Attending to Children's Emotions
While typically adaptive, children's feelings sometimes overwhelm themselves or others. Here I explain briefly the ways in which I conceptualize and attend to children's emotions in treatment.
I encourage my patients to notice lighthearted, happy moments from their past week. Those moments tell them that there is something that was satisfying happening in those moments. Happiness provides important information!
Being comfortable with happiness, listening to happiness, and experiencing happiness in our bodies is healthy. We all need to allow happiness into our lives.
I sometimes ask patients and their families to recall sadness from the past week.
When one notices grief stricken moments - the heavy, weighted down experience, they learn that sadness is informative.
Moments of sadness tell us what we lost. If we felt sadness, there may have been something we wanted that we did not get. Gaining comfort with sadness and grief and choosing to go through grief is healthy.
Sadness and grief aids in discovery, helps us appreciate what was lost, and offers us the chance to make meaning of the state of things. When we are sad, we cry. Hopefully our tears bring others close to comfort us.
By feeling our sadness, we can move forward with realistic and balanced acceptance for what is. Grief allows us to come to grips with reality. Sometimes it allows us to find what we need.
Anger is that hot storm that we feel when we sense that we have been transgressed upon. Anger is critical for letting us know that something or someone may have moved into our space or done something that we experienced as aversive.
Anger really must be allowed into our lives. It helps us to say "no." Anger helps us to make choices that benefit us. Anger is what allows us to reject something that is not good for us - to walk away from something or someone who might not be honoring us in a way that helps us feel honored and respected. Anger should be listened to because it is critical for self-acceptance.
Aggression, of course, is a behavior, not a feeling. Aggression does not need to flow from anger. In fact, aggression may very well be a phobic response to anger. Frustration tolerance includes allowing anger to come and go without punching the pillow or stomping on the floor, for example. Allowing for frustration without expressing aggression is the goal for many children, teens, and adults.
I encourage my patients to notice lighthearted, happy moments from their past week. Those moments tell them that there is something that was satisfying happening in those moments. Happiness provides important information!
Being comfortable with happiness, listening to happiness, and experiencing happiness in our bodies is healthy. We all need to allow happiness into our lives.
I sometimes ask patients and their families to recall sadness from the past week.
When one notices grief stricken moments - the heavy, weighted down experience, they learn that sadness is informative.
Moments of sadness tell us what we lost. If we felt sadness, there may have been something we wanted that we did not get. Gaining comfort with sadness and grief and choosing to go through grief is healthy.
Sadness and grief aids in discovery, helps us appreciate what was lost, and offers us the chance to make meaning of the state of things. When we are sad, we cry. Hopefully our tears bring others close to comfort us.
By feeling our sadness, we can move forward with realistic and balanced acceptance for what is. Grief allows us to come to grips with reality. Sometimes it allows us to find what we need.
Anger is that hot storm that we feel when we sense that we have been transgressed upon. Anger is critical for letting us know that something or someone may have moved into our space or done something that we experienced as aversive.
Anger really must be allowed into our lives. It helps us to say "no." Anger helps us to make choices that benefit us. Anger is what allows us to reject something that is not good for us - to walk away from something or someone who might not be honoring us in a way that helps us feel honored and respected. Anger should be listened to because it is critical for self-acceptance.
Aggression, of course, is a behavior, not a feeling. Aggression does not need to flow from anger. In fact, aggression may very well be a phobic response to anger. Frustration tolerance includes allowing anger to come and go without punching the pillow or stomping on the floor, for example. Allowing for frustration without expressing aggression is the goal for many children, teens, and adults.
Anxiety gets manifested in various physiological sensations including butterflies in the belly, sweaty palms, and dizziness. Anxiety informs us that there is something up ahead that we want to do well or perhaps something we need to accomplish, yet we anticipate the possibility of failure. It is because we can envision failure that we are motivated forward to work harder and accomplish more. Without anxiety, I suspect that there would be no growth.
Physiological processes associated with fear represent our brain and body keeping us safe. A car speeds nearby, our heart beats rapidly, and we jump out of the way. Perhaps we adapted to feel fear so that we could learn to stay alive.
Certainly people feel euphoric for no reason, get angry without provocation, experience chronic rumination and anxiety over the simplest of tasks, and feel intense fear in the absence of any current danger.
CBT for Tolerance of Emotions
From a cognitive-behavioral perspective, the treatment for these issues is not to feel less. We know from Exposure with Response Prevention research that relief is found for a person managing big feelings when the person gradually allows themselves to feel more completely - eventually welcomes the feeling, actually. Moving towards, rather than away from, the feelings and sensations allows the emotions and related sensations to rise and fall, as they will.
In the best of scenarios, emotions are not being discharged or released from a cage, as theories of "catharsis" would suggest. Rather, they are gradually being welcomed as they appear, integrated into one's experience, and used as valuable sources of information.
When we go towards emotions with courage, such emotions may bubble up more appropriately and more reliably in the future. With my support and assistance, patients in my practice often move towards experiences that elicit the very emotions and sensations that they have been avoiding, sometimes for several years.
Below is an example of artwork created by a patient struggling with social anxiety. In this example, the artwork was a medium or way to deepen the feelings and move through them, rather than try to avoid feelings of anxiety and sadness. Many parents of my patients are reporting positive results at home and at school following Exposure with Response Prevention. That is, processing and going through the fear, even in imagination, can often lead to increased courage and adaptability in life.
* While my consideration for emotions has been longstanding, I credit this organizational framework for emotions to David Barlow and his colleagues at the Boston University Center for Anxiety and Related Disorders. Their Unified Protocol creates a wonderful organizing structure for those of us concerned with emotions and the emotional lives of children and families.
Physiological processes associated with fear represent our brain and body keeping us safe. A car speeds nearby, our heart beats rapidly, and we jump out of the way. Perhaps we adapted to feel fear so that we could learn to stay alive.
Certainly people feel euphoric for no reason, get angry without provocation, experience chronic rumination and anxiety over the simplest of tasks, and feel intense fear in the absence of any current danger.
CBT for Tolerance of Emotions
From a cognitive-behavioral perspective, the treatment for these issues is not to feel less. We know from Exposure with Response Prevention research that relief is found for a person managing big feelings when the person gradually allows themselves to feel more completely - eventually welcomes the feeling, actually. Moving towards, rather than away from, the feelings and sensations allows the emotions and related sensations to rise and fall, as they will.
In the best of scenarios, emotions are not being discharged or released from a cage, as theories of "catharsis" would suggest. Rather, they are gradually being welcomed as they appear, integrated into one's experience, and used as valuable sources of information.
When we go towards emotions with courage, such emotions may bubble up more appropriately and more reliably in the future. With my support and assistance, patients in my practice often move towards experiences that elicit the very emotions and sensations that they have been avoiding, sometimes for several years.
Below is an example of artwork created by a patient struggling with social anxiety. In this example, the artwork was a medium or way to deepen the feelings and move through them, rather than try to avoid feelings of anxiety and sadness. Many parents of my patients are reporting positive results at home and at school following Exposure with Response Prevention. That is, processing and going through the fear, even in imagination, can often lead to increased courage and adaptability in life.
* While my consideration for emotions has been longstanding, I credit this organizational framework for emotions to David Barlow and his colleagues at the Boston University Center for Anxiety and Related Disorders. Their Unified Protocol creates a wonderful organizing structure for those of us concerned with emotions and the emotional lives of children and families.