Mommy, I have a feeling I have never felt before. It’s excitement, and joy, and anger that you never brought me here before, and unbelievability that something this beautiful can exist.
—A nine-year-old girl arriving in Venice, Italy
Pediatrician Benjamin Spock launched a revolution in parenting when his Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care was published in 1945. The revolution was not about feeding, sleeping, or diapering, but about emotions. Dr. Spock believed in children expressing them and parents listening to them.
Dr. Spock invited parents to look underneath behavior to see the emotion driving it, as in this example about a child’s jealousy over a new baby: “When [Mother] sees him advancing on the baby with a grim look on his face and a weapon in his hand, she must jump up and grab him. But then she can turn the grab into a hug and say, ‘I know how you feel, sometimes, Johnny. You wish there weren’t any baby around here for Mother to take care of. But don’t you worry, Mother loves you just the same.’ If he can feel, at a moment like this, that his mother is still on his side, that she is still thinking of him, it is the best proof that he doesn’t need to worry.”
Mr. Spock, by contrast, is the pointy-eared half-Vulcan, half-human character from the Star Trek television show and movies. He is known for suppressing his emotions to an extreme degree. He attempts to live his life purely by logic and reason, though he is occasionally overwhelmed by the emotionality of his human side. In one episode the highly expressive Dr. McCoy tries to tell Mr. Spock that the release of emotions is healthy. Spock responds, “That may be, Doctor. However, I have noted that the healthy release of emotion is frequently unhealthy for those closest to you.”
Which Spock is right? Both! A balance between expressing and containing emotions—Spock versus Spock—is very important for preventing and lowering anxiety. Children need to learn how their feelings work so they can recognize them, express them effectively, and choose whether to act on them. They need to learn how to regulate emotions so they don’t escalate out of control. Most adults never learned the basics of emotions either. The lessons many of us learned—Be nice, Don’t cry, Never show fear—aren’t very useful.
I experienced a Spock versus Spock showdown in the children’s section of a bookstore in Denver. I had just finished a presentation about Playful Parenting when a woman who worked in the store said, “I know this is an unusual request, but would you mind settling an argument between my coworker and me about the message to children in this book?” The book was Smile a Lot!, by Nancy Carlson, a picture book featuring a frog with a giant grin. The text advises children to smile heartily in response to life’s difficulties, whether it’s being served oatmeal with prunes for breakfast or being taunted by bullies. The frog’s big smiles are offered as a more positive alternative to whining, complaining, giving up, or having an emotional meltdown.
The controversy between the two clerks at the bookstore was obvious as I flipped through the book. From one angle, you could say the book was full of helpful advice to look on the bright side, have a positive attitude, and think about ways in which a smile may actually get you what you want—whereas a meltdown or a tantrum may just dig you in deeper. We all know people who could use this advice, people who make an art form of misery, whining, and complaining.
From a different angle, the book seems to advocate an unhealthy suppression of feelings: Fake a smile and squelch your real emotions. That advice is not so useful. Excessively suppressed emotions build up inside. We are all familiar with uptight people with plastered-on fake smiles who are completely out of touch with their emotions, or people who explode with rage or implode with depression once their feelings can’t be repressed anymore.
When I was asked to resolve this dispute at the bookstore, I found myself agreeing with both sides. I thought of people who might be happier if they chose to put aside their painful feelings and act cheerful instead. But I also thought of people who already smile too much, even when they are feeling something very different inside. These are people who need to get real and show how they truly feel. If you grin and bear it too long, at some point you may not be able to bear it anymore. You may also fool yourself into thinking that you don’t have the feeling you are trying to hide.
In the end, I told the feuding booksellers that smiling a lot is great advice, as long as you also get a chance to truly express angry, sad, or hurt feelings. After my carefully diplomatic reply, each of the two employees said to the other: “See, I told you so!” What could I do? I just smiled.
Many people are unaware of their feelings, and unaware of how to express them effectively. Anxious children, for example, may complain of stomachaches and headaches, with no awareness that anxiety is involved. Many adult men discover that they have panic attacks only after they show up in the emergency room thinking they are having a heart attack. Why mostly men? Because the majority of us men are conditioned to be so out of touch with our emotions that we aren’t aware we are anxious—even after our pounding hearts and soaking sweats bring us to the ER. For children and adults alike, understanding emotions is a key to reducing anxiety.
Start with yourself. What are you feeling right now? How do you know? Does the feeling include physical sensations? Thoughts? Facial expressions? What is the feeling urging you to do? Are you going to do it, or not? Is the feeling changing as you pay attention to it? If you can’t identify a current feeling, what was an intense feeling that you experienced recently? Describe it in detail. The answers to these questions reveal how complex emotions can be.
Paul Ekman, a psychologist best known for his work on facial expressions and deception, proposed six basic emotions: anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise. Other scholars of emotion count them differently. Some researchers reject the idea of basic emotions, suggesting instead a range of feeling from joy to sadness or anger to fear. The psychologist Marsha Linehan, who developed Dialectical Behavior Therapy, distinguishes between primary emotions and secondary emotions. Primary emotions are automatic, such as anger if someone hurts us, or sadness if we lose someone close to us. Secondary emotions are feelings about feelings, such as guilt about being mad, or shame about being afraid.
