What Kind Of Family Raises Children With A Sense Of Ease?
The Story For A Sense Of Ease
A post on Instagram recently went viral and struck a deep chord with many people.
In essence, it’s about a girl and her boyfriend who both appear to lead glamorous lives and have respectable jobs. But while the girl feels miserable every single day, her boyfriend has a sense of easy.
For example:
They both learned musical instruments. She spent her childhood grinding through exams and grade levels in agony—and never touched an instrument again afterward. Her boyfriend, on the other hand, never bothered with exams and simply played the pieces he loved.
They both have good jobs. But she’s under enormous pressure and finds her work painful, while her boyfriend does something he genuinely enjoys.
They both love cats. She would train her cat to do tricks and get angry when it couldn’t, while her boyfriend remained endlessly patient and gentle with his.
She couldn’t understand it: Why, growing up in such similar family backgrounds, were their mindsets so completely different?
It wasn’t until she saw how her boyfriend interacted with his parents that she felt she’d found the answer.
Her boyfriend and his parents cared deeply for one another, yet maintained healthy boundaries and knew how to respect each other’s space. That’s when she realized: So this is what it looks like—to be loved this lightly, this freely. To be this happy.
The relationship between her and her own parents, by contrast, lacked that same “ease.” That’s why she always felt… knotted up inside.
Different family backgrounds led to opposite states of being.
After reading it, countless netizens said they envied the boyfriend and wished they could have grown up in a family like his.
So today, Kelly wants to talk with you about: What kind of family raises children with that “A sense of ease”?
These 3 Types of Parents Tend to Raise “Knotted-Up” Children
A sense of ease generally means someone who isn’t conflicted or overly anxious, has stable emotions, and possesses strong self-regulation—handling most situations with natural comfort. At its core, it reveals that a person feels deeply secure and has a high level of self-acceptance.
Take the boyfriend mentioned at the beginning—he’s exactly someone with a sense of ease. He focuses on enjoying things for their own sake, is rarely swayed by outside judgment, and lives life at his own pace. Clearly, his parents provided him with a healthy, relaxed upbringing.
The girl, on the other hand, is the opposite. Though accomplished, she’s anxious and knotted up at every turn, rarely able to feel genuine happiness from within. Comparing the two, she concluded it all came down to how they were raised.
A lack of ease is the result of growing up under prolonged pressure. From a psychological perspective, these 3 types of parents are more likely to raise children who struggle to feel relaxed:
1. Emotionally Unstable Parents
Parents with unstable emotions can create a tense family atmosphere—frequent conflicts, arguments, or poor emotional regulation. They might take their moods out on their children, being warm one moment and cold the next.
As the more vulnerable members of the family, children are forced to absorb the stress of their parents’ emotional outbursts. This can trigger a cascade of effects: difficulty focusing, hypersensitivity, low self-esteem, and a deep lack of security. The internal pressure and conflict become overwhelming.
To cope with this stress, a child’s brain releases cortisol—a steroid hormone produced by the adrenal glands during the stress response. When cortisol is released in excess or over long periods, it can interfere with brain and nerve development, and in severe cases, lead to mental health disorders.
2. Dismissive/Negating Parents
These parents constantly criticize and shut down their children. When faced with a child’s negative emotions, they engage in what’s known as “emotion dismissing”—the belief that negative feelings are harmful, so they try to quickly fix or erase them. They ignore, distract, or even punish the child to make the “bad feelings” go away, sending the message that negative emotions should be rejected.
For example: a little boy is afraid of the dark and starts crying. If his parents say, “What’s a boy got to be afraid of the dark for?”—he’ll feel ashamed. Desperate for his parents’ approval and love, he’ll likely deny his own feelings and tell himself he’s not scared. But the fear of the dark is still there. His mind and inner world are now in conflict.
The more his inner experiences—especially vulnerability and making mistakes—go unaccepted, the more his authentic self gets distorted, and the greater his internal conflict grows. This easily leads to low self-esteem, defensiveness, and anxiety, leaving the child’s body and mind constantly tense.
3. Controlling Parents
Parents of this type, consciously or not, use behavioral control and psychological control to manage their children. Through resource control, or by expressing disappointment, disapproval, and using guilt trips or threats, they manipulate the child’s psyche. They also try to keep the child emotionally dependent on them, preventing true independence.
Children raised under this level of control are more prone to low self-esteem and mental health issues such as anxiety, depression, and even antisocial behavior.
As the girl from the earlier story described: her parents’ dynamic made her feel she had to be a dutiful daughter—send money home, be the “good girl.” Yet she was still accused of “not caring about the family at all.” That accusation left her feeling deeply wronged and successfully triggered a crushing sense of shame for being “unfilial.”
This knotted-up relationship with her parents made it impossible for her to move through life with the same lightness her boyfriend had.
What Kind of Family Is More Likely to Raise a “Relaxed” Child?
In reality, there are many imperfect parents—but there are also many parenting approaches worth learning from. We’ve found that children with a stronger sense of ease tend to come from these 3 types of families:
1. Families Where the Child Knows, Without a Doubt, That They Are Loved
Online, I came across a mother who did something incredibly far-sighted for her daughter: every month, she sets aside a sum of money labeled “Breakup Fund.” The purpose? To give her daughter the confidence to walk away—from a partner she doesn’t like, a city she doesn’t love, food she doesn’t enjoy, a job that drains her…
“No matter what happens, I am deeply loved by my mom.”
