Let go and connect
To feel or not to feel...
After having my son, I quickly realized I was on track to becoming Marlin the Clownfish dad from Finding Nemo. I don't want anything bad to happen to my son. I fear the inevitable hurt he will experience in life. I desire his life to be filled with love, joy, peace, wellness.
Goodness...the heavy task of finding out what is and is not in your control as a parental figure.
Here's the truth: we cannot control our children's feelings and nor should we. In fact, if we can find a way to let go of the fear of suffering, our children will be better off.
When we parent from a mindset of, "I don't want you to feel this way," we are doing three things:
1. Sending our child the message that it is not okay to feel anything but okay.
2. Practicing magical thinking and controlling behavior: "I can control how my child feels and thinks."
3. Teaching our child intolerance to distress.
If you have the fear of your child suffering, your strength and value of love and compassion is charged, expansive, and transformative. I bet that love and compassion of yours actually agrees with these lessons:
1. My child, it is okay and natural to feel distress. Suffering is part of life, something we all experience. And you are not alone. And I am not afraid of your feelings.
2. I cannot control how you feel or think, but I can control showing up and accompanying you in your walk of life. It is important to me to be there for you, as a guide, a shoulder to cry on, as a safe base.
3. My child, breathe in, breathe out. You can handle this. You can make it through.
Distress Tolerance
Distress tolerance is a skill that can be refined and strengthened. To do so, we practice mindfulness, which includes recognizing and accepting reality. So often we deny the reality of experiences, our feelings, our thoughts--we delude ourselves into believing that we can avoid away the suffering. As a result, we pack up the pain over and over again and reinforce the belief that we won't be able to handle it/we won't be able to recover from its wrath. Then, when we can no longer delude ourselves from feeling distress, we start feeling ashamed: "What's wrong with me that I feel so horrible? That this situation is overwhelming?" And from feeling ashamed, we isolate.
So instead, we accept that we will feel distressed in life, which takes the avoiding distress and feeling ashamed when we fail off our to-do list. It also allows us to be living beings.
We practice coping skills, such as deep breathing, drawing, talking to a trusted friend.
We practice helpful and true thinking: "I can handle this. I can get help to handle this. This experience/situation/feeling is temporary."
We connect with others. We can tell them what we are going through and/or harbor in social refuge.
We remember that distress tolerance is a skill, that it is a muscle that grows with practice, and is able to be strengthened and refined throughout our lives.
Connect, Don't Correct
When your child--or anyone--says, "I feel this way," notice if you find yourself assessing if they "should" feel that way. Notice if you find yourself identifying what you want them to be feeling. That's the part of your brain that wants to correct. It sees the feeling as a problem and therefore has identified the solution. So, you say, "Don't feel that way. Here's what you can think/feel instead."
While that might seem helpful and can temporarily be so, it is more powerful and supportive to connect. Engage the part of the brain that wants to know more about that feeling they are having. When did it start? Is there anything they know is contributing to the feeling or its strength? What do they want to do about the feeling? Can I imagine what that feeling feels like?
Then, the advice piece may come naturally--or maybe, advice-giving will not be invited into the conversation. Either way, your loved one will feel like their heart and mind is better seen than it was before and that it is safe for them to talk to you. They don't have to worry about getting unsolicited or misguided advice.
We want to be seen, heard, and understood.
Jon Kabat-Zinn talks about how we are human beings, not human doings in his writing and teachings on mindfulness-based stress reduction.
In our Western society, we act a lot like we are human doings. We wake up to stimulation, to-do lists, appointments. That starts in childhood. More often we ask, "What did you do today?" instead of "How did you feel today?" This can lead to a place of burnout, an existential crisis, feeling as though all people care about is our resume and accomplishments.
But human beings are social animals who thrive with connection, oxytocin, interdependence, and socializing. When we connect, when we feel seen, heard, and understood--not analyzed and corrected--we are better able to live authentically and joyfully.