Since scholars disagree on naming emotions, I tend to follow the lead of another set of experts—children. Some like to keep it simple: mad, sad, glad, and afraid. Other children prefer a different name for every nuance of emotion: anger, aggravation, annoyance, hatred, and irritation. Some like to invent their own emotional language, like the boy I knew who made a fine distinction between “madder than a wet hen” and “madder than a wet hen in a haystack.” Since he grew up on a farm and I didn’t, I took his word for it about how mad a wet hen can be.
I asked a group of children to define anger. Here are some of their responses:
• “Anger is when someone hits you.”
• “When you feel like hitting somebody.”
• “It’s like this.” (Child makes tight fists and squinches up her face.)
• “Anger is yelling and screaming at someone.”
• “It’s not nice to get angry.”
• “My sister gets me mad all the time.”
• “Anger is when you’re mad inside.”
• “I get angry when something’s not fair.”
• “When I get mad I count to ten.”
Yes! Anger is all of those things. Every emotion contains physical sensations and facial expressions (the tight fists and squinched-up face). Every emotion is triggered by a situation (someone hits you) or by a thought (it’s not fair). Every emotion has what Marsha Linehan calls an action urge (the urge to hit someone or to scream), though that urge may not be carried out. Every emotion has an overall impression (feeling mad inside). And every emotion can set off new thoughts and feelings. For example: Anger might lead to the thought, It isn’t nice to be mad, triggering guilt; or anger might lead to the thought, My sister makes me mad all the time, intensifying the anger. We can sustain the emotion, or we can try to change it (count to ten).
For sadness, the physical sensations might be an empty feeling inside, heaviness, and heartache. Sadness is often triggered by a loss. The action urges for sadness are usually to seek comfort and to cry, or sometimes to seek solitude. The overall feeling impression might be acute anguish or lingering mourning. The sad emotion can set off new thoughts and feelings (for example: I can’t stand it, which leads to hopelessness; It’s my fault, which leads to guilt; or I miss him so much, which leads to renewed sadness).
Now it’s your turn. Consider a few other feelings, such as fear or joy, and think about the physical sensations, the typical triggers, the action urges, the overall feeling impression, and the thoughts and feelings that are likely to follow. You can do this exercise on your own or with your child.
When children are highly emotional, we often demand that they use their words. I avoid this, because I want children to understand all the different layers that make up an emotion—the name of the emotion is just one small layer. We eventually want children to use their words, but if we jump to that single word too quickly it can close the discussion instead of opening it up. During a strong emotion I like to ask children the following questions instead of telling them to use their words (but be sure not to pepper them with too many questions at once, and wait until they are able to talk before you ask!):
• “What are you sensing in your body?”
• “What sparked that feeling?”
• “What thoughts are you having about that feeling?”
• “What do you want to do next?”
• “What do you think will happen if you do that?”
All these questions help children integrate their thinking with their feelings—their Mr. Spock brain with their Dr. Spock brain. After you have explored all those layers, you can finally ask, “What would you call that feeling?” If you are talking about a feeling after it has cooled down, you can still ask all those same questions to increase emotional self-awareness.
The Flame Model of Emotions brings these ideas about feelings together in a way that children can understand. Every emotion begins with a spark, a thought or event that lights the flame, which is the emotion itself. If you are already having a bad day, that puts extra fuel on the fire, and the same spark will create a bigger flame. The flame metaphor is especially fitting for anxious children, who often treat their feelings as if they are too hot to handle. Fortunately, they can learn to pour water on the flames. The water is anything that cools down an emotion, such as counting to ten, breathing deeply, thinking about something different, or talking to a friend.
The flame of an emotion usually includes a physical reaction, such as hot or cold skin, crying or screaming, tense muscles, or butterflies in the stomach. The flame also includes an overall inner sense of a feeling, such as fear, anger, happiness, or sadness. This overall sense might be a metaphor, such as a trapped or sinking feeling. The emotional flame usually includes facial expression, verbal expression, and body language. The person having the emotion, however, might not be aware of any of these bodily reactions. Another part of the flame is the action urge, the drive to do something with that feeling. For anger it may be to shout or hit, for fear it may be to run, for sadness it may be to curl up in a blanket or seek someone to provide comfort.
Imagine that someone steps on your foot and you immediately feel a surge of anger. That’s the spark and the flame. The size and shape of the flame depends on the spark. You will probably feel angrier if you think He did that on purpose than It was an accident. Now imagine you hear a banging noise and you feel startled. Your fear will be greater if your thought-spark is It’s a burglar than It’s the wind. Now imagine that you have painful memories related to alcoholism and it was a drunken person who stepped on your foot. Imagine that you were recently in a car crash when you heard the loud banging noise outside. Emotionally loaded memories add fuel to the fire.
Emotions seem to be sparked by outside events, but they are usually sparked by our own thoughts. In other words, the exact same event can create completely different emotional reactions, depending on the sparking thought. Suppose you tell your child that she can’t have candy. If she thinks I want it so badly, I’ll just die without it, then her emotion will probably be sadness. If her thought is That’s not fair! then the emotion will probably be anger. If the thought is It’s okay, I’ll have one tomorrow, then there will be no strong emotion. A child with a fear of thunderstorms may believe that the fear is triggered by storm clouds, but it is actually triggered by scary thoughts about death and danger.
