Emotions Monsters and The Way We Treat Them
i have
complex post-traumatic stress disorder
ptsd it’s healed
managed but forever a part of who i am
i collected adverse childhood
experiences like some kids collected
happy meal toys
and as i transitioned into adulthood i
continued to survive
traumatic situations and
one of the survival skills that i honed
to perfection
was the ability to compartmentalize
or if i’m being honest
stuff my feelings in a corner and ignore
them
and to heal i had to learn how to take
everything out of those meticulously
constructed compartments
and finally begin to process them but i
had to learn
how to name my feelings before i could
do that it was messy
so here i am a mother of four
a homeschooler an english teacher a
graduate student
how could i not know how to do something
so basic
it is among the first skills we tackle
with my young chinese students
letters numbers
colors feelings i feel happy or
i am angry the thing
is knowing the word
for an emotion is not the same thing as
assigning a name to a feeling
when you name something you give it a
voice
you acknowledge its existence and that
can be as terrifying as it is
therapeutic for someone like me
so not only did i have
to do the work of healing from my own
trauma
i became hyper aware
of the propensity for my children to
develop
unhealthy avoidant habits as they
navigated the stressful situations
in their lives my marriage problems
family strife social and academic
pressure
and now everything that goes along
with living through a pandemic
i began to notice how much their moods
and reactions were rooted in
emotions that they felt but had no tools
to evaluate discuss or convey
what i needed more than anything was to
teach these four small humans
how to talk about their emotions so they
don’t end up like me doing weekly
arduous therapy to rewire their brains
what i needed
was to teach them how to talk about
their emotions but more importantly
how to listen to them because really
every emotion has something
to teach us and let me tell you
when you ignore those feelings
it’s asking for trouble when we
hide the emotions that are scary or just
plain unpleasant
it can wreak havoc on our ability to
assess new situations
we don’t learn how to grieve properly
we minimize very real pain
and then shame ourselves for for being
weak
we push people away and we get into
toxic relationships when we ignore
our instincts we fail to learn
we fail to grow we just
fail according to bessel vander kulk
author of the body keeps the score the
best way to keep a traumatic situation
from growing into ptsd later is to
process
events and emotions quickly in a safe
and understanding space
but we need to be able to talk
specifically
about our feelings in order to do that
enter the emotion monsters
about three years ago i told my kids the
story that i’m about to tell you
and it has made a huge difference in our
lives i use it in our daily interactions
and i teach my friends to tell the story
to their children
as well and i want to give you the
opportunity
to add it to your repertoire as well now
i have a way to understand what’s going
on emotionally
with my kids and they have a way
to express what they’re feeling
inside when they lash out
or dissolve into tears or retreat into
silence
and as it would turn out they would need
those skills to convey their sense of
loss
grief fear
anger and bitter despair when their
worlds came to a halt in march
pandemic descended on us all and plunged
us into realities that
no parenting book equipped me to guide
them through
listen y’all i said
i want to tell you about little
creatures
that live inside you they’re like
little monsters they’re your feelings
each one is a different emotion
there’s joy and anger
and fear and guilt
and all the feelings that a person can
have
they’re always inside you but every once
in a while something will happen
it’ll cause one of them to come up and
grab your attention
there’s a little version of you in there
always waiting to
listen to them and then tell the big you
what they want to say
those little monsters will tug at your
sleeve or
knot your ankles they will roll around
and hop around just trying to get your
attention
every single one every single time
just wants a chance
to teach you
fear might want to say
this is a bad idea let’s not do it
sadness i might want you to know that he
really really misses grandpa
and anger sometimes likes to tell us
things like
hey that guy treated us pretty badly
you should get some better friends
only a lot of times we’re too busy
too impatient to listen to what they
have to say
or we’re afraid of what that might be so
we have a tendency to stuff those
monsters
into a box cram it
into a container and then slam a lid on
it
like i did and then take that box
and put it in a closet where we have
stuffed countless other
boxes containing countless other
monsters
we slam the door and breathe a sigh of
relief because who wants to deal with
all of that
they are just so needy much better to
lock them up right
except what happens if
one of those boxes just didn’t quite
shut all the way
maybe that monster was bigger than you
thought
it’s going to break free from its box
and then go open as many other
containers as it can
and now that closet is overflowing
with rowdy upset monsters who still have
something to say to you
they are going to break free and rush
over you
in a flood of furry confusing chaos
now what is big you doing
while inside you is dealing with this
well that’s where
meltdowns and outbursts come from
you might lash out at someone
or make a really bad decision
or you could shut down entirely and of
