5 tips for helping your kiddo when they blow up or shut down
For years I taught a seminar called “Good Enough Parenting”. Here are a few things I learned from it.
For years I taught a seminar called “Good Enough Parenting”. Here are a few things I learned from it.
check your own attitude and nervous system
Make sure your attitude is not “they are just trying to…” or “they are so ungrateful”. Basically make sure you’re not making it about yourself because if you do you will misunderstand your kids. What they are doing is different than what they are trying to communicate. They are trying to communicate they are overwhelmed by something. Their goal is not to hurt you or disrespect you, their goal is to get your help even if they struggle to accept it.
They need your nervous system to re-balance. You need to be in an emotional place where you can stay reasonably stable so they can be co-regulated by your steadiness. If you need to, take a break (with good communication about why you’re breaking in effort to decrease misunderstanding) before you engage or have someone else engage for you.
Ask yourself if they need to SEE: sleep, eat, exercise
Check the basics. Do they need food or sleep or to get some energy out? Is there something obvious that could be bothering them? No need to make things more complicated if they are simple.
Don’t stand, get to their height
The height difference between you standing and them may be enough to activate a threat response in them increasing an already stressful situation. Getting down to their level helps bring more calm to the situation.
Music & touch
You’re trying to help them rebalance which may really be helped by music or touch. Have a calming playlist made ahead of time (here’s one from Spotify already) you can stealthily put on when the blow up/shut down is simmering.
Ask before you touch. Showing them respect and not talking down by asking if it’s okay to give them a hug or to scratch their back or to pick them up, etc. Allowing them to be in control of their own space. But if you’re allowed, hugging, etc. can be so helpful for co-regulation.
If they’re open to it wrestling might really help to start to re-open them up.
Connect BEFORE you redirect
This comes from Dan Siegel’s work and is huge. Emotionally validate and understand (from their perspective) before you move to correct or change or put in some kind of limit. I can’t stress how important this is. One reason is to do this requires us as parents to slow down in the moment to make emotional space for them. That alone is valuable plus when our children feel understood you’re more than halfway to victory in terms of helping them cope. (BONUS TIP: it doesn't really matter if you or your kids are late. Letting go of the stress to be on time opens up the space needed to tend to what's needed.)
Social situations are the new stalking lions in our lives. How can we survive?
The brain can’t tell the difference between physical threat and emotional threat. It is going react (ie fight/flight/freeze) to both the same. Important takeaways!
The bullets:
The brain reacts the same to emotional threat as to physical threat.
Threat takes us out of the game and majorly decreases our creativity.
Knowing you're in threat is powerful to combating an unnecessary threat response.
There are some steps you can take to help restore peace.
The brain can’t tell the difference between physical threat and emotional threat. It is going react (ie fight/flight/freeze) to both the same.
HOW TO KNOW IF YOU'RE POSSIBLY IN THREAT
Heart speeds up
Sweating Blood will flow to larger areas like your legs to prep you to run away
Hearing negatively effected (less middle frequency)
Ability for eye contact goes down
Ability to think smoothly and reflectively diminishes
Becoming more reactive
Less creativity
Vigilance (noticing every little problem)
Thoughts that see others as a threat (likely in the form of judging people) and yourself as vulnerable (likely in over inflating yourself or under inflating).
2 STEPS TO CONSIDER FOR RESTORING PEACE:
Awareness: notice that you’re in a threat response without judging yourself. This is MASSIVELY different than just being IN a threat response.
Shift from inside focus to outside focus: this comes from Somatic Experiencing. We take 80% of our content in from sight. Using your vision, let your eyes go wherever they want. SLOWLY. You are trying to not think and just notice the outside environment: colors, lighting, textures, objects, details, shapes, etc. Doesn’t matter why you want to look at anything. The point is to shift from the brain focusing on the inside to focusing on the outside. This literally shifts which part of the brain is activated and can give your nervous system a chance to reset. Notice if you spontaneously take a deeper breath or sigh or yawn or want to stretch. It could help to tap your feet while you do this.
Are these feelings shadows or real?
Our brains are prediction machines using the past to predict the future and un-healed past events cloud those predictions and can cause un-adaptive emotions.
Here is this post summarized in three sentences:
Our brains are prediction machines using the past to predict the future and un-healed past events cloud those predictions and can cause un-adaptive emotions.
Slowing down and reflecting using non judgement and lots of self acceptance helps us suss out whether our feelings are adaptive or not.
Working on our past helps our present be clearer.
It’s popular to say that you won’t let fear drive your life. While that’s maybe an important counter balance to living too much in fear or giving away your personal power it’s also a misnomer. The goal shouldn’t be to get rid of any core emotion, instead it should be to slow down when we are sped up and automatic so that we can listen to what we’re feeling (this might take a lot of self acceptance and be alarming to do). That is how we start to be truly adaptive. Remember what we feel is going to be based on both the present moment and your past. So it takes some time to suss out whether your intuition is adaptive emotions to the present moment or out of date feelings from the past being put on the current moment. Our brains are prediction machines. Their job is to efficiently predict what will happen based on the past. When the past is incomplete then we inaccurately predict. So in order to be more present we need to not only slow down we also need to process and complete or re-complete the past. Fear is important, without fear we would be much more vulnerable to being taken advantages of. That said, unnecessary fear keeps us small and under selling ourselves.