Beliefs about one’s self and the world are a common source of fuel. Some beliefs that make anxiety more extreme: Bad things always happen to me, Something bad is going to happen soon, or You can’t trust anyone. When a small upset leads to intense feelings, you may be able to understand why if you draw out the underlying subtext that added extra fuel to the fire. Beliefs can have a positive effect as well. The world is generally safe and Someone will help me are underlying beliefs that help prevent anxiety from escalating.
When children are tired, hungry, or bored they are more likely to have extreme emotional reactions. That’s because these states are a concentrated source of extra fuel. As every parent knows, in these situations a small spark can become a giant flame. Unfortunately, we can’t just tell children, “You’re only reacting so intensely because you are hungry.” That just adds even more fuel to the fire! The only real solution is to stay ahead of the game, preventing children as much as possible from building up that extra reserve of explosive fuel.
If all we had were sparks, flames, and added fuel, every emotion would escalate out of control. Fortunately, we have water to quench the flames. (It only seems that your child’s every emotion escalates out of control!) In the Flame Model, water represents the thinking mind cooling the emotional flame.
Rating the intensity of an emotion from one to ten is one example. Drawing the feeling or making up an imaginative story about it also cools the emotion. Strong emotions overactivate certain pathways of the brain. Language, numbers, and creativity activate different pathways, so that Mr. Spock and Dr. Spock can find a healthy balance. Activating more of the brain seems to lower the flame in many anxious children. Another way to activate more of the brain is to describe in detail the physical sensations of an emotion: “I feel tingling in my arms and hands, my chest is tight, my heart is beating fast.” A broader perspective also lowers the flame: “I’m having an anxiety attack, it isn’t dangerous, and it will pass.” Physical activity activates completely different pathways of the brain, which is why exercise, dance, and yoga can be so effective in reducing the intensity of strong painful emotions.
The thinking brain can step in to pour calming waters on an emotion’s action urge:
I’m so mad that I want to hit you, but I would rather not get into big trouble, so I won’t.
I’d like to laugh at my friend’s haircut but he’ll be offended and upset and I don’t want to jeopardize our friendship, so I won’t.
I want that bicycle, but stealing is wrong, so I won’t.
Parents and teachers often say, “It’s okay to be angry, but not to hit.” That’s true, but I don’t think it captures what children need to hear. It leaves out a key step—the urge to hit. In order to say no to that urge, children need it to be acknowledged: “It’s okay to be angry, and I understand that being so angry made you want to hit, but it’s not okay to hit. It’s hard sometimes, but you can always choose not to hit.”
Not all action urges are created equal. Some make sense to act on, others don’t. Wise or useful action urges are probably the reason we have strong emotions in the first place. Emotions galvanize us to run from danger, turn to confront a threat, speak out against injustice, seek a shoulder to cry on, and shower affection on those we love.
Do I really have to? is an exercise that I learned in a yoga class. It reinforces the idea that we don’t have to act immediately on every action urge. Try it yourself, then coach your child through it. Take a few deep breaths. On an exhale, empty all the air from your lungs. Then wait before breathing in. Notice your first impulse to breathe, notice how intense it is, but don’t inhale until your body signals you that you really need to. There is usually a gap of at least a second or two—if not longer—between the panicky impulse and the real need.
Maturity is knowing that many action urges are not so wise. We all know adults who have never grown up in this way, who act on every urge they have. But we can help children understand what to do if an action urge doesn’t make sense. For example, they can imagine it without really doing it (just about everyone has had a revenge fantasy that they would never actually carry out). Marsha Linehan describes some things people can do when they are experiencing a powerful action urge that isn’t wise to act upon. One is to do the “opposite action” to the urge. If you feel ashamed and want to hide yourself under your blankets, find a trustworthy friend and count on her to listen to you with compassion. If your heart is racing and your breathing is rapid and shallow, take slow deep breaths. If your fists are clenched, slowly open them. Avoidance is a common action urge for the emotion of anxiety. Avoidance is usually a lousy idea, so consider the opposite action—approach whatever scares you.
When doing an opposite action, make sure you aren’t forcibly suppressing your emotions, but rather choosing in a gentle way to influence your emotional state. You can also choose an alternative action, not following the urge or doing the opposite, but something completely unrelated, like taking a walk or reading a book. Opposite and alternative actions are powerful ways to pour water on the flame of an insistent action urge.
When we are overwhelmed by an emotion it’s easy to think, This is going to last forever or This feeling might kill me. These thoughts can easily become the spark to a new flame—adding anxiety to the original emotion. Linehan’s solution for this escalation of emotion may seem strange: Just notice the first feeling and let yourself experience it. With practice, acceptance can cool even the most intense emotional flames. When you watch your own emotional flow with no effort to change it, you realize that you can endure it. What’s more, you will most likely notice that the feeling lessens or changes over time. When we fight against our emotions, they intensify and linger. When we let each one be what it is, the emotion passes more quickly.
The discovery that everything changes has to come from within. It doesn’t ever help to scold a child by saying, “Just let the emotion pass, don’t get so upset by it.” Instead, you can ask, “Do you notice any change at all in the feeling as you sit with it? Does it get stronger or weaker, do the physical sensations move to different places in your body?”
Many parents try to cool off a child’s emotions by saying, “You shouldn’t feel that way.” This seldom works, because emotions don’t listen to shoulds. Sometimes we don’t realize we are giving shoulds to a child’s emotion. When a child cries or hits after another child bumps into him, we are likely to say, “It was an accident.” This really means, You shouldn’t be sad or mad. But guess what? The child is sad and mad, and it doesn’t matter to the emotional brain whether it was an accident or not, at least not at that moment of peak emotion.