course that’s what happens
it is so frustrating confusing trying to
listen to all of those voices
all at once and now that they’re out you
have two
options you can try and put them back in
their boxes again
that’s even harder now or
you can sit with each monster
and listen to it like you should have
to begin with that means you have to do
something
called processing you have to call
each monster by name and address it
you have to allow your inside self to
say
okay anger what has you so upset
and that’s not always easy so you can
ask someone else for help
mom you can say i think sadness is
trying to tell me something but
i don’t understand and when you get
through
all of that the monsters will go on
their way calm and at peace and you will
be too
so how do we
as parents and educators
mentors and caregivers use that imagery
to help our kids
imagine a three to five year old is
terrified to use the bathroom at night
you can say i can see fear is bothering
you in there
likes to make a lot of noise i can help
you talk to him
sometimes it helps to show kids this age
a picture and have them point out which
monster
is making the most noise you can say
fear likes to tell us stories to warn us
so it’s important to listen
but do you think we need to be afraid of
the bathroom at night
and maybe yes the child does see a
reason to be afraid
so you can help them think of solutions
maybe a flashlight
or a night light a routine of checking
the shadows
and then they can go back and reassure
their fear monster that everything is
all right
they can say thanks for warning me but i
think it’s okay
or what if your seven to ten year old
lashes out
uses harsh angry tones with a sibling
and then runs off crying
encourage them to evaluate their
reaction
by saying whoa i can see some monsters
are fighting for your attention
does it feel like one monster has come
to talk to you or does this feel like
your closet is emptying of all the
monsters
let’s call them by name and see what
they want
fear is from last week when you had to
ride a horse after you fell off
oh i bet that was scary how do you feel
now
are you still afraid
sadness what does sadness want
oh you miss going to playgrounds
together
i do too do you want to think of
something fun and safe we can do instead
see encouraging kids to find solutions
teaches them resilience
while still validating what they’re
experiencing
and one of my favorite activities for
this age
is asking them to draw the monsters that
they’ve noticed throughout the day in a
notebook
journaling is an excellent tool in
therapy and this lays a great foundation
and the story can also help pre-teens
and young teens
i can tell mine to sit with their
monsters
which ones do you notice i can ask
what to cause them to get agitated
why are they talking to you now and how
do you think it wants you to react
my 13 year old son said to me once
mom i have some sadness monsters
at first i thought they were anger but
then i realized
i’m angry and frustrated because i feel
sad
and now talking to you i think i noticed
some fear monsters in there too
and that was a watershed moment for me
as a parent
getting kids to voluntarily share their
feelings
is such a triumph because it is so
common to hear
i’m fine when you ask how they’re doing
we can see that’s not true but how often
do we hear
nothing as a response when we ask
what’s wrong leaving that conversation
stuck and how often have
we as adults hit roadblocks in our
relationships in the form of
nothing or fine
and how often have we felt stressed and
overwhelmed
and found ourselves taking our feelings
out
on our loved ones when it comes to
talking about our feelings
we fall short because we’ve never really
learned to express that the stress we
feel
is actually a complex mixture of fears
of failure
or sadness maybe a little anger
learning to deconstruct our stress or
the funk
enables us to root out the individual
emotions and begin to address each
one in kind
like with the monsters sometimes
it’s enough to just name
those feelings when i started to name
the losses that i’ve accrued over my
lifetime
i was able to finally begin to mourn
them
i felt sad for experiences
that i never got to have i grieved for a
future
that will never come to pass i allowed
myself
to feel all of those painful
unpleasant emotions and then
release them allowing
joy and peace to fill me
see that’s the best part of this story
each time we sit with our emotions and
listen
to them we grow stronger
and wiser and more self-aware
our feelings don’t sit in a closet
for years whipping themselves into a
panic and then unleashing
in a torrent of breathtaking intensity
when you least expect it later
imagine something for me
imagine a world where children and
adults are
unafraid to talk about their emotions
because
it’s no longer something to be ashamed
of imagine
a world where taking care of our
emotional health
is as important as taking care of our
physical health
a free-flowing dialogue about mental
health
where going to a therapist would be as
normal as going to the dentist
imagine teaching our kids
that every emotion is valid
and important
in helping them dialogue through those
interactions
imagine all the empty closets
and dusty discarded boxes
unused because we’ve given kids the
tools
to evaluate their feelings communicate
around them
and process them in healthy proactive
ways
this story gives kids
a language to speak fluently
in their future relationships with
family and partners
co-workers classmates even people
they’ve never met
it gives them empathy and self-awareness
and understanding
do you notice that that monster
tugging at your sleeve that’s hope