RUOK? Big Emotions? Feel the feels!
On this RUOK today – I think it’s important that we acknowledge our big emotions. We all have them, and I suspect most of us push them inside because we don’t think they’re socially acceptable. Then we numb by drinking or shopping or scrolling. We try not to face the feels, because then we need to feel them and all the uncomfortableness that comes with that. Feeling them means sometimes we add to our shame buckets because we don’t think it’s right to have certain feelings. Then we model to our kids that they shouldn’t express those big emotions and the cycle continues. Sounds familiar? It certainly is to me!
My tween has had some big, lets say humongous emotions this week. As a parent our first instinct is often to fix it and our second is to sympathise. Well little Miss 11 going on 30 was not having a bar of that. She told me she hates sympathy and is seeking empathy (the education system has a lot to answer for when 11-year-olds can express that! Yes, my tongue is firmly in my cheek). I placed a hand on her shoulder during a situation I knew she found difficult to show that I understood and was holding space for her to feel her feels. She mistook it for sympathy and cracked a mega reaction.
I got her out of the space as quickly as possible and the resulting yelling, tears and then calm discussion let her feel the feels. She had attached shame to the situation, because she felt she would get in trouble for how she felt. She felt she should have been happy for someone else and not disappointed for herself. That’s the thing. I model that behaviour for her, and I really shouldn’t. We can be genuinely happy for someone else’s success and disappointed for ourselves. That is human and real. Feelings are not mutually exclusive; you can have two or three or even ten simultaneously and we are allowed to express disappointment. Let me repeat that! We can celebrate someone else’s success and simultaneously be disappointed for ourselves. There is no shame in that. None!
Yet again, my little firecracker has taught me a valuable lesson – she needs space held to feel her feels. She wants her parents to be curious but not judgemental. She wants empathy, not sympathy. She often wants us to just let her sit with the emotions and not offer solutions. Sometimes she just wants to feel it and when she is ready, she will talk through solutions.
She is probably more OK than I am because she does let herself feel the feels. Yes, sometimes there are big (ok ENORMOUS) reactions, but she is owning her feels. After the explosion, she finds growth in the calm. I think our job is to not add to the shame bucket but gently guide her to the learnings. I love that she will reflect and adapt based on her learnings (once she is calm). She also owns her behaviour (not always straight away but after deliberations) – I love this.
I don’t love being yelled at and I struggle to keep calm in the face of a midget terrorist firing proverbial bullets, but the calmer I am, the quicker we get from the explosion to the calm, healing waters of growth. In her learnings I learn too. I recognise that I need to model to her my own feeling the feels. That I need to embrace not pretending everything is ok all the time. That I don’t always have to be strong. I’m strong if I acknowledge that Mums have bad days too. That I feel my own feels and discuss with her the tools I use. i.e. Mum had a bad day today love, but a lunchtime bath, think and candle really helped.
I had a very difficult day yesterday and decided to work from home for the afternoon and spend my lunch break in the bath with a candle working through what troubled me. I emerged calmer, happy and with a clear action plan and the day ended much better than it started. Then the tween netballers worked their magic making me cry with laughter on the long drive to Wednesday night netball. As we hold space for their feelings, they also hold space for ours. The secret to being ok is feeling the feels.