Most parents are surprised to discover that empathy is actually a better way to tone down emotions: “You are really upset that she bumped into you.” Parents fear that this kind of empathy will inflame the emotion more. Understanding and validation are actually the best paths to soothing and comfort.
Anxious children may try to block or eliminate all emotions, like Mr. Spock does, or just block the scary ones, such as anger. This doesn’t work. I watched my niece tense up during a suspenseful scene in a movie. I asked if she was scared. “No,” she said, “it’s only a movie.” I think she meant, I’m not supposed to be scared, so I’m not. Her emotional brain, however, didn’t care that it was only a movie. She was scared anyway. The main problem with applying shoulds to emotions, where they don’t belong, is that children can end up feeling ashamed or guilty that they have a feeling they aren’t supposed to have. Meanwhile, they still have that unwanted emotion because shoulds don’t make it disappear.
I’ve described the spark, flame, fuel, and water. But that’s not the full story of an emotion. After we have a strong emotion our minds are in a different place than they were before. One child who understood the Flame Model very well called this “getting cooked or getting burned.” She said the feeling can burn you up (if it overwhelms you or causes big trouble), or the heat can cook something (if the feeling leads you to do something constructive, such as solving a problem or escaping harm).
The flame of one feeling can also light a new flame, like lighting a candle with a match. You can feel shame about being sad (such as a boy who is humiliated for breaking the no-crying “boy rule”), or you can be scared of your own anger. You can feel joy or pride at having handled an emotion in a healthy way, or you can pass your feeling along to someone else (such as the upset child who hits a younger sibling, and now that sibling is the one who is upset).
Another way that an emotion changes us is that we are now more likely to notice and remember things that are in line with that emotion. Have you ever noticed this? Someone cuts in front of you in line or in traffic, and you are instantly filled with anger. Before your anger can fade you run through your mind all the other times that similar things have happened to you. These memories become new sparks that keep renewing and refreshing the angry flame. You also notice every annoying thing in the world around you. This is called selective memory and selective attention, and it can keep us stuck in a painful emotion for a long time.
Selective memory and attention explain why it doesn’t usually work to insist to our anxious children that they think about positive things: “Just think of something happy!” The fear makes children selectively remember and notice only scary things, and there is no room for happier memories for a while. We have to help them finish that first emotion and let it fade before we can expect them to put their minds on fresh thoughts that are outside that emotion. Happy thoughts are usually too big of a leap. As a child starts to cool down, however, you can use neutral thoughts such as numbers or colors as stepping-stones: “Can you find three blue things in the room? Can you count backward from fifty by fives?” The message with this technique is to convey that the child can choose to emerge from that painful emotion, not that you need the child to hurry up and be finished with it.
I urge parents to teach the Flame Model, or a similar outline of emotions, to their children. This knowledge helps prevent emotions from causing so much anxiety and distress. Awareness of how the system operates gives children more control over the spark, the flame, the added fuel, and the cooling water. After you teach children the Flame Model it can become a way to talk about emotions without judgment or criticism: “I noticed that you were still tired from your nap, and then when your sister took your toy you got extra upset because you were thinking, That’s not fair! Maybe you were thinking about other times when she took your toys too.” You can also reflect on the action urge, the decision to act, and the consequences of the action: “It looked as if you were wondering what to do with all those mad feelings, then you thought about hitting her, then you decided to go ahead and hit her, then you got in trouble.” The idea is to help slow down the process for children, because emotions happen very fast.
Rumi was a Sufi mystic poet born in Persia in AD 1207. Yet “The Guest House,” one of his best-known poems, feels very modern in its call to welcome every emotion, even those we consider negative or painful. Why welcome awful feelings? Because anxiety is often the result of blocked emotions. “This being human is a guest house,” Rumi writes, “Every morning a new arrival. A joy, a depression, a meanness.… Welcome and entertain them all! Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows.” Rumi goes on to urge us to greet even the most undesirable emotions with laughter and gratitude.
We often refer to “good feelings” and “bad feelings,” but this confuses children. They think it means that certain feelings are right and others wrong. It’s true that some feelings are pleasant and some are unpleasant, but none are bad. Of course, some emotions are harder to welcome than others. As psychologist Harriet Lerner says in her aptly named book, Fear and Other Uninvited Guests, “Feelings are a package deal, and you can’t avoid or deny the painful ones without also forfeiting part of your humanity. If you are never fearful, you may also have trouble feeling compassion, deep curiosity, or joy. Fear may not be fun, but it signals that we are fully alive.” That sounds to me like a lecture Dr. Spock might give Mr. Spock!
Rumi probably wouldn’t be surprised by recent research on attachment and emotion, which shows that mirroring of all emotions is essential for children to learn who they are and what they feel. Mirroring teaches children that emotions can be shared and understood and don’t have to be dangerous or destructive. The best way to convey this to children is to reflect all their emotions back to them, beginning when they are babies and continuing as they grow up. Match—and even exaggerate—their facial expressions, while naming the emotion: “Wow, you’re really mad!” “Eek, that was scary!” Don’t frighten them with your intensity. Just let them know that you understand what they are feeling. It’s easy to mirror a smile or laugh, but make sure to mirror every feeling, not just the ones you like! It may be hard, because you probably didn’t have all of your feelings mirrored when you were young.
