Somatic Therapy San Francisco: What Makes a Good Parent?
In our modern world, it can be easy to get stuck on what we should be doing and what parenting should look like, especially when we look at social media with various influencers. With the internet, we can also get lost researching how to be a good parent and get tons of information—not necessarily from reputable sources.
As a somatic therapist working in San Francisco, I work with many parents who have children of all ages. One thing that is consistent about parenting, no matter the age of the child, is that parents wonder if they are getting it right. At each new developmental stage, there are new challenges and questions and new parenting insecurities. However, one of the things that I see as a key to being a good parent is being emotionally in tune and able to regulate your own emotions. Being emotionally regulated means being able to know what you are feeling and know how to attend to your own emotional needs.
How Being Emotionally Regulated Helps With Parenting (A somatic therapist in San Francisco’s observations)
1) You can attune better to your child. One of the biggest parts of being a parent is being able to observe your child’s emotions and respond appropriately. The ability to respond or attune to a child’s emotions is directly correlated with being able to regulate your own emotions. If you can make sure you take care of your emotional needs, you are better equipped to take care of the emotional needs of others. If your child makes a bid for attention, you want to be able to try to meet that need in order to to create a secure attachment. The good news is that you can create a secure attachment by answering your child’s bids for emotional connection approximately 30% of the time.
2) You can model how to respond to emotions. Anyone who has been around a child knows that children pickup on EVERYTHING. When it comes to how we move, how we talk, how we feel, children are constantly observing and often imitating us. Modeling how to deal with our emotions helps our children learn how to cope with their own emotions.
3) You can set better boundaries. Boundaries help children feel safe and nurtured. It’s important to be able to set consistent, firm, and loving boundaries and be able to safely hold space for how a child reacts. That’s not to say that you must get boundaries right 100% of the time or that you can never get frustrated with your child, rather that aiming for consistent boundaries is the goal. Again, if you are someone who can emotionally regulate, the pushback from setting boundaries will feel less triggering.
So what happens if you are reading this and thinking, “Wait, I don’t know how to meet my emotional needs aka emotionally regulate? In fact, I barely know what my emotional needs are. . .”
Therapy, specifically somatic therapy, can help you connect with yourself and learn how to meet your emotionally needs. If we were not taught how to meet our emotional needs as children, we grow up to be adults that are disconnected from our bodies and our feelings. Or feel like we are often dysregulated emotionally and live in chaos. In order to break the cycle of emotional detachment, emotional dysregulation, and emotional neglect of our own needs for the next generation, we must first take care of ourselves.
How Somatic Therapy San Francisco can Help With Emotional Regulation
As a somatic therapist in San Francisco, I often work with clients who intellectually understand their emotions but struggle to actually feel, process, or regulate them in their bodies. Somatic therapy focuses on the mind-body connection and helps people become more aware of physical sensations, nervous system responses, and emotional patterns that may have developed over time. Oftentimes these emotional patterns become imprinted very early in our lives, and it can feel difficult to change them.
Many parents walk around in states of chronic overwhelm, anxiety, or emotional shutdown without even realizing it. Parenting can activate unresolved wounds, attachment patterns, and nervous system responses from childhood. For example, a child crying, yelling, or expressing anger may unconsciously trigger feelings of helplessness or frustration in a parent. Without awareness, these feelings cause reactions characterized by emotional reactivity rather than intentional parenting.
Somatic therapy helps individuals slow down and notice what is happening internally. Through body awareness, mindfulness, movement, breathwork, and nervous system regulation techniques, people can begin to develop a greater capacity to tolerate emotions without becoming overwhelmed by them. Over time, this can lead to feeling and being calmer, more present, and more emotionally connected in relationships with both yourself and your children.
One of the beautiful things about somatic therapy is that it is not about becoming a “perfect” parent, which is an impossible goal. Instead, it is about becoming more aware, more compassionate with yourself, and more capable of repairing ruptures when they happen. Children do not need flawless parents but rather parents who are emotionally available, willing to reflect and change, and able to reconnect after difficult moments.
Parenting and the Nervous System
When parents are emotionally regulated, children feel safer. Children co-regulate through connection with caregivers, meaning they often rely on adults to help them return to a calmer emotional state. If a parent is consistently dysregulated or emotionally unavailable, children may have difficulty learning how to regulate themselves. If a parent can’t handle their own emotions, the message that the children receive is that emotions are big and scary—both their own emotions and those of others.
This is why healing yourself is not selfish: on the contrary, it directly impacts future generations making personal healing a selfless act. Learning how to care for your own emotional needs allows you to show up more intentionally in your parenting.
Somatic Therapy San Francisco can support parents with:
Emotional regulation skills
Anxiety and overwhelm
Parenting stress and burnout
Attachment wounds
Boundary setting
Trauma healing
Building nervous system resilience
Improving communication and connection in relationships
Final Thoughts on What Makes a Good Parent
In my experience as a somatic therapist in San Francisco, good parenting is not about always saying the right thing, never losing patience, or following every parenting trend that appears online. A good parent is someone who is willing to stay curious, grow, repair, and emotionally show up for themselves and their children. A good parent makes the commitment to try and regulate themselves and help their children regulate their emotions each and every day—even if the day before they struggled with it.
When we learn how to connect with our own emotions through our bodies, we become more capable of connecting with others. The greater capacity we have to connect with ourselves, the more capacity we have to connect with others as we bring self-knowledge and intention into our relationships. Emotional regulation is not something we are simply born knowing how to do—it is a skill that can be learned and strengthened over time.
If you are struggling with emotional overwhelm, anxiety, disconnection, or parenting stress, Somatic Therapy San Francisco may help you reconnect with yourself and create healthier relational patterns for both you and your family.