#emotion-regulation

#emotion-regulation

The day before school resumed, Sara spent the afternoon with her daughter, just being together-nothing extravagant, just simple delights: a playdate, a temporary face tattoo (because, why not?), pockets of slow time woven together. On the walk home, the temperature dropped sharply. The subway felt impossibly far. Her daughter said she was too cold, too tired, too done. So they shared a pair of headphones.

When a young child pulls their hair, picks their skin, or bites their nails to the point of injury, it's natural for the adults in their lives to want to focus on stopping the behavior. Parents want to prevent their child from experiencing harm, and clinicians want to help the child gain control and relieve their parents of worry. But with body-focused repetitive behaviors (BFRBs), especially in young children, control is rarely the place to start.

Let's talk about meltdowns and temper tantrums. Arms flailing, feet stomping, the full body drop-to-the-ground moment. For toddlers, the image is all too familiar. For those of us who have older children, we take a sigh. But are tantrums just for toddlers? No, they aren't. The tantrum meltdown isn't just for kids. It's also an experience many teens, young adults, and adults experience on the regular. They just look a little different now. Let me explain.

One key insight from these observations is that when teachers correct kids when they are engaging in unwanted behavior, many kids shut down or escalate, becoming defiant, melting down, or getting more aggressive. This is especially true for kids who are highly sensitive, big reactors, by nature. They are quick to shame and process corrections as indictments of their personhood. They get so flooded with emotion that they can't process whatever lesson the adult is trying to impart.

Children can be, and usually are, demanding. A parent may recall their fussy child's tantrums over a particular meal or toy, remembering the challenge of getting it just right. Children expect, and rightfully so, their parents to know what's good for them, even when they don't know themselves. Ultimately, it's the parent's responsibility to calm, which all of us accept as the natural state of things.

When you name what you're feeling you're not just talking. You're helping your brain shift gears. Research shows that labeling emotions reduces activity in the amygdala, the part of your brain that sounds the alarm. At the same time, it activates the prefrontal cortex, the part that helps you think clearly and make good decisions (Lieberman and colleagues, 2007). Naming your emotions helps you move from panic to power.

"That stage of life is all about figuring out who you are, which means emotions run high and identity can feel more fragile," said Kristin Anderson, licensed clinical social worker, founder of Madison Square Psychotherapy . "Because teens are still developing emotion regulation skills, small misunderstandings can escalate quickly in ways that are less common in adult relationships."

If you feel like there are times when your emotions quickly escalate and spin out of control, it may also feel like there's nothing you can do about it. Perhaps others have told you that you are "overreacting" to situations that typically do not evoke such intense feelings. But being told by others to "calm down" feels dismissive to you, and it invalidates your strong emotions.

It can certainly feel like emotions happen to you. That they bubble up and cause you to do and say things, but that experience is an illusion that the brain creates. Not everybody has as much control as they might like, but everybody has a little more control than they think they do. When you're experiencing emotion or you're in an emotional state, what your brain is doing is telling itself a story about what is going on inside your body.

I mean, the amazing thing about our circumstances that each one of us is in a position that is in some sense, as free and as profound and as in touch with reality, as any other position in this universe, where you stand, the universe is illuminated as you, as your experience in this moment. And that we call this substratum of experience, consciousness, for lack of a better word.