Anxiety follows the same path through the Flame Model as any other emotion. The spark is a worried thought or perceived threat. The flame represents the direct experience of anxiety in the body and the mind. A temperament that is highly reactive to anything new and different provides anxious children with an endless fuel source. All of the strategies in this book—from the second chicken to relaxation to finding the edge—are ways to douse anxiety’s flame with cool water.
Anxiety also arises when other emotions, such as anger or sadness, get stuck and don’t flow in a natural way. The flow of emotion means that we cry when we are sad; we shout and stomp our feet when we are angry; we tremble, shake, and sweat when we are scared; we laugh and smile when we are happy. The opposite of anxiety is welcoming every emotion into the guesthouse.
Flow also means that we follow each emotion’s action urge, as long as that action is healthy and effective. We speak out when we are angered by injustice, for example, as long as it is safe to do so. When our emotions flow in a healthy way, we don’t act on urges that are destructive to ourselves or to others. So we don’t whack someone over the head every time we want to, only when our survival is at stake. Emotional flow means that we hide when we need to, fight when we must, and seek out comfort when we are lonely and sad. Healthy emotional flow means that we feel remorse when we’ve acted badly, but we don’t plunge into self-hatred. We seek out intimacy without clinginess or excess neediness. In short, we feel what we feel and we express it freely, but responsibly.
Stuck emotions and frozen action urges arouse anxiety. If we don’t allow ourselves to feel our feelings, they get stuck “halfway in and halfway out,” which may be why so many people feel anxiety in the gut, chest, and throat. Many adults, especially men, tell me that their eyes hurt when they cry, but I think their eyes hurt from fighting so hard not to cry, because crying is “forbidden.”
Even fear can get stuck and turn into anxiety (this is an example of how our language about emotions gets complicated). Healthy fear leads us to run, hide, or fight when we are truly in danger, so we can reach safety and find comfort. Afterward we “shake off” the fear, recover our balance, and return to a calm state. If the fear gets blocked, we freeze. Healing is blocked, and anxiety can result.
To prevent this anxiety blockage, the psychologist and trauma expert Peter Levine encourages people who survived a trauma to complete any action that was left unfinished because of fear. For example, they might move their arms in slow motion as if they are protecting their faces, because they were unable to protect themselves when they fell off a bicycle. They might run, throw a punch, or shout at a pretend attacker to finish an action that was stopped short by threat or terror. These movements are best done in slow motion to help the person shift from immobility to action to safety.
You can usually tell when children’s emotions are blocked, because their expressions are flat when you would expect to see a strong feeling. They may say they feel numb, shut down, overwhelmed, or even dead. Suppression of feelings can lead to feeling fatigued, bored, or lethargic. As time passes, children have to suppress more and more to keep their unwanted emotions from pressing into awareness. Children with blocked feelings may also look aggressive or hyperactive. When one emotional channel is blocked, the emotional energy comes out in other ways. Put a tight lid on a pot of boiling water and steam will escape violently from the sides.
Children who are shut down, children who are overly nice and never get angry, and children who explode with rage all need encouragement to express anger in a healthy way. Dramatic play is a great way to help them, because you can introduce characters who are extra-aggressive, extra-nice, and extra-unemotional, like a robot. As you and your children play with these characters, they learn that anger doesn’t have to be dangerous or scary.
Some children confuse parents because they are both anxious and angry. They swing wildly between rage and fear, or they feel both at the same time. I believe that when anger and anxiety go together, children are not accepting their more tender or vulnerable emotions, but they can’t get rid of them either. The tender emotions—sadness, loss, and fear—are often seen as weak or shameful. But those feelings are still there, pressing for release. Such strongly rejected and conflicted emotions are a recipe for explosive anger and high anxiety.
Jonah, at age five, was extremely anxious, easily frustrated, and frequently angry. If he was upset with a friend he said, “I hate you, I’m not your friend anymore.” Then he felt lonely and rejected. His anxiety and anger seemed to feed each other. If he was nervous about a game, for example, he tried to hide it with anger. After he exploded he became more anxious as he worried how others would react. Jonah’s teachers described him as an excellent student but fearful of making a mistake. He had several losses in his life, including the death of a close grandparent, but he never talked about his feelings. Instead, he bottled everything up unless he was in explosion or panic mode. What helped Jonah was for his parents to mirror his angry feelings without moral judgments (“That’s a very strong way to show that you’re mad,” instead of “No one is going to like you if you act that way”). They also helped him describe the intensity of his anxious feelings, such as rating the fluttering in his stomach from snail speed to train speed to rocket speed. This helped him regulate his anger and anxiety, but it had an unexpected result as well: He became aware of his buried feelings of loss and sadness and began to talk about his grandfather.
Children often cry for a minute or two and then suddenly stop, as if a gate has crashed closed. This may look like a good sign: They are done crying. But they probably aren’t done; they have just become afraid of the release of their feelings and shut them off. Children also seek out sugary foods or television to close off their emotions. They need us to make an extra effort to let them know that their emotions are welcome to us, and not dangerous to them.
Children become especially anxious when they start to feel “forbidden” feelings, most commonly anger and sexuality. Unlike Jonah, most anxious children never show anger. The result is always anxiety, because everyone feels angry sometimes. Boys who never cry are also likely to become anxious, because they can’t help but be at the edge of tears now and then.