So to recap once again in those three sentences:
Our brains are prediction machines using the past to predict the future and un-healed past events cloud those predictions and can cause un-adaptive emotions.
Slowing down and reflecting using non judgement and lots of self acceptance helps us suss out whether our feelings are adaptive or not.
Working on our past helps our present be clearer.
Why organizations risk getting It wrong if they don’t understand the unconscious.
Don’t get caught managing people without understanding the unconscious…especially your own!
Much of our life is not conscious. We are designed to be efficient, life preserving beings which means that our brains will automate what it can when it can. How much of your day is automatic? Think about yourself at work (maybe in a meeting or in an interaction with a colleague). How much of how you feel, react, don’t react, hold your body even is automatic and repetitive? If organizations want change in their culture they need to focus on bringing people to the present moment. When we are in the present moment we feel our feet on the ground, we feel our sense of choice even though we’ve been in this moment thousands of times before. In the present moment we can identify fears that are not really adaptive and fears that ARE really adaptive. Here is one thing that makes being present more possible and one reason the present moment threatens people’s nervous systems and gets resisted:
Co-Regulation is easier when: we have another nervous system with us that is emotionally regulated (able to de-center from their own perspective and hold the other person’s without too much stress) it’s like we go from arms shaking trying to push that last rep up to a renewed strength and ability to smoothly push the bar back up. Co-regulation is increased by good eye contact, a tone of voice and emotional intensity that is in the ballpark of where the other person is but not exactly where they are (back it down a bit), reflective listening and plain listening.
Being present is threatening to some nervous systems because: a person may be in a self protective automatic mode. Meaning that doing something other that what they’re doing registers as moving away from safety and towards danger. Becoming present can feel relieving for some and for others it can activate an internal alarm system which may cause some anti-social behaviors. Knowing how to engage someone in those moments in order to increase safety is crucial for the psychological safety of a work place.
The 5 Reasons therapy or counseling is actually valuable for you!
Therapy is so popular these days but is often under or over sold. Find out what actually makes therapy valuable for you.
Therapy or counseling is often under sold or over sold. When it’s under sold people say it’s just talking to someone and that helps you feel better. It’s much more complex than that with a well trained and experienced therapist. When it’s over sold it’s put inside of marketing language that says it will solve all your problems instantly: all of a sudden you’ll be great with money, relationships are a breeze, you feel balanced emotionally all the time and you find $20 in your pocket. Obviously that’s not right either. So what makes therapy or counseling actually valuable?
Therapy or counseling offers you a chance to feel seen and known.
Don’t under-estimate this. Feeling seen and known is important for everyone and it causes us to feel better. It helps our emotions to express and feel relieved. It helps us feel like we’re not an alien and that we’re not alone. It helps us feel connected. All of this moves us into a place where we can be ourselves more naturally.
Therapy or counseling offers you a chance to change the memories that are responsible for the automatic ways you interact with yourself and the world that are a problem for you.
Likely the brain mechanism at the core of any real change in therapy is something called, memory reconsolidation. When we go through something enough times or intense enough one time we remember it and our brain creates an automatic way to “adapt” to such a moment. This includes what emotions to feel, the meanings we make about ourselves and others, how to hold our body, what to do with our voice and our gaze, how intense to feel, what to do behaviorally, etc. This automatic thing becomes unconscious and then starts to control our lives around those situations or similar situations that still activate those automatic ways. Impacting those memories (whether they are memories we think or memories we just feel) causes new automatic ways to begin to be made.
Therapy or counseling offers you a chance to gain skills of self regulation.
This is not easy and a lot of therapies don’t teach this well enough. Knowing how to regulate your emotions and re-balance your nervous system is not intuitive to most. Learning this skills can change your life. In therapy we learn these skills both through education and practice together but also through the co-regulation of being with the therapist’s nervous system. Having a steady AND open person with you when you start to feel deeply helps you hold and manage your feelings better.
Therapy or counseling offers you the chance to learn about yourself.
Who doesn’t like to learn about themselves!? In therapy we come to know things about how we really feel or think or what desires we have that might be tough for us to come in touch with on our own or in our normal life. I can’t tell you how many times someone has said to me or I have said myself in my own therapy, “I am just realizing this right now as I say it…”. Would you rather be on auto pilot or know what you really want?
Therapy or counseling offers you the chance to make sense of your life.
There’s something calming to the brain when we can name what emotions we’re feeling, when we can put together a narrative that helps us make sense of why we feel the way we do or why we do what we do, etc. In therapy we work towards this often so your brain can calm down and be more present.