Real Talk

How A Parent Deals With Their Inner World Affects Their Families

by Kevyn Gohu
February 18, 2025

A parent’s inner world can be hidden only for so long.

Many parents know about the “inner child” — the part of ourselves that holds onto our unfulfilled childhood needs and wounds. But where do we hide our true feelings? Parents often call this place the “inner world.” It’s where we temporarily or permanently store our true feelings when the current situation doesn’t allow us to express them. It’s like a hamper where we dump our dirty clothes. Once it fills up, it’s time to dump it out at the laundromat or do the laundry.

Unfortunately, unlike hampers, dumping out our mind’s “dirty laundry” isn’t as simple as we think.

A parent's inner world affects the home far more than they think.

What’s an Inner World?

Some are probably more familiar with Sigmund Freud’s term: the unconscious. When he coined the term, he likened the mind to an iceberg and the most submerged layer represented the part of our brain where all our lifelong memories — both bad and good — are stored. But it’s not easy to recall them; sometimes, we even forget about them unless the proper conditions are met to activate them.

However, our minds are not exactly slow to change or melt like an iceberg. In some cases, they may be more like a library that constantly changes to accommodate new books.

Imagine our inner worlds like a library. Our memories and knowledge are the books, newspaper clippings, CDs, and USBs all stashed and sorted neatly on their shelves. The ones we don’t usually use are stored in the archives and are called upon when needed. The interior design — our choice of wallpaper, windows, chairs, tables, and knick-knacks used to design the library — are representations of our inner world. Whenever there’s new information, we subconsciously change the design to accommodate it.

It’s similar to how we change when we add something new. If we suddenly have diabetes then, we try our best to dump all those memories of sweets so we don’t crave them anymore. Kids do the same thing; when they experience their first day at school, they have to open a new section in their library to accommodate the new “books” or memories they have about their school life.

But it doesn’t just change whenever we take in new information. It also adjusts whenever feelings pass through. Imagine emotions as students going through the library. Some genuinely look for a good read or a quiet place to think. Then, some are just so stressed they have a meltdown. Unfortunately, when left unchecked, the ones having a meltdown start wrecking the place. While they’re throwing chairs, eating the books, and destroying many other things, our conscious self is the poor librarian trying to control said kids.

But How Does Managing An Inner World Affect Parenting?

As parents, we try our best to “curate” our family’s lives and do so out of love. After all, we want our kids to have the best childhood ever. Sure, there’ll be tears but we want them to laugh as much as they can and have everything they need and want. Unfortunately, the challenge lies in our ability to maintain and sustain that environment which sometimes means burying all the negative emotions. But as parents, we’ll gladly sacrifice anything and everything to ensure they never feel cheated out of their childhood.

Then, we’ll say that their smiles and laughter are reward enough. But there’ll always be a part of us that will try to reclaim what we’ve sacrificed. Unfortunately, all the demands of parenthood occupy our minds until we forget what we were trying to get back. All that’s left is that feeling of regret and frustration which, we can’t express to our families. So, what do we do? We wear a smile and dump those feelings into our inner worlds and say, “We’ll sort that out later.” But whenever we’re given the chance, we’re ashamed and say, “Why can’t these feelings just go away?”

But these feelings are like the papers we never throw out but don’t know why we’re keeping them. Eventually, they will build up and all it’ll take is one spark to set everything on fire. Or in our case, our tempers go off and we chew out anyone and everybody for any negative emotion they have because we’re not done sorting out ours.

Does the situation sound familiar? Don’t worry, it’s not an uncommon story.

Removing Morality From Emotions

In 2018, psychologist Sarah David’s TED Talk revealed why the situation has become so common: “Positivity has become a form of moral correctness.”

“We either judge ourselves harshly for having these so-called bad emotions like sadness, anger and even grief or actively try to push it away,” she says during the lecture. “And in our kids, we may inadvertently shame them out of emotions seen as negative. We sometimes do this by jumping immediately to the solution, failing to show them that these emotions are inherently valuable.”

Because we’re so determined to give our kids that happy childhood, we shame ourselves and them into believing any negative emotions are morally wrong. These bad feelings can feel like an insult to our efforts to provide our kids with a childhood that we feel is far better than ours. It’s why we tend to micromanage; we’re trying to make sure we stay on track for that “happy childhood.”

Considering how badly badgered we are with all the studies that reveal all the things that could cause our kids to have negative emotions, it seems so wrong to let them feel them. But, it’s as Sarah says, “Tough feelings are part of our contract with Life!”

A safe home is better than a “happy” home

We often associate happiness with safety, and we forget that outward appearances are not all they seem. A strict family may look stifled but they’re actually at peace with one another despite the stoic appearance. But the opposite can also happen — the family can be loud and be every Filipino family’s favorite party companion but have more skeletons in their closet than an actual graveyard. So, is happiness really a good metric for rating or diagnosing a family’s mental wellness?

Perhaps, a better metric is “safe” which we can define as just how willing one is to trust their family with their “good” and “bad” feelings. But like any other metric, it starts with us, the parents. How we deal with our inner world is a big factor in how safe the kids will feel at home.