Sexuality can be a hidden trigger to childhood anxiety—hidden because it is so hard to talk about. I have seen young children who are quite anxious about feeling vaguely different from others. They can’t put into words just how they are different, and it doesn’t seem to have anything to do with sexuality. Years later, however, their anxiety lowers when they realize that the reason they felt different is that they have a gay or lesbian sexual orientation. Of course, if their families or peers reject them, their anxiety will increase tremendously, not decrease.
Lately I have noticed many parents scolding children for being “mean” to their stuffed animals or dolls, saying, “You hurt its feelings.” What? I think the parents are afraid their children will become bullies, but the message is that all aggression is unnatural and needs to be eliminated. But aggressive play isn’t violence, it’s play! Children understand the difference—they know toys don’t have feelings—it’s adults who get confused sometimes.
You might wonder what’s wrong with closing the door to these unpleasant or adult-only feelings. Anger can be dangerous, and sexuality is too grown up for children, right? No, because suppression is even more dangerous. It’s easy for children to feel ashamed if their age-appropriate sexual feelings are denied. As much as we might like to believe that our sweet and innocent children have no sexual feelings, the fact is that all children want to know where babies come from, are interested in the differences between male and female bodies, and notice that it feels extra good to touch certain places. If we shame children for having these feelings, the result will be anxiety, as suppression fights against the natural urge for expression. It’s much more effective to be matter-of-fact about sexuality and offer accurate information geared to each child’s level of development.
Parents would love for children to always use their words to express their anger. I’ll never forget the mother who told me what happened when she requested that her young son use his words instead of hitting. He proceeded to swear and curse, using the foulest language she had ever heard! She had no idea he had been exposed to those words, but he sure knew how to use them. She could hardly tell him to stop, since she had just told him to use his words. We often see only two choices with anger: violence or complete suppression. But we need another way. It’s easy to take advantage of a person who never allows herself to be angry. When there is injustice, unfairness, or a threat, we need to stand up to it. That requires the energy that comes from anger.
At the same time, we can help children by not exposing them to violence or sexuality that is beyond their capacity to understand. It’s not healthy for children to go to sexually explicit or ultraviolent movies. We might think sexual movies are okay because children won’t understand them, but they become overwhelmed and confused by the images and emotions portrayed on the screen. The result is often a compulsion to try to understand what they have seen by acting it out with peers or younger siblings.
However, we do want to expose children to the full range of human feelings, even anger and sorrow. If we try to protect children from knowing our true feelings, they will sense that we are hiding something and that will make them more anxious. On the other hand, if we yell and scream and rant and rave or cry inconsolably we can easily frighten our children. So be a role model by expressing your own emotions freely, but not in a scary way. Use your words! Children benefit greatly when they see their fathers or other men shed tears when they are sad, and when they see their mothers acting assertively.
Emotions are so important that our bodies rebel when we try too hard to suppress them. A group of therapists coined the term “affect phobia” to describe fear of one’s own emotions. Some people react to any unwanted feeling with “bodily tightness, tension, withdrawal, panic, fear, and inhibition.” The solution is to emotionally move step-by-step toward each scary feeling. Pause frequently to face-and-feel the emotions. This is very similar to the games described in chapter four, such as overcoming a fear of dogs by taking baby steps toward a friendly dog.
Some anxious children are very sensitive to the idea that they might show the “wrong” feelings, such as laughing when someone is hurt or crying at their birthday party. Of course these aren’t wrong feelings at all, because there is no such thing as a wrong feeling. Let me repeat that, because anxious children have trouble with this concept: There is no such thing as a wrong feeling. People often laugh nervously when something bad is happening, and many children cry when they feel overwhelmed, even if they are being overwhelmed with positive attention. We feel what we feel.
For children to welcome all of their emotions, we need to welcome their emotions. Before we can do that, we need to welcome our own. When we block off areas of feeling in ourselves, it is simply impossible to acknowledge or encourage those same emotions in our children. I know this is a challenge. I have never met an adult yet who grew up with every one of their emotions welcomed by the adults around them. As a result, we constantly give children messages to tone their feelings down—“Don’t be mad, he didn’t mean to take your truck, he’s just a baby.” Welcome feelings instead with a simple reflection: “Wow, you are really mad.”
One controversial topic in regard to welcoming emotion is whether or not to encourage a child to release anger physically—but safely—by pounding pillows or shouting. In some situations, such as road rage, it seems that the release of anger just increases the anger. But in other situations, such as playful roughhousing or a friendly pillow fight, this release can be calming and beneficial. I think the key is whether the child feels a strong connection with a safe adult when they are releasing those feelings physically. If they do, then the anger releases instead of recycling and escalating, and balance is restored. But if they are “seeing red,” hurting people, or unable to notice your warm presence, then the release will probably do more harm than good.
Most adults have a hard time welcoming every feeling, but some even feel the need to tone down children’s joy! When my daughter was little, we were visiting friends who lived in a large apartment building. Walking down the hall, the girls were laughing and giggling. Someone came out of an apartment and said that the children were “laughing too much.” She even filed a complaint with the building management. Fortunately, the managers could not find anything in the rules against laughter, and the matter was dropped.
