Validating then moving beyond feelimgs

[Subsidiarity]

In conversations I feel a tension between validating people's feelings and helping them move beyond them. For example my son saw part of a scary movie and later told me he felt scared when thinking about it. So I tried to let him know that I understood how he felt and such validation, but then I wanted to help him put it in perspective. So I told him that it wasn't real, they are actors telling a story and such. When I start this I feel like I am discounting his feelings. Like I am telling him subtly that he should not feel this way.

 

Do you guys ever feel similarly? Have you found a way to deal? Is the entire scope of my perception off? Thx in advance.

[Prairie]

Here's what came to mind on the subject and in the situation you mentioned. I don't mean it critically, in case any of it comes out that way. Imagine a glass jar over the rest of this posting to keep it sealed in for safe viewing

 

As for his fear, I think he just needs someone to listen and reflect what he's saying. Once he's done talking about it he will move to something else, and that is done.

 

As for perspective, does anyone ever watch a movie and experience it entirely as flashing lights on a screen, or at least as just actors and editing? I doubt so (or else movies would be boring things for most). So I think that everyone watching movies loses perspective while watching.

 

I often hear people talking about feelings, then discounting them and talking about "perspective" from an intellectual point of view, then switching back to feelings, in a conflicted manner. I don't see any conflict between feelings and logic/intellect, as long as feelings are understood. I think that it is an error to interpret feelings as the same as intellectually thinking something, and to respond to feelings as if they are thoughts is to further this.

 

To me, feelings show things going on inside and their relation to associations happening inside/outside me. Something that comes up in a movie is something that was there before, not caused by the movie. So if I got really frightened, sad, or angry when talking about a movie experience with someone and they started to remind me that it was fictional, I would be annoyed with them because they reduced my emotions from a reflection of something going on before I came into the theater to a silly response to something I didn't realize was fiction. "Crying over spilled milk" is another example of this trivialization. No, it's not over the milk, it's over something else and was just brought back into consciousness when the milk spilled, because something about the situation is similar.

 

On the subject of movies, if I wanted to explain what they are to a child, I'd start with a behind-the-scenes featurette that shows some behind-the-scenes shots. Then I'd comment how it's interesting that even though we know it's not real, we belive it's real to some extent while watching. And finally use feelings that come up after watching a movie as a start of exploring fears, etc. to demonstrate nonverbally that the movie being fiction doesn't mean that the feelings are equally fake or baseless. One way to emphasize the exploratory nature is to imagine variations on scary scenes. "What if the evil robot were only a foot tall, would it still be scary? An inch tall?" The scenes become experiments to map out one's fears (or whatever emotion is being explored).

[travioli]

In conversations I feel a tension between validating people's feelings and helping them move beyond them. For example my son saw part of a scary movie and later told me he felt scared when thinking about it. So I tried to let him know that I understood how he felt and such validation, but then I wanted to help him put it in perspective. So I told him that it wasn't real, they are actors telling a story and such. When I start this I feel like I am discounting his feelings. Like I am telling him subtly that he should not feel this way.Do you guys ever feel similarly? Have you found a way to deal? Is the entire scope of my perception off? Thx in advance.

 

I do often feel this. Not only in regards to others that I'm trying to give a bit of advice for, but also myself. With others, I used to be more "discounting" as you say--to say that they shouldn't feel it or explain it away. Obviously here you were in more of a curiosity/understanding mindset which is better.

 

With myself, I've found that when I accept the full reality of the emotion, whatever it may be, and then find why I'm having that emotion and what it means for the future, it tends to go away. Paradoxically enough, my (mostly "negative") emotions go away when I let myself feel them, and they come back and are very stifling and stubborn when I don't consciously experience them and let myself feel them. I guess a way I would deal with it when it comes to others, is to tell them that they are feeling the emotion for a reason, and not to be hostile to it. I guess you could show them by example on how feeling your emotions is important. So, maybe just help them understand emotions in general, rather than feel like discounting their particular emotion. Of course I think it is good to help a child understand if he feels something from a horror movie, that it's fake etc. but also that the emotion is an important part of life, that it means something. 

[Mike Larson]

Here is how I see the situation you have described:

 

1. A child has an emotional response to his interpretation of some event.

2. You suppose that his emotional response was at least partially due to an inaccurate interpretation of the event.

3. You acknowledge/validate the emotional response.

4. You attempt to help the child avoid inaccurate interpretations of similar events in the future.

 

And you are concerned about moving from step 3 to step 4 without somehow diminishing the effect of step 3.

 

First of all, I don't think there is anything particularly troubling about the process described above. I think it is generally a reasonable and empathetic way to respond. But here are some questions that I think would be useful to ask...

 

- Do I have an accurate picture of why the child is responding in this particular way?

- What is my core objective in correcting his understanding of the event?

- Am I really just trying to manage his emotions by trying to diminish the event that triggered them?

- What was my emotional response to his emotional response? What is my relationship to fear?

- Despite what I am saying, what is my tone and body language communicating to him? Is he getting the impression that I am uncomfortable with his emotional expression?

 

I would pay attention to the fact that you "felt" like you were somehow discounting his feelings.

 

For me this sort of a thing occurs fairly regularly. And when I look really deeply into my own motivations and feelings, I almost always recognize that there is at least a part of me that is simply uncomfortable with the emotion being expressed by the other person. And for me, that is where I need to start in determining how to proceed.

 

Perhaps none of this has anything to do with your experience, but if it does, then I think that there are a couple of considerations that could be useful. First of all, as Prairie mentioned above, it might be helpful to be more curious about what triggered the emotional response in the first place. In this case, the interpretation of the movie as "real" or "fake" may have had very little to do with the his response. And secondly, given that help is needed in correctly interpreting the event, it might be useful to create some distance between validating the child's emotions and correcting his interpretation... so just focusing on being present with him until you perceive that he feels understood. Then allow some time to elapse before correcting the interpretation-- and then do so without referring to his emotional response.

 

Just some ideas here. I think it really depends on the situation. I mean you could go into different scenarios like what if the child is about to go to sleep (wouldn't it be good to explain things right away) etc, etc. 

[Subsidiarity]

Really great help guys.

 

It was me and my wife that were talking to him and I find that we leap into action without proper exploration when working together. On reflection dissecting the movie didn't help as much as talking about what we do to protect the family... We recently got a dog partially for security purposes and we don't entertain violent people. So it would seem like his fear was driven more by perceived insecurity than scary imagery.

 

Thx guys.