I’m going to describe something to you, and I will be mixing imagery and reality throughout the whole thing:
Picture a huge garden with tons of benches in it. These benches represent different emotional states.
When a child is sad, he will sit on the sad bench. When my son is crying and I sit with him, I say, “Sweetheart, I’m so sorry that you’re sad. Can you tell me more about what happened? What are you feeling in your body?” I am figuratively sitting with him on the sad bench.
What he gains from this is for one, he feels less alone. And two, he learns non-verbally that sadness is bearable and Mommy can deal with his sadness.
If, on the other hand, I say things to him such as, “Don’t be a baby. Boys don’t cry. I don’t know what the problem is.” Or even, “Honey, don’t be sad about that. Look at it this way. What if you looked at it this way? Or what can we do about the situation?”
In all of those examples, I would be showing him non-verbally that I’m not sitting on the bench with him. I didn’t sit in the sadness with him. “You can’t tolerate sadness. I can’t tolerate sadness.” That’s what Michael learns. “Don’t go to that sad bench because Mommy won’t sit with me on it.”
Also, what sometimes happens is when you’re on the bench as a parent, your child decides they’re done with the emotion before you’re done sitting with them. This actually happens to me in real life. My daughter will be sitting on my lap when she’s upset and I am talking to her trying to console her. Eventually, she looks at me and says, “Okay, I’m done, can I go play again?”
I can handle that in one of two ways. “Yes, Sweetheart, go play. I love you. I’m glad we had this talk.” Or I can say, “But I wasn’t done describing this to you.”
So I’m either going to force her to sit on the bench longer than she wants to, or I’m going to let her go and sit there until she’s gone. If I let her go, that also tells her, “I can handle the emotion as long as I need to and Mommy’s there with me.” And then it passes and life moves on.
If I force her to stay on the bench with me longer than she wanted to, then she learns that sadness is overwhelming. “I have to take care of Mommy because she’s on the bench now.” So she’ll learn to start taking care of me, which isn’t good, either.
By the time we get to adulthood, we subconsciously have these mental images of the benches and which benches we have. People will sit with us on the benches that were allowed.
If the benches were not allowed, we learn how to deal with emotions in other, non-healthy, non-productive ways. If sadness wasn’t allowed, people get angry, instead, because the anger protects them from feeling that way. They just avoid the sad bench, period.
Do you need help identifying which benches you allow yourself to sit on? Drop me an email to chat about working together.