If you want to take the “advanced course” in emotion, try this: For a half hour, Welcome Every Emotion that comes into your own mind (and body), as Rumi suggests in “The Guest House.” If that’s too long, try it for a few minutes and build up slowly. If you notice a feeling that you’d like to avoid, step toward it instead. Take your time. Go deeply into that avoided feeling. You can give it a number for its intensity level, and you can name it. In addition to naming it with one word, such as anger, sadness, or jealousy, think of a metaphor to describe the feeling. Do you feel trapped, sinking, or like you have been punched in the stomach? Do you feel like a volcano about to explode, or like a doll abandoned on the side of a road?
Welcoming every emotion goes by many names: mindfulness, radical acceptance, or willingness. I have taken you through this exercise so that you can see just how challenging it is. Stick with it, because we can’t really help our children welcome feelings if we can’t do it ourselves.
Another exercise for parents is to Write Your Own Emotional History. What did you learn about emotions when you were a child? Take anger, for example. How did each different person in your family express anger when you were growing up? Were you allowed to show anger? In terms of sadness and sorrow, did you ever see a grown-up cry? What kind of comfort (or rejection) did you get when you cried? Did you get any help naming and managing your feelings? Don’t forget to write about the family history of anxiety.
Moving to the present, what feelings within you are hard to accept or to bear? What feelings in your children are hard to accept or to bear? Do you cheer your children up relentlessly? One time when I picked up my daughter from preschool I could see she was having a bad day. She made it very clear that she didn’t want to talk about it, so I dropped the subject. Absentmindedly I started to sing as we walked down the stairs. She asked me suspiciously, “Are you trying to cheer me up?” I answered, “I wasn’t thinking about that, but would you like me to cheer you up?” She said, “I’d like to see you try!” As you write your emotional history you will gain more perspective on your current struggles as a parent of an anxious child.
Listening to children and welcoming all their feelings does not mean “giving in” or “spoiling.” You can say, “I will listen to you for as long as you need me to, and you can cry and be really mad, but I am not going to change my mind about that candy.” Both parts of this sentence are crucial: You aren’t going to change your mind because of the feelings (unless you realize you made a mistake, in which case you can correct it). But you aren’t going to add rejection and humiliation on top of the sadness and anger they already feel.
Often children don’t know what they feel, and aren’t able to express their emotions in words. Or they may simply be too young. If you have a pretty good guess about what your child might be feeling (jealousy of the new baby, perhaps, or nervousness about a new activity), then you can speak it for them. Just make sure that you are somewhat tentative. “I think maybe you are feeling ________.” The psychologist Mona Barbera calls this being a spokesperson for a neglected feeling. For example, if a child is frequently scared but almost never gets angry, you might stand up tall and yell out the window, “Go away, storm! You don’t scare me! Grrr!” Then you can encourage your child to join you.
Anyone with high anxiety will tell you that it is exhausting. I think a big part of the exhaustion comes from the nonstop fight to suppress feelings. Welcoming feelings can be scary. The relief, the lowered anxiety, and the increased energy are well worth it.
The Yawn-a-Thon game counteracts the pressures on children to suppress emotions. The game works best in a group. Have everyone pretend to yawn. This always brings on real yawns, because yawns are so contagious. Then have everyone fake laugh. This brings on real laughter, because it’s fun to fake laugh. Keep going through all the emotions you can think of: fake crying, fake trembling and teeth-chattering with fear, fake storming around with anger, fake gasps of surprise. Most of these pretend emotions will bring more laughter, partly because it’s funny, and partly because everyone is breaking the “rule” not to show too much emotion without a good reason.
The Yawn-a-Thon also teaches that we don’t always have to do something about our feelings. We can just feel them and release them from our bodies with tears or giggles, shakes or yawns. The game gives people control over this release of emotion, which helps counteract the fear that emotions will spin out of control. Adults in therapy often say, “I am afraid that if I start crying, I won’t be able to stop.” I always ask them if they have ever seen that happen to anyone. No one ever has. There is no “world’s longest cry” in the Guinness World Records.
Have you ever sought out a sad movie or sad music to give yourself just the right amount of sadness to release some backed-up tears? Children often seek out things that are a little bit scary so they can feel just the right amount of fear. Of course, often they miscalculate, and get overwhelmed by the scary movie or the roller coaster that they thought would be just-scary-enough.
My favorite example of deliberately scaring oneself comes from The Lion King. Two hyenas are talking about Mufasa, the fearsome king of the lions. One says, “I just hear that name and I shudder.” The other one says, “Mufasa” and the first one shudders, then says, “Ooh, do it again.” Then one hyena says, “Mufasa, Mufasa, Mufasa” as the other one shakes and laughs, releasing the pent-up fear.
Once a child’s feelings start releasing, they need us to stick around and listen to them until they are finished. Parent educator Patty Wipfler, founder of Hand in Hand Parenting, calls this staylistening. It’s the exact opposite of “Go to your room until you can have a smile on your face.… No one wants to listen to that.… You are ugly when you pout.”
Listening can happen whenever a child is upset, but it can also help to set aside Feelings Time. This is a regular time, usually at the end of the day, for parent and child to share feelings that have built up and haven’t had a chance to be fully expressed. It could be something that you know about: “Do you have any leftover feelings about what happened at the park today?” It could be something that you don’t know about: “You seemed a little upset at dinnertime, but I’m not sure why.” Feelings Time builds closeness and promotes emotional awareness. You can share your own feelings too during this time, as long as you don’t overwhelm your child with adult concerns or extreme emotions. Over time your child will come to count on that time, and use it to share feelings that are harder to put into words.
