Feelings and Validity

 There has been a picture and a story going around for a while that has been of very much interest to me. And it has received some very strong and emotional reactions from people. Some in support, most in condemnation.

The picture was thus: A man standing over a little girl, maybe 3 or 4 years old in my judgement. And he was straddling her so that people would walk around them. This was in either a Grocery or Department store. He was not angry. Protective.

He was talking with another adult while guarding his little girl.

The little girl was having a massive melt down. The type that includes a lot of loud crying and yelling with tears and snot. And the adult was not trying to manage her or shush her or any of that. He was just letting her express herself in the way that she needed to express herself in that moment.

And the story attached to the picture was of the father explaining to another person that she just needed to have a meltdown right then and that his only job was to protect her and give her space to feel what she needed to feel. That they would have a discussion afterwards about what she was feeling and maybe ways to handle feelings that would be more in line with the actual feelings that she was having.

Something along those lines. Been a long while since I have seen it.

Every time that I saw that posted in a Social Media environment there was a lot of people making comments of either praise and support for the Dad or condemnation for the Dad.

The praise comments, and there were not a lot f them proportionally, all went something like how wonderful it was that the father was willing to let his child feel without any feelings of embarrassment for himself. How lucky this child was to have such an understanding parent, etc. Everything that was said was thru the lens of the parent.

The comments of condemnation, well. They got downright unhinged at times.

People felt the need to make harsh judgements about this scene. They said that the father had no right to let his little girl carry on like that. That by inflicting this child's emotions on everyone around him he was showing his complete unfitness to be a parent. That he was going to raise an entitled daughter who would just go thru life demanding that the world accommodate her to their expense. That she would probably turn into a serial killer or terrorist. And more of the same.

And not once did any of them say that this little girl was just overwhelmed by something and that all she needed was to get it out safely.

Kudos to that dad.

What this exposes is one of the many things that is not workable about our society.

What I am referring to is how much we, as Adults and/or Parents, try to manage and control the feelings of the young people around us. We let Our Feelings dictate what Their Feelings are supposed to look like.

Because, to most adults, acknowledging that this child's feelings are Valid in some way threaten our picture of how the world is supposed to look.

So we Judge and try to shut down or deflect those feelings. And by doing so we teach these children that what they are feeling is Not Valid and Must Be Suppressed, Changed, Diverted, or anything else other than Expressed.

And that is just plain Fear Based Behavior.

And why are we so afraid of our children's emotion? I think, for me, you will have to come to your own conclusions, that we are afraid because children FEEL things. Loudly and deeply they feel things. And when they are feeling it impacts us on a very deep level.

Some of us get hit by a child's feelings and it reminds us of when we were kids and felt everything deeply and loudly. We remember how we were shut down and thus never truly learned how to have and express feelings. So we feel it deeply. And, because we never learned how to manage our feelings correctly it is only for a moment before we make sure that we do not.

And then we stop them, the child, in whatever way that we are accustomed to, in order to not feel this. Because we are afraid. Which, of course, we must not feel.

And thus we perpetuate the cycle of not be allowed to feel and thus not learning how to manage feelings. And being afraid.

I could go on. For some it is embarrassment. For others it is feeling out of control. Whatever it is, they all lead to the same place. The same cycle of denied feelings and repressed emotions.

I posit that most of the worlds problems have come about because most people do not know how to manage emotion. And have so successfully hidden that from everyone, especially themselves, that they often will act on an emotional basis while having no real understanding that this is what is really happening.

And when outside emotion comes in it hits in the unhealed wounded places that people carry. Which makes it even worse. Because they then proceed to "bleed all over people who did not hurt them" and then wonder why they are alone.

So, how do we fix this?

I have some ideas. Of course:

• We must do the internal work to heal those places that we are hurt and afraid to face
• We must learn to sit with our feelings and be ok with them
• We must learn how to manage our feelings in a healthy manner
• We must learn how to express those feelings in a way that Honors us and Validates our feelings
• We must learn to allow others, especially children, to express their feelings
• We must know that all feelings are valid to the person feeling them

Once we do all of that, and yes, this is an inside job where we have to face things that are uncomfortable and downright distressing at times, only then can we begin to help others along this path.

And, thus, we can change the World. We can change how the World interacts with each other. We can be the Teachers we always needed.

And begin to finally break the cycle of people walking around with everything all bound up inside them.

And, just maybe, we can be the ones letting a child melt down and just be ok with them melting down. So that later we can show them how to express appropriately to the emotions actually being felt.

This is possible.

Even for You.

Namaste 🙏