Feel Your Feelings

My 18 year old step-son came for dinner this evening to celebrate Father's Day. It is always exciting for my two sons to spend time with their big brother - they don't see him often. As I kissed my oldest son good night he told me he was sad. He missed his big brother. He spent some time trying to figure out a way to not be sad - he could go live at his big brother's house (but then he would miss us), we could move closer to him (but he is going away to college and we want to live on a farm)...with every solution he created he quickly discovered a draw back. I finally stepped in and offered a suggestion, "Why don't you just feel your feelings?" I explained to him that feelings are not good or bad, they are just something we experience which can sometimes make us uncomfortable for a little while. I told him it can hurt our bodies when we try not to feel our feelings since the energy of the feeling can get stuck when it is not expressed out of our body. Our energy works best when it is freely flowing through and around us and the places it gets stuck are the places we can get sick. I also explained that sadness can be a good thing - it means you have a loving heart since only a loving heart misses somebody when they are gone. He began to cry. I encouraged him to let all of his sad out, and he did. When he calmed down I reminded him that he could choose to lay in bed and think about his brother not being here or he could choose to think about all the things they did together. We spent a little time talking about what he liked best today, and what was the most fun. I am so thankful for books like "Connection Parenting" by Pam Leo which raised my consciousness about encouraging children to express their feelings. As parents, our first instinct is to stop our children from crying but often this is not what they really need. They need to have a safe place to discharge the energy of overwhelming emotions. This is also good advice for us grown ups - did you let your energy flow today, even the uncomfortable stuff, or did you suppress and trap it in your body someplace?

BTW - I wrote an article about Attachment and Connection Parenting in the May 2009 issue of Inner Vision Magazine (www.innervisionmagazine.com). Enjoy!