Growing Pains: Five Things Teens Need From Parents
If someone asked you what period in human life is likely to be the loneliest, what would you say? Fortunately there are loneliness researchers who…
Portfolio Categories: Adolescence
When Play Ends and Boredom Begins
Understanding boredom in kids is serious business. A mother of a 7-year old boy sat in my office, clearly distressed and said, “I take away…
Five Things You Might Not Know About Human Emotion
Humans are some of the most complex emotional creatures on earth. From our teenagers who roll their eyes in disdain to our toddlers who cry…
The Surprising Secret Behind Kid’s Resistance and Opposition
Why is it that young children can lock down in protest at the mere suggestion of getting dressed or undressed? Why do school-age kids seem…
What Kids Worry and Fear at Different Ages
Kids have worries – from monsters to natural disasters. They can appear at random or may be triggered by everyday events. Their increasing awareness of…
Healing Broken Attachments with our Kids
They are few stressors greater in life than having a challenging relationship with one’s child. It can be heart breaking to look at the chasm…
Why Tears are the Secret to Fostering Resiliency in Kids
There is much talk of how parents need to avoid overprotecting their kids and allowing them to experience failure as a part of routine life.…
Self Esteem: What Stuck Kids Taught Me About What It Means to Matter
Wally, a 21 year old student, glared at me intently as he lept from his chair at the front of the class. He spoke loudly…
Making Sense of Adolescents (or anyone who acts like one)
Mark Twain wrote, “When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around.…
Softening the Hardened Heart
Hearts can grow cold and become hardened, something poets, artists, and musicians have always claimed. From children to adults, emotional numbing is part of the…
Being defended against vulnerable feelings is an equal opportunity problem not confined by geography, gender, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, or education level. It is a quintessential human issue given our unique capacity to reflect on our emotions and assign feeling names, unlike other mammal species. The three or four year old who suddenly bursts out with their words instead of their hits, “I frustrated! I need HELP!” reveals the developmental sophistication in this system. We were meant to develop a language of the heart, one that takes us towards civilized relating around emotional content.
When Caring Goes Missing
Caring feelings are a luxury in a world that feels like it is coming undone. There are sometimes too many acts of uncaring for a human heart to bear in today’s ‘connected world’ when self centered actions dominate, combined with an absence of shame or fear, and no tears in the face of all that should make us weep. As T.S. Eliot pens in his poem, “The Hollow Men,” vulnerable feelings often go missing not with a bang but with a whimper. We were meant to care deeply – and not just about ourselves but about others too. The hunger for connection is what should hold us together but there are times we seem so intent on tearing these relationships apart. The vulnerable feelings that make us most vital and human go missing for the sake of survival.
When the emotional system flatlines, not only does fear disappear but joy, delight, and enjoyment too. Some of my counselling clients would tell me, “I don’t need anybody, I don’t really care I am on my own” with little emotion. It created problems attaching to others and preventing the love that was there for them in getting through the wall of defenses their brain had erected. They could not feel, despite being aware on some level that they really should be. As one teen said to me, I know I should be happy but I just don’t feel anything right now. When the emotional system operates in a defensive mode, the caring feelings go missing along with their tempering effect on frustration, upset, alarm, and impatience.
How to Revive Hardened Hearts
What is critical to remember is when a heart becomes hardened, the brain has its own reasons for pressing down upon vulnerable feelings. To feel sets the person up to get hurt and the brain is geared towards survival at all costs. To bring emotional defenses down, the heart must be softened. The question is how can this be done? The heart won’t be resuscitated through logic, cognitive manipulation, or behavioural interventions. When our kids lose their caring (or adults), it is the warmth and caring of others that offers the best chance of melting emotional defenses.
According to Gordon Neufeld, a heart can only be softened with the cultivation of safe and caring attachments with others. It is relationship that offers someone the promise of safety, warmth and dependence. It is attachment that is the ancidote to facing too much separation and leads to wounding. The human heart will spontaneously recover and experience vulnerable feelings again when emotional defenses are no longer needed. It cannot get there with a pill, prodding, pushing, cajoling, rewarding, or punishing but only through the warmth of another human being.
What every person needs most of all is a guardian for their heart. As one ten year old said to her mother, “I don’t what it is about you Mama, but when I talk to you I feel such comfort.” One of my clients said her sixteen-year old son said, “Mom, you always seem to know what to say to help me when I am really scared.” This is the job of parenting – to hold on to our kid’s hearts and shield them. As adults, the hope would be that we can rest in the care of another.
Three Keys to Melting Emotional Defenses
When we have built a strong relationship with someone we can lead then lead them towards vulnerable territory, ever so gently. With a young child it might be reading picture books about characters with big feelings, taking an older child to see a movie such as “Inside Out,” or having chats with teens about the songs they are listening to or the ‘heros’ they admire. It is our job to use our relationship to come to their side and invite them to share their world with us. When appropriate we can reflect back what we have heard in increasingly vulnerable ways such as, “sadness saves the day – who ever thought that would happen!” It is the slow, but consistent message that all of a child’s feelings are welcome and that the relationship can handle what needs to be said, that will slowly bring the defenses down.
To lead someone to their vulnerable feelings we will need to be caring ourselves and model an openness to vulnerability. This doesn’t mean we tell our children our feelings about them but rather reflect on vulnerability as a strength and as being valued. We can then increasingly touch emotional bruises in their life in a gentle way as needed.
