Blog Post 1: 02/08/2021

I was riding in the car with one of my children, and picked up on the fact that something wasn’t quite right.  “What?” I asked, “are you disappointed in how that went?”  

“Yes,” muttered the child, somewhat downcast.

Full of my new-found knowledge and understanding about nurturing my childrens’ emotional health and growth, I responded, “What? There’s no reason for you to be disappointed!  You did just fine!!”

Screech on the mental brakes.  Did I just say that?  What about validating and teaching them to acknowledge and deal with whatever their emotions are?  Oops.  Wrong approach.  Again.

“Wait,” I said.  “Let me try that again.  I’m sorry you are disappointed about this situation.  I, however, feel that you have nothing to be embarrassed about, that went absolutely just fine in my opinion.”  A pause.  “Let yourself be disappointed, feel it, acknowledge it, work through it, and hopefully you’ll be willing to try again next time.”  I should have added something along the lines of, “Do you want to tell me about why you’re disappointed?”  Maybe next time I’ll think of it.

Is there such thing as a “wrong” emotion?  I agree that there are some emotions that are not healthy to dwell on, or live in, such as intense anger, or shame and guilt.  However, all emotion serves us a purpose.  For example, fear alerts us to possible danger. It is up to us to slow down enough to feel it, name it if we can, and try to understand why it is that we felt it.  Only then can we process what it is that we might need to do about it.  

Some of our emotions can be explained by the idea of unfulfilled dreams, or long-standing fears.  They can come from mistakes that we have made in the past and are scared of making again, or from well-meaning loved ones who may have invalidated our feelings in the past (as I started to with my child in this story).  If we understand where a feeling came from, it can be a starting point to understanding what we are supposed to learn from it.