Last week we had a family outing planned: watching Inside Out 2 at the movies. To warm up, the day before, we watched the first film and, at one point, my son said: “Mom, sis is like Anger, I’m Sadness and you’re Joy.” The little one was in a bad mood because she no longer wanted that outing; he was overcome by sadness because of his sister’s sulking; and I was thrilled to watch the sequel. His reading of the moment was perfect.

I will not go on about the film, because I am forbidden from giving away spoilers, but I strongly recommend it: it is a film for children, but mainly for adults and for the children living inside their bodies. Hearing my son’s analysis makes me even happier.

One of my life purposes has always been to teach my children the ability to recognize and handle emotions, so they have less difficulty showing themselves and expressing their needs in relationships with other people (especially so they do not live through the same pains I did).

When I discovered transactional analysis in 2014, a theory of human behavior created by psychiatrist Eric Berne, I recognized myself in it and saw the possibility of my purpose coming true. Since then I have studied a lot, really a lot, but I realize every day that studying alone is not enough. I share here perhaps one of the biggest challenges I face as a mother.

Studying alone is not enough for a very practical reason: every day of my life I am influenced by every piece of my history, good and happy fragments of life, but also parts that are not so good (irony: the pains I lived through). And many times, in relating to other people, but mainly to my children, I fight internal battles against my own monsters.

In front of my children, anger takes over when my inner Goofy comes onstage in traffic, sadness overwhelms me over some event and invites me to withdraw, enthusiasm spreads (or annoys) when joy is present and, at times, fear consumes me when I have to do something I think I cannot manage. And in all those moments, they (my children) always have something to tell me to bring me back.

Knowing the theory, my history, my pains and my survival strategies helps me understand all this, try new ways of doing things and handle emotions and emotionally competent stimuli. But I am not always grounded enough not to be captured by my own pains or fantasies.

That is why I often get it wrong and have to start over, but never from the beginning, because certainly steps of progress have been taken.

Relationships and emotional education are not easy, not for children and even less for adults.

The sooner I learn to name what I am feeling and to identify the stimuli that led to it, the sooner I can learn better strategies to take care of myself and relate and, above all, I learn that I am allowed to feel what I feel.

Maku, in her column last Sunday, wrote about the basements of our minds, illustrated by beautiful (in my view) trunks in the attic. From my experience, I can conclude that, however frightening or ugly the contents of some trunks may seem to my eyes and to others’, each trunk, each memory, each experience of my life made me who I am today. When any piece of my history changes, changes also happen in me.

Today I thank my children for allowing me to learn from them every day of our lives; after all, I think the ones who have been teaching me about emotional education are them. My part is to offer a safe, protected environment for them to express and notice what they are feeling, but, just like me, they will learn in relationships (easy and hard) and through self-knowledge.