I remember the day it happened. I was working with a kid who was very angry and aggressive. No therapy prior had worked to help him connect any dots in reference to his anger and behavior. I tried asking him about his anger, tried redirecting and distracting and nothing seemed to work. For some reason, at about the half hour mark, I had another thought pop into my head. I did my best to get his attention and then asked “Well…where do you feel that anger in your body?” He literally stopped almost in his tracks and I could see the wheels turning in his thinking mind as he slowly began to regulate and calm down.
It seemed rather simple, but the change in his body language was remarkable and since that day, I have never forgotten that. In fact, it was three days after that in a manic episode at 2am I wrote the draft version of My Feelings Workbook. I learned in that moment just how little we know about feelings. We think we know a lot, but when you start to ask deeper questions, even adults stumble to find the answers. If that is the case , what are the common mistakes I hear parents, teachers and adults making about emotions that we are inadvertently communicating to our children and how can we change it. The answer, like that day, is more simple than we may think.
“Good” is not a feeling!
Disappointment is OK and necessary!
Where Where Where!
No one “makes” you feel anything!
Stop Judging the Feelings! They are not good or bad
State the feeling, actually!
“Good” is not a feeling!
Alright parents, you know how this goes, especially with tweenagers and teenagers. You pick them up from school and ask them how the day was and they say…..”good.” You ask them how they felt about the math test they just took or how they feel about the upcoming project and they say….”good.” Good is not an actual feeling. It is a description of a group of feelings and is often just an easy way out to not give more details. If you can start young, ask them more questions about this. Inform them that “good” is not a feeling but rather a way to describe feelings, then give them a few examples based on the situation to help them discern the difference and use actual feelings. For example in the math test situation: “do you feel confident or nervous? With teens it is important to make this a sporadic fun thing otherwise it won't go too well. When I pick up my teenage son from school and I ask him how his day was, he almost always says “good.” I then sometimes say, and he expects it, “you know I want some details, what was “good” about it?” If he tells me something in his day that was positive, I will validate that and use the feeling. For example: “so you were excited you scored the winning basket at recess today.”
Disappointment is OK and necessary!
We have all felt it if we are honest as parents. That moment when we become aware that our child is going to feel disappointed when we have to deliver the “news.” We scramble in our minds to come up with ways to “soften” the blow, make it more palatable or maybe prevent the tantrum. The absolute truth is that every feeling a human being has is necessary. Every…single…one! Purposeful and useful including the uncomfortable ones. What is actually happening when we try to save a child from feelings is that we are actually trying to save ourselves from the uncomfortable feelings we have/had when we were kids when our parents were responding to our distress in not the healthiest of ways. The first step to change is to be aware that it is our own aversion to disappointment from our childhood experiences that's the driving force to our efforts to save our own children from this feeling. The second step is to regulate the self in those moments and the third step is to place the reflection comment at the right time for the child. For example, “so I'm wondering if you're feeling disappointed right now?” The 4th step is to simply be present in those moments when our kids have those big strong feelings and comfort when necessary; but not too much and not every time.
Where Where Where!
What is the first thing you felt this morning? Or a better way to ask it is how did you know you were hungry this morning? We can all get this connection right away because our brains have paired the where with the need and reward thousands upon thousands of times. Hunger is a feeling IN the body. So why would we think that other feelings are any different? They aren't! If we slow down enough and “listen” to our bodies, they will give us information that we are having a particular feeling. I once used a worksheet from My Feelings Workbook to teach a teenager with an IQ of 40, that right before he would become violent his hands would get hot. From there we were able to develop an intervention that whenever he noticed that feeling IN his body and hands, he would go to staff and say “hot hands, hot hands,” and they would give him a bag of ice cubes to hold. It was the first time an intervention for his anger ever really worked because it was not focusing on the cognitive “how” but rather the body “where.”
No one “makes” you feel anything!
No need to spend too much time on this one other than to say that this type of statement and thinking is habitual and reinforced by our society at a level that is unimaginable. Everywhere you look, in the news, in conversation, in the media, you will see people stating this untruth. It literally is a thinking error called blaming and it is ingrained into the very fabric of our society. Believing other people have the ability to “make” you feel anything is like saying they have a remote control to your nervous system.
Now I did NOT say it is easy. I said it is possible, with a lot of time, practice and awareness to no longer give away your power to others in relation to your feelings; in particular anger. Having worked with thousands of very angry humans over a 25 year career, many of whom no one else could or would work with, this was always where I started with them. Until they understood and took responsibility for their anger (i.e. not blaming others for that feeling and subsequent behavior), they would never truly feel personally motivated to change it within the self.
Stop judging the feelings!
We definitely take this one for granted and of all the mistakes in this list, this one will technically be the hardest to shift. The main reason is because we often underestimate the levels of shame and judgement we attach to feelings from a cultural leaning point of view. The easiest way to think about feelings is to simply see all of them as normal and that they generally can be uncomfortable and comfortable, pleasant or unpleasant. We then use this information, paired with appropriate validation, to help us make decisions hopefully in a healthy direction. As it relates to children, one thing we most definitely want to stay away from is asking the dreaded "now aren't you ashamed of yourself?" question.
State the feeling, actually!
This one will be a little easier to shift but will for sure take time. Have you ever heard your child say something like this: “I feel like I want to hit my brother because…..”? When we take a closer look, they did not actually state a feeling but rather a thought in relation to that feeling. This is very common and to be honest, we adults model this to our children on a regular basis. What the child would want to say, and to which you can simply reflect back to them in that moment is: “so you feel angry and are wanting to hit your brother because….” Most of the time, you will get a resounding “yes.” For older kids, once the concept has been explained, you can simply note to them in that moment they didn't actually state a feeling and see if they can restate things with the feeling included. Most of the time with teenagers this becomes a sort of joking type of interaction; but make no mistake. They are listening and they are taking in all of what we say.
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