Overall, children need a balance between expressing their emotions freely and putting their attention on positive thoughts. During Feelings Time the focus is on expression. Since you are probably tired at the end of the day you might be tempted to dismiss feelings that don’t seem important or serious to you. Resist that temptation! Every emotion is important to the person feeling it. In fact, if you want children to tell you important things, then you have to listen attentively to everything, no matter how trivial it seems to you. I like to say, “That’s an important thing to be sad (or mad) about.” This helps me control my frustration, which is urging me to say, “I’ve got better things to do than listen to you talk about this triviality.”
Children need to learn from us that they can handle any emotion they happen to feel, even ones that seem forbidden, overwhelming, or unwanted. When children can’t put their feelings into words we need to offer them other ways to express themselves, such as drawing, pounding on pillows, wrestling, or curling up in our laps (even if they seem too old for this). At times children will insist, like Mr. Spock, that there is “no point” in sharing feelings because it won’t change what happened in the past. Push back against this belief. The point of emotional expression is that speaking out and releasing feelings eases the grip of the past and clears our minds to enjoy the present moment.
Sometimes children know what they need to say, but are scared to say it. Unspoken truths are a major source of anxiety. The Gestalt therapist Fritz Perls developed the Empty Chair for adults who have something to say—but the other person isn’t available or isn’t likely to listen respectfully. This technique can be used with children also. Bring over an empty chair and have your child pretend it holds the neighborhood bully, the math test, or their grandmother who passed away and left them so sad and lonely. Encourage them to say whatever they want to say, without any worry of reprisals or hurting anyone’s real feelings.
Another great use for the Empty Chair is to have children pretend that their anxiety, or some other emotion that troubles them, is sitting in it. They can speak to the anxiety about how angry they are that it limits their lives, or they can tell it to stop sending scary pictures to their minds. If your child wants, you can sit in the chair and pretend to be that emotion. Let your child direct you and give you a script. For example, one boy asked me to be his anxiety and say things like, “I’m not going to let you sleep or have any fun.” Then he made angry faces at me and threw pillows at me while I pretended to be very scared and promised to leave him alone.
Not all anxious children suppress their emotions. Some have extreme outbursts of sadness or frustration. They may cry frequently without the tears providing any release or healing. These children have trouble regulating their emotions, rather than trouble releasing them. They need to understand their own emotions in order to express them in healthier ways.
To prevent emotional overload, ask children to rate the intensity of their emotions from one to ten before it gets up to the top of the scale. Children who escalate rapidly into extreme emotional states usually don’t notice the buildup. The number scale helps children tune in to their emotions when they are easier to express with words or nondestructive actions.
Children learn more about their own emotions when adults avoid judgmental or critical language. For example, one nine-year-old boy, Scotty, became extremely agitated whenever his mother told him that he was “out of control.” Even though to some extent this was true, those words made him feel ashamed and humiliated. That made him act even more out of control. When his mother started to say instead that he seemed to be “heading up toward one hundred on the Angry-O-Meter,” Scotty could acknowledge his feelings and brainstorm with her about ways to lower the intensity of his emotions.
Some children like to imagine that their feelings have a dimmer switch, rather than an on-off switch. Others pretend to turn down the flame on the stove from boil to simmer to warm; or they imagine anger as a wild bear that has gotten loose from the zoo and has to be tamed. Sometimes children will suggest that their anger or anxiety has to be shot or destroyed. I always push back against this image. On the one hand, children need to choose their own metaphorical language. On the other hand, eliminating feelings is impossible, and locking them up is unwise. I try to gently steer children toward a new metaphor such as making peace with the feeling, taming it, or harnessing its energy. These images promote a healthy balance between expression and regulation.
When feelings are especially strong, words aren’t enough to allow for their full expression. Children also need to use their bodies to share their deepest feelings. You can encourage them to roar like a lion, dance, run, make themselves into a sculpture that represents how they feel, or crash into a pile of sofa cushions.
My favorite physical activity for regulating emotions is Faster, Slower. Have your child run in different directions and at different speeds based on your rapid-fire instructions. “Run left, run right, run to me, run backward, run fast, run slow, run in super slow motion, run real fast!” You can do this with any rhythmic activity, such as jumping jacks. And you can do it with volume, as in the Isley Brothers song “Shout” (“A little bit softer now … a little bit louder now”). I don’t know exactly how it works biologically, but physical games with quick changes like this seem to translate into more manageable emotions.
So should we encourage children to smile a lot and whistle a happy tune, as Anna sings in The King and I? Or do we encourage them to release all their emotions? Dr. Spock and Mr. Spock were both right to some extent. Mr. Spock is right that sometimes people’s emotions get carried away to extremes. But overall, I believe we need to lean more toward Dr. Spock. In his discussion of childhood fear, Dr. Spock wrote, “Don’t make fun of him, or be impatient with him, or try to argue him out of his fear.… This is a time for extra hugs and comforting reminders that you love him very much and will always protect him.”
Emotions are a natural reaction to situations and thoughts, and everyone has the right to experience each and every one of their emotions. But passions are sometimes so strong that they get in the way of reasonable thinking or happy relationships. We need to feel our feelings, express them, and also regulate them. When we do that, our emotions are much less likely to trigger anxiety. Children need to express their true feelings, and adults need to welcome those feelings warmly. But we can also help children take charge of their emotions by choosing how much to fuel them and how much to cool them.