If you’ve looked at the map, the first and most important thing I’d like to say is that I invite you to refrain from self-judgment. I value deep and wide compassion for ourselves as parents around this whole topic of feelings.
I also want to say that this is a concise map, and by definition, it leaves out the complexities and nuances of human relationships and feelings.
As Alfred Korzybski said, “the map is not the territory.” And Alan Watts said, “the menu is not the meal.”
The reason I make these maps is to help bring more understanding and more compassion to children and parents.
So, given that premise of compassion, I’d like to say next that what is also left out of this map is the bigger cultural and historical context of parenting, which I am passionate about including.
Outside of this map lies thousands of years of the devaluation of the body and feelings from ‘Western’, domination, colonised cultures, which is still spreading around the world like an emotional virus.
For those same thousands of years, the mind has been seen as superior to feelings and the body.
And although we are being invited towards a new paradigm of deep compassion for, and trust in, the body and feelings, most of us don’t live in that paradigm. Most of us didn’t grow up in that paradigm. Most of us learnt to repress many of our feelings, to judge them, to dissociate, and to do whatever we needed to do with our feelings in order to be safe (or safer) and belong.
When I first stared practicing Aware Parenting, I wanted to support my children in expressing 100% of their feelings, and for them to develop no repression mechanisms.
Along the way, I realised that, in taking account my own history and culture, that aiming for compassionate awareness of feelings, and to support my children in having fewer repression mechanisms than I have, was my aim.
So, back to the map.
From this Aware Parenting context, it is seen as natural and normal for ALL children to experience painful feelings at times, however much we aim to be attuned them and responsive to their needs.
Birth itself, even if a beautiful, calm experience, is big, and babies have feelings in response to it, and more feelings if the birth was traumatic.
Babies experience confusion and overwhelm.
Children experience powerlessness and frustration, even when they’re simply at a developmental cusp.
Then there are daily stresses such as them being with us when we are stressed or trying to do all we can do in colonised nuclear families, as well as things like going out in the car, to a busy place, being with other children, having a new sibling, new experiences, etc. etc. etc.
Feelings are a normal and natural part of being a human being.
However, in order for children to be able to feel, express and release feelings of overwhelm, frustration, confusion, sadness, and all the other myriad feelings, we need to:
1. Understand that feelings are normal and natural to be expressed and there is profound healing value in feeling, expressing and releasing feelings;
2. Have the emotional capacity to stay compassionately present in our our own body whilst they are expressing those feelings.
And that’s when things often get hard.
As I said before, we’ve had thousands of years of beliefs that feelings are inferior to the mind. In “The Patterning Instinct,” Jeremy Lent says, “in just a few generations, the philosophers of ancient Greece revolutionised human thought. The senses and emotions were no longer to be trusted. Reason and abstraction would henceforth be the source of what was good in the human experience.”
Given those beliefs, no wonder that until a few hundred years ago, a child having a tantrum was seen as being possessed by the devil.
Beliefs about feelings have been becoming slightly less harsh over the past couple of hundred years, but it has been common for children who are crying or having a tantrum to be seen as ‘misbehaving’ and for them to be punished.
When we look upon this history, and see such judgment and devaluation of feelings and children expressing feelings, it can help us be even more compassionate towards ourselves as we regain deep friendliness with, and compassion for, feelings and the amazing natural healing, relaxation and release mechanisms of the body that include crying, tantrums, talking, playing, sweating and shaking.
Most, if not all of us, have acquired various repression or dissociative mechanisms growing up. These morph into adulthood, and many become socially acceptable and to outside eyes, invisible, so the colonised culture can continue pretending that it isn’t normal for children and adults to have feelings.
Common adult repression mechanisms include: eating or drinking when upset or to avoid feelings, busyness or movement, keeping things ordered, having control over things, thinking, scrolling social media, reading, shopping, muscle tension, alcohol, drugs, etc.
Almost anything can become a repression mechanism, if it is used to divert our awareness away from uncomfortable sensations in the body towards something else.
And then there are the more dissociative mechanisms, where awareness leaves the body even more. There is so much work nowadays by people like Steven Porges and Polyvagal Theory, on understanding the fight, flight, freeze and fawn mechanisms of the body.
When we want to listen to the natural normal feelings of our baby or child, our own capacity to be with our own feelings, and our own history around how the adults in our lives had capacity to be with us when we were feeling feelings, all come to the fore.
For us to be able to be present in our bodies when our child is crying, for example, we need to be able to stay present in our bodies with the similar feelings in ourselves.
If our parents couldn’t be present with our tears, or our frustration, we would have found ways to repress those feelings or dissociate from them.
Our own relationship with our feelings will deeply affect our capacity to be present with our child’s feelings.
And our responses to their feelings will affect how they then respond to their own feelings.
Again, I want to remind you to be compassionate with yourself here. This isn’t about trying to achieve some kind of non-existent perfection. This is to increase compassionate understanding of our feelings, both as adults and children, so that we can be more present with both.
As the map shows, if our child has some uncomfortable feelings to express, but we repeatedly perceive that the feelings are indicating an unmet need, we, of course, will do all we can to meet that need. We might think they are hungry, and give them food. We might think they need movement, and move or bounce them. We might think they need to suck and give them a dummy or pacifier.
And because they are learning to interpret their own body sensations, they will then internalise our responses, and when they feel that sensation within, they will perceive it to mean hunger, or a need for movement, or a need for the pacifier or dummy.
If we distract them from the uncomfortable feelings, which of course seems to be the most loving thing to do, for example with singing or books or playing; they will then internalise that, and when they feel those uncomfortable feelings, they will ask for those same distractions. This can sometimes lead to a child seeming to need to be constantly ‘entertained.’
And if we aren’t present, either physically, or emotionally (which again, is going to be very common, given our cultural lineage and family histories and the colonised culture of nuclear families where parents aren’t supported), they will find a way to repress those feelings, such as with sucking on their thumb or fingers, or twirling their hair, picking their nose, tensing their muscles.
How can we tell if something might be a repression mechanism, given that almost anything can become one?
One of the indications that it might be is that if our child’s eyes look glazed when they’re doing it, or we have a sense of them not being connected with their body, or they tend to always do it when they are tired (which is when feelings naturally bubble to the surface to be expressed), or if they do it when they are clearly upset, such as if they fail over.
So, what can we do, if we want to support our children in being able to stay even more present in their bodies when they feel uncomfortable feelings, and to express and release those feelings more often?
We can learn to perceive when they feel upset, and let them know that we are listening.
Instead of distracting them, we can aim to be present in our bodies so that they can feel, express and release feelings.
We increase our own capacity to stay present in our bodies with uncomfortable feelings, so that we can be more comfortable being present with them whilst they’re feeling and expressing feelings.
In order to do that, we generally need to have another adult, who can be with those feelings in themselves, be present with us when we are feeling upset.
As we experience that loving presence when we feel sad or frustrated or overwhelmed or confused our outraged, we feel increasingly comfortable with staying present in our body with those feelings, which means our child feels our compassionate presence, and we can support and facilitate the expression of their feelings.
This is no small journey. This is the next step in a thousands-year-old journey of humanity.
I invite you to have profound compassion for yourself in your own unique journey with feelings.
If you want to understand more about children’s feelings, I’m running a Masterclass called: “Reducing repression, aggression and agitation in children”
It’s on at 2pm on Sunday, 1st March in the Making Friends with Children’s Feelings Course.
Everyone already in the course gets access to it.
If you want to join, you get 22% off with the coupon code: 22%
If you’re reading this after that date, the Masterclass is available as a replay in the course FB group.