It all starts with a seemingly insignificant detail – my middle name: Joy. If you met me now, you'd say that joy is an inseparable part of my life. But there was a time when I couldn't stand that name. It felt like a cruel joke.

'Why did I get a name like Joy when it seemed like the last thing I could find?'

My journey to understand joy was deeply intertwined with my complicated relationship with my mother. She and I clashed frequently. To make matters worse, she shared the same middle name, Joy. It's ironic, isn't it? I had this name, yet my life often felt joyless. She and I struggled to express our emotions. Instead of addressing our feelings, we would dance around them, trying to avoid the inevitable confrontations.

I vividly recall thinking about my mum in those moments, 'You’re pretty stressed. You’re not joyful. That's stupid. Why did I get this name? And you're just grumpy with me all the time.There's not a lot of joy. I don't like this name.”

Growing up, I often experience my own emotions being bypassed. My mum had her share of challenges, too. We both had big feelings, but we never knew how to embrace them. Those emotions we couldn't face or process began to accumulate inside us, unprocessed and ignored.

Is this something that you can relate to? Have you felt your emotional needs bypassed too? It's a common experience for many kids because most parents were never really taught how to meet their own or their child’s emotional needs.

Back then, I didn't have a clue about the connection between these unprocessed emotions and my inner turmoil. That knowledge came much later. In our weekly parenting masterclass, we dive deep into understanding how bypassing emotions can affect both us and our children.

It's like carrying around a suitcase full of emotions that never got unpacked. These trapped feelings didn't just go away – they resurface as irritability, frustration, anger, depression, and even physical issues. What we all need is to process and release any big emotions we have, but most of us never learned how.

How long do you think these emotions should ideally last? A minute, a day, a month? No, just 90 seconds. That's all! Yet, for many people they tend to linger for years, even decades, leading to a boiling pot of stress and anxiety. And sadly, there are people who go to their graves with trapped emotions.

That's not all; it's similar to having your emotions locked away in a pressure cooker. Day by day, incident by incident, the pressure builds up. You go about life, doing your best to hold it all together. But one minor trigger, one small incident, and boom! You explode, just like many of our children do when their feelings burst free.

As parents, we know this scene all too well. Your child pushes your buttons, you've kept your cool – until this moment. Now, you've finally lost it. And why? Because we’ve been bypassing our emotions.

In our parenting classes, I often remind parents how important it is to help ourselves and our children release these trapped emotions. It's not just about validating the emotions but also learning the skills to process them. In doing so, we create space for something far more wonderful: Joy.