Anna Brown joins me this week to talk about our theme in the Living Joyfully Network this month, Sitting with Fear and Discomfort. This is something that comes up on our unschooling journey pretty regularly because, not only are we challenging lots of cultural norms around learning and parenting, we’re also giving our children space to make meaningful choices in their days, from what they want to do to how they want to explore the world. Sometimes their exploration has us bumping against our comfort zones!
Anna and I walk through the process of noticing our fear or discomfort, validating the emotions we’re feeling, asking questions about our internal experience as well as what’s happening in front of us, and coming to a greater understanding of the situation. And then, from this place of deeper clarity, we can have more meaningful conversations with those involved and make choices moving forward that both make sense and feel good. Fear and discomfort will bubble up again and again, that’s just part of life. But having tools to tease apart the various aspects at play—like cultural messages we’ve absorbed, baggage we carry from past experiences, and thoughts we’re projecting into the future—helps us process the overwhelm, improves our communication, and strengthens our relationships with our kids.
DISCUSSION AREAS
- Why sit with discomfort and fear?
- Why it’s important to first be kind to ourselves.
- The transition from external “fixing” to internal processing.
- Turning our curiosity inward: asking ourselves questions.
- Turning our curiosity outward: what does it look like now?
THINGS WE MENTION IN THIS EPISODE
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