cover image Parents Have Feelings, Too: A Guide to Navigating Your Emotions so You and Your Family Can Thrive

Parents Have Feelings, Too: A Guide to Navigating Your Emotions so You and Your Family Can Thrive

Hilary Jacobs Hendel and Juli Fraga. Alcove, $19.99 trade paper (320p) ISBN 979-8-89242-294-9

In this transformative guide, psychotherapists Hendel (It’s Not Always Depression) and Fraga offer tools to help parents work through their emotions and avoid passing intergenerational trauma onto their children. The main tool they recommend is the “Change Triangle,” a “map of the mind” designed to help people identify inhibitory emotions, core emotions, and the defenses they use to avoid emotions altogether. When experiencing distress, the authors explain, people often use defensive behaviors, like sarcasm or blaming, or experience inhibitory emotions, like anxiety, guilt, and shame. The goal is to become aware of these patterns and connect with the core emotions one is actually feeling, like anger, sadness, fear, disgust, joy, or excitement. This process can help parents avoid reactive “freak outs” that hurt their kids. The authors illuminate how the “Change Triangle” works by sharing patient stories. In one example, a mother who was raised to believe anger was shameful found herself snapping at her kids in frustrating moments. Acknowledging her core anger allowed her to release it in safe ways (journaling, walking, or venting to a friend), and her family life became more peaceful as a result. Offering practical suggestions and enlightening stories, Hendel and Fraga prove to be compassionate teachers for parents in need of healing. This is a game-changer for parents and their children. (Sept.)