And worse, what if the incessant demands of our culture to be happy made our children miserable?
It sounds counterintuitive, of course, but in order to be happy in the long run, we should better embrace the times when we aren’t.
In a culture determined to be positive, teaching this mindset is like swimming upstream. Our children absorb the message “Happy feelings are most acceptable feelings” early on. The smiley sticker is the ultimate praise, thinking happy thoughts and turning your eyebrows upside down make up too many kids songs to count, and the ‘don’t cry’ warning (though it doesn’t contain any instructions how to do it) has become ubiquitous, whether in our attempts at comfort or in our bitter rebuke when our children’s emotional manifestations frustrate us.
But this approach to emotional development overlooks the full and complicated range of unhappy feelings that are just as a part of human life as happiness – from sadness to frustration, from anger to fear, from guilt to disappointment, to boredom or disgust.
Much wellness research clearly shows that typical American approaches to seeking happiness are far from helpful for our children. Anxiety and mental health issues in children and teens have been on the rise, even before the massive disruption of a year that has been the most difficult of many young lives.
In fact, the more we teach our children to stay positive, at the expense of helping them come to terms with sometimes difficult feelings, the less tools we equip them to deal with when life inevitably gets difficult. At worst, it teaches our children that upsetting feelings are unacceptable and should be anesthetized.
We tend to have a similar disregard for the negative thoughts. Americans like to believe that our thoughts define us: that we need to control this common commentary, shape it, and aggressively avoid “bad” thoughts that condemn us to doom. But it gives too much power to our thoughts. Mindfulness research and acceptance and engagement therapy reveals that it’s not negative thoughts that cause depression, anxiety, amotivation, or any other mental rut we’re afraid of. This is when negative thoughts become tights that we are more prone to these problems. And here’s the catch: the more we fight with our thoughts, the more power we give them to stay. Being obsessed with having only the ‘right’ kind of thoughts breeds cognitive rigidity that creates tunnel vision, locks us into unnecessary patterns, increases our risk of rumination, obsessions and compulsions, and decreases our ability. to adapt to setbacks.
In addition, intolerance of distress – the fear of discomfort that creates the need to escape a bad mood rather than deal with it more actively – is associated not only with anxiety, but with risk. higher drug addiction, binge eating and self-harm.
Our children are now entering a year of painfully disrupted daily life, where everything from play dates to grandparent hugs, field trips, sports teams and birthdays have been sacrificed. If they didn’t have unhappy feelings about these losses, frankly, it wouldn’t be natural. What better time to start teaching our children that unhappiness has its rightful place in a full and – yes – truly happy life? It is often the difficult emotions that teach us the most about ourselves, and which give us the opportunity to find meaning and connect with others.
I’m not suggesting at all that happiness is bad, of course, or that joy shouldn’t be sought after. But forced happiness, happiness as a single goal without a deeper sense of meaning or purpose, or the pretense of happiness that arises from the expectation that anything less is toxic, can make this “happiness” inherently harmful.
If you can help your child develop metacognition – the ability to think about their thoughts and not get stuck in them – and mindfulness, which helps them become a gentle, non-judgmental observer of their thoughts and thoughts. feelings, listening to the moment experience, then you give them psychological tools to help them with life.
Here are some ways to make lessons more consistent.
Teach your children that their thoughts do not define them. Encourage your children to watch their thoughts with curiosity rather than fear, non-judgmental rather than shame. Establish that not only is a thought not automatically true, it is also not automatically “you.” Encourage labeling painful thoughts like “I think no one loves me” rather than “No one loves me,” which helps your child to separate from them.
Encourage turning anxious thought patterns into characters. This can help your child gain even more distance from their negative voice and de-stigmatize themselves by talking about anxiety. A child with OCD might see his obsessive voice like “Mr. Bossy, ”or a child with social anxiety may call their negative self-talk“ The Stage-Fright Bully ”and decide that they have nothing important to say – and the show can go on.
Take the position that even the most important feelings are always good. Emphasize that it is how we deal with emotions that matters most and that we can choose these actions mindfully. Teach your children that disturbing moods often pass on their own, but if they don’t, we can develop a toolkit to deal with and manage them. Emphasize that the feelings themselves are neither right nor wrong.
Commit to teaching and practicing the break. Praise your kids whenever they feel an overwhelming feeling, then stop and notice the feeling without acting destructively. We often tell our children, “Don’t be so angry” because we equate their anger with hurtful acts. Instead, teach them that anger is fine, but that we need to think carefully about our actions, noticing our thoughts and bodily sensations without going on autopilot. Whenever they fully engage with a feeling and choose a functional behavior, they boost their emotional intelligence and make it more likely that this feeling will not lead them to adopt unhealthy habits in the future.
Expand your vocabulary about emotions. Encourage your children to express their feelings and put them into practice yourself. From “I” statements (“I was sad when you told me that” rather than “you’re mean!”) Encouraging your kids to write or draw their feelings in a journal, research shows the simple Labeling a feeling can help us feel more in control and allow it to pass more quickly.
Observe and adjust your own ways of talking about feelings. Pay special attention to the times when you are invalidating your child’s emotions or trying to force a different internal reaction: “Everything is fine,” “Everything is fine,” “You have nothing to fear.” Instead, choose empathy: “It sounds really upsetting; let’s think about how we can fix it. “
Talk about real happiness as more than fun or ease. We all want our children to be happy. But what they absorb into what it means is crucial. By opening them up to the idea of a sense of purpose, finding meaning in their life, or defining values that are important to them, they will better understand how even difficult and difficult times can cultivate happiness. Be aware of how you put external, superficial definitions of happiness – like taking a test or winning a championship – above the sense of internal pride that comes from working hard on something that matters to your child.
Soon they (and you) will be on the path to true happiness – when it really happens.