That love is the armor we wear to face life’s battles. A parent’s unconditional love and acceptance give a child a solid sense of security and fill them with positive energy. This makes it easier to move through life lightly. Even when things get tough, they have more inner strength to get through the hard times and explore the world freely.
2. Families That Accept a Child’s Mistakes and Vulnerabilities as They Are
How parents respond to a child’s errors and vulnerabilities hugely shapes the boundaries of that child’s exploration—and deeply influences their self-perception.
Recently, a trending Weibo topic—“How Happy Is a High-Fault-Tolerance Family?”—sparked a lively discussion. It featured a compilation of videos where, after a child made a mistake, no parent lost control or lashed out. Instead, they comforted the child and focused on solving the problem together.
In the comments, countless people wrote: “I’m so jealous.”
Because these children, rather than falling apart or spiraling into anxiety after a mistake, showed greater emotional stability and stronger initiative. In families like these, no matter how big the setback, everyone pulls together to face it.
The renowned psychology professor David Hawkins once said: “A person full of positive energy can bring order and beauty to those around them.” I couldn’t agree more.
When something is already broken, there’s no need to damage the relationship too. When parents accept a child’s authentic feelings—even the unpleasant ones—and allow them to make mistakes, giving them room to grow, the child’s inner experience is validated. They don’t develop fear. Their body and mind relax, leaving them with the energy and courage to experience life fully.
Parents who allow themselves to make mistakes—and allow their children to make mistakes—are the ones who build truly happy families.
3. Families That Cultivate “Insensitivity” (Mental Toughness)
In life, we notice that “thick-skinned” people tend to have better mindsets, stronger resilience, and live with more ease. This is similar to what Haruki Murakami… sorry—what Junichi Watanabe described as “insensitivity” (or fumbi-ryoku / bluntness power).
Insensitivity is the opposite of being overly sensitive. In his book The Power of Insensitivity, Junichi Watanabe writes:
“Insensitivity is a gift—a force that allows one’s talents to bloom and flourish. It is an endurance against adversity, an ability to push back against the outside world with a thick skin. It is a positive, upward-facing attitude toward life.”
People with this quality sometimes seem indifferent to many things. But behind that “not caring” lies a strong sense of self-awareness—or, you could say, self-confidence. They don’t dwell much on what others think or on setbacks.
Parents can lead by example in this area. I’m reminded of a little boy who recently told his mom, quite dejectedly: “Today at kindergarten, I raised my hand three times, and the teacher never called on me…”
The mom first acknowledged his feelings: “You felt like the teacher overlooked you, and that made you sad, right?”
After the boy nodded, she comforted him, then used an analogy about shelling peas: “Why did you pick that pea instead of this one? Is it because you don’t like the other one?”
The boy replied: “No, it’s because there are too many peas. I can only do them one at a time.”
Then the mom said: “When you raise your hand and the teacher doesn’t call on you, it’s not because she doesn’t like you. It’s because there are so many kids, and she has to get to everyone one by one. So you can be patient. There were times before—and there will be times after—when she does call on you, right?”
This kind of guidance gently soothes the child, stops them from spiraling, and teaches them to view outside judgment objectively—building that “insensitivity” muscle. Their mindset will be so much better the next time something similar happens.
A Sense of Ease Can Also Be Learned Later in Life
Some might ask: “If I grew up in a tense, high-pressure family, does that mean I can never move through life with ease or have a happy life?”
The answer is, of course, no.
As psychologist Alfred Adler said: “Neither genetics nor psychological trauma can control you. No matter what you’ve been through, in the present you can still choose your future.”
Recently I met up with a friend who seemed so much more at peace. In the past, he’d grown up with strict, demanding parents and had always placed intense pressure on himself. Combined with the stress of being a lawyer, his mind and body were constantly wound tight—to the point of insomnia and loss of appetite. He eventually had to quit and go home to recover.
I was curious about his transformation. He told me that a few years back, he found a countryside guesthouse that offered room and board in exchange for work. He went and stayed there. He woke with the sun, rested at dusk, and ate healthy food he’d grown himself. The landlords mostly gave him physical labor—no time to overthink. He began to truly unwind. On top of that, he’d been seeing a counselor he really clicked with for a few years, and his mood gradually lifted. The physical symptoms eased too.
More importantly, he learned how to be a better father to his own child: “Let the child be who they are. Relax.”
Inspired by his change, here are 2 ways we can try to re-learn that sense of ease:
1. At the Cognitive Level
Try to step outside your identity—or work with a counselor—to view your relationship with your parents, and with yourself, from a third-person perspective. Learn to take full responsibility for your own life instead of staying stuck in the “victim” role.
While your parents’ upbringing is deeply connected to your current lack of ease, whether or not they change is not what determines your happiness. You might as well save the energy you’d spend trying to “fix” your parents and use it to create new “object relations.”
A good relationship is like a container—it can hold your negative emotions, expand your psychological space, and help you grow. Not having a perfect start is a shame, yes. But we can still level up bit by bit, grow bit by bit, and unleash our life force little by little.
2. At the Behavioral Level
Care for yourself—from body to mind. Adjust your sleep schedule. Simplify your life. Let your body rest. Choose activities that help you relax—yoga, meditation, anything that reawakens your body’s sensitivity and gets your energy flowing. Or seek out high-energy people and things. Stay connected with optimistic, positive people. Learn from the good energy they carry. Emotions are contagious—spend enough time around people like that, and you’ll naturally become more positive and at ease.
Not growing up in a宽松 (relaxed/lenient) family environment may be a regret. But we can gradually build our own inner strength—and create that space for the next generation.
