How to Deal With Your **** So Your Kids Don’t Have To: Breaking Cycles of Anger, Rejection, and Shame with Eli Harwood

How to Deal With Your **** So Your Kids Don’t Have To: Breaking Cycles of Anger, Rejection, and Shame with Eli Harwood

From The Child Psych Podcast by Institute of Child Psychology

April 15, 2026 · 45 min · Season 3 · Episode 177

About this episode

Eli Harwood discusses how unprocessed emotions in parents can affect their children and offers strategies for healing and breaking generational cycles.

In this powerful and deeply honest conversation, we sit down with attachment therapist and author Eli Harwood to explore the heart of her new book, How to Deal With Your $%$! So Your Kids Don’t Have To: An Encyclopedia for Ditching Your Emotional Baggage —releasing April 14. At the core of this conversation is a simple but profound truth: your kids can feel what you don’t heal. Together, we unpack how unprocessed anger, experiences of rejection, and lingering shame can quietly shape the way we show up as parents. These patterns often surface in our hardest moments—during conflict, disconnection, or discipline—and can unintentionally be passed on to the very children we’re trying to support. Eli offers practical, no-nonsense guidance to help parents recognize their emotional triggers, work through their own internal experiences, and respond with greater intention and connection. This is not about perfection—it’s about awareness, repair, and doing the kind of work that changes family patterns over time. In this episode, we explore: *How anger, rejection, and shame show up in parenting *Why children carry what parents don’t process *Tools to begin healing your own emotional patterns…

People in this episode

Guest: Eli Harwood

Topics covered

  • parenting
  • emotional healing
  • generational cycles
  • anger management
  • attachment theory

Keywords

  • emotional baggage
  • parenting challenges
  • anger
  • rejection
  • shame
  • attachment
  • healing
  • family dynamics

Mentioned in this episode

Books & works: How to Deal With Your $%$! So Your Kids Don’t Have To: An Encyclopedia for Ditching Your Emotional Baggage

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