Drop the War with Emotions

Here at Drop the War life coaching, we are all about dropping the war. What war are we talking about today? The war with emotions! Our own and our kids’.

Are you feeling some butterflies lately? Your kids probably are too. With all the newness and unknowns of back to school time. You can drop the war on the butterflies. They are not a problem. They are just a message from your brain. Acknowledge them and let them be there. You don’t have to “fix” anything for your kid. Making nervousness into a problem escalates it into anxiety. They can feel nervous, no problem. So can you. It’s all good.

All the feelings are just coming from thoughts in your brain 🧠 (more about that in the last blog about Feelings)

Now that we know where emotions come from, what do we do with them?

Well, there are a few default options that we are cultured to do. One is “stuff” them. Did your Mom say to you “You’re ok!” “Stop crying” “I’ll give you something to cry about!” when you were feeling feelings as a little kid yourself? She came by it honestly. Previous generations did not know what we know about brain and body connection science. Emotions were a scientific mystery until recently. And I’m sure her mom and her mom before that didn’t know what to do with them either.

But now we know better so we can do better.

Feelings just need to be felt. There is nothing wrong with feeling any sort of way!

Happiness 100% of the time is not the goal. We will feel the full range of emotion in this human life and that is OK!! But what should we do with them to deal with them in a healthy way?

Well, first of all. If we are accustomed to stuff them, you may have noticed after a lifetime of doing this, that you tend to stuff stuff stuff until they all come exploding out at some point. That’s why stuffing is not so healthy.

Another way of handling feelings is what we call “buffering” (you know, like the pad on the bottom of your chairs so they don’t scratch the hard wood floor or make that terrible screeching noise) We put a “pad” between us and the emotion so that we don’t have to “get scratched” or feel that terrible screeching feeling in our bodies. When you are feeling upset, you reach for M&Ms. Did you ever wonder why that is?

Thoughts in our head produce a vibration in our body. Different thoughts feel different in our bodies and we like how some feel and we don’t like how others feel. So if we feel embarrassed cause we said something that we later think was “stupid”, we will feel a rush of hot fiery red feeling run to our cheeks, our hands get sweaty, and we feel queasy in our stomachs. We describe all of this physical sensation as embarrassed. And we don’t like how it feels. When we eat food, especially foods that give us a boost of dopamine, it literally covers up the sensations in the body that emotion had caused so we don’t have to feel it. Buffering.

Another thing we do with emotions is react to them. Yelling, screaming, throwing things. The stuff your kids do in their tantrums because that is the brains natural and easiest way to get rid of the emotion the fastest. And if you haven’t taught your brain a different way, it will continue to throw adult temper tantrums.

The alternative to acting them out, buffering against them, or stuffing them down, is that you could just feel your feelings. The way to drop the war with emotions is to acknowledge them, get the message from our brain, and feel them through. Take a breath. Get out of your head and into your body. Breathe some more. Just feel. It only takes 60-90 seconds for the feelings to work it’s way through your body. You came equipped to do this. Your body knows what to do. You just have to drop your end of the tug of war rope by allowing the feeling to do its thing. You’ve got this Momma!

Go feel your feels! Emotions are not a problem that need to be fixed. Yours or theirs!

Apply all of this to your kids also. You breathe and process your feelings about their feelings and meanwhile they will be processing their own. They know how. Trust their bodies also. Drop the war with your kids’ feelings by just “letting” them have them. You don’t have to hurry them back to happy. All the feels are fine. You may need to protect the other kids around or your property. They may need to go to another room if they are processing too loud and disruptively to the peace in your home. But not because you can’t handle it. You can deal with your own emotions now. They don’t have to stop having feelings in order for you to feel better!