emotional awareness

The Day She Snapped

/ Sheri / Leave a comment

And what we can do to prevent further meltdowns

Sometimes, it’s the kindest people who experience the harshest meltdowns.

A dear friend of mine is the mother of a teen obsessed with musical theater. For the past decade, despite working full time and having one other kid to raise, her son has participated in community theater that requires my friend to drive far and wide all over New York, often late at night. 

A Window View

The other day, I was on the phone with my friend when her son came into the car from another rehearsal. Here’s how the dialogue went:

Teen: I’m hungry. 

Friend: (handing him string cheese) Here you go.

Teen: No, I want McDonald’s.

Friend: You can get that tomorrow after your PSAT test.

Teen: What the f$%&! No, I’m not taking that. I don’t even need it. I have plans with my girlfriend tomorrow.

Let’s just say, I got off that phone as quickly as possible.

The Backstory

My friend is a single mom. Everything has been on her. As her son was growing, there were several small occasions when her son spoke down to her and my friend placated or ignored the disrespectful behavior.

My friend’s empathy for her son eclipsed her judgement.

For years, my friend would say:

“He doesn’t have a father. I feel so bad for him. I want him to know how loved he is and how much he matters.”

Creating a Monster

Just prior to her son entering the car, my friend confided:

“I snapped the other day. I couldn’t take it anymore. I’ve created a monster.”

All those years of yes-ing her son in an effort to make him feel like he mattered, prevented him from learning respect and appreciating another person’s perspective — in this case, his own mother.

The Snap

We humans tend to snap when there’s been a buildup of tension and frustration. We snap after a long time of undisclosed and/or unaddressed unhappiness or resentment.

Like a zit that’s just come to a head, the snap is a manifestation of pent up emotion that needs to come out.

My friend snapped after her son told her he was going to be changing high schools because it had a better musical theater program. 

There was no discussion; in his 15-year-old-mind, changing high schools was going to happen.

Friend: I will look into the high school program.

Teen: I already know I want to do it. There’s nothing to look into. This is my life, not yours.

On and on this dialogue went until my friend, inevitably snapped:

“You know what? You are a child, a minor. Do you not understand that? You know what, just forget it. You’re going to do what you want anyway. Just do it; just do it! GO — what are you waiting for?! I don’t care anymore. Just do whatever the hell you want.”

And the teen’s response:

“It’s okay. I don’t have to do it.”

The Aftermath of a Snap

My friend felt such guilt for snapping at her son.

“You should have seen the look on his face. He looked so scared of me. I feel awful about it.”

And yet, a day later, her son was cursing up a storm in front of her, sometimes at her. There was no:

  • Thank you for picking me up from theater rehersals.

or

  • Thank you for bringing me a snack.

The Thing About Snaps

Snaps don’t address the core issue (in this case: lacking respect for a parent).

Snaps are nothing more than the surface of an emotional iceberg. 

It’s no wonder her teen returned to dictating what would and wouldn’t happen regarding the PSAT and McDonald’s. The roles in their relationship were never addressed in my friend’s snapping.

Love isn’t a Doormat

Whether married or raising kids solo, parenting is not easy. But loving our kids does not mean letting them run the show. 

We wouldn’t give a kindergartner the key to our car. Yet when we placate our children with blind consent, contorting ourselves to please them, we are effectively putting them in the driver’s seat.

There’s Still Time

I don’t know what transpired between my friend and her son after I hung up the other day. I can only hope she:

  • didn’t get him McDonald’s
  • insisted he take the PSAT
  • is going to look into the new high school and not blindly consent

As long as her son is under her roof and a minor, there’s still time for the roles to alter.

Of course, its’ easy for me to see what’s happening: I’m not in the situation. I’m a mere observer. But I can relate to those moments when a need to demonstrate love to my children eclipsed my better judgement. 

Self-compassion

My friend is trying her best. We are all just trying our best in this life. The word compassion means: to suffer with and take action. 

Self-compassion is looking within, exploring the why behind our respective snaps and doing something about it. Sometimes that means saying no to your kid, even if that no will illicit a temper tantrum.

Better a temper tantrum from our kid now than a giant snap from us later.

They Myth of Empathy: What It Is and Isn’t

/ Sheri / Leave a comment
The notion that empathy can deplete our mental resources or hurt us is an unarticulated myth.We can appreciate someone else’s suffering without the need to experience it.

A good friend has a car accident. Your uncle has dementia. A sibling has breast cancer. In each of these situations, as in any challenging time in the lives of loved ones, our heart has the opportunity to open and experience compassion.

But sometimes, we humans confuse Compassion’s powerful sibling, Empathy, for a virus that’s potentially contagious. 

So, we close up, emotionally distancing ourselves from whatever turmoil a loved one is experiencing, not because we don’t care, but because we are afraid to care too much.

Empathy Fear in Action

Years ago, a friend of mine saw I was struggling with a family issue. When I articulated what was going on, she told me the following:

“You know I love you, but I can’t be around you while you are going through this. It’s too hard for me. Once it’s over, let’s get together.”

Despite knowing me for years, my friend equated “being there for me” with somehow catching the challenges I was facing.

What Empathy is Not

Empathy is not something that requires physical, emotional, or spiritual stamina. It doesn’t ask us to drain our health, bank account, or time. Empathy doesn’t infringe or demand. It isn’t a cosmic paramecium, feeding off of us to help another.

What Empathy Is

The prefix EM means to put into or bring to a certain state. The root word PATHY means feeling or suffering. To have empathy to imagine what another feels in a given situation. We are imagining the Other’s experience, but we are not in the situation itself. Empathy is the emotional lubricant that allows humanity to connect. By putting ourselves in another’s shoes, we stimulate Compassion.

Empathy in Action

My friend’s fear of empathy ironically prevented her from experiencing it. When someone loses a loved one, when there’s a difficult divorce, when a family member is robbed — the greatest thing we can do for that person is be present. The sufferer does not expect their friend to BE in pain, only to acknowledge that it’s there.

Empathy is a silent or verbal acknowledgement to let the sufferer know they are not alone. It can manifest in anything from a homemade pie to a text, letting them know you’re thinking of them.

The Myth of Empathy

There’s this unspoken fear that demonstrating empathy, allowing ourselves to “go there” for someone in pain, is going to break us. 

But the opposite is true: when we open our hearts to someone else’s pain, our heart gets stronger, not weaker. Our ability to put ourselves in another’s figurative shoes makes us more powerful, not less.

A Surprising Benefit to Empathy

When we lean into empathy for another’s suffering, we strengthen self-compassion for ourselves. By welcoming the unwelcome in others, we grow more understanding and forgiving of our own imperfections and challenges.

What Matters Most…(It’s NOT What You Think:-)

/ Sheri / Leave a comment
 
If we want to alter the course of our lives to acquire the feeling of what we desire, we must make how we feel matter most. 

*Ms. Pierce is a teacher in my school who cares deeply for our students. You can see it in the way she puts great effort into her history lessons, working long hours to ensure her students are engaged yet well-paced, challenged yet not overwhelmed or frustrated. Many a day, I will leave our school hearing her on the phone with parents, passionate about getting their sons and daughters motivated, organized, and involved in their academic progress. She is also at work before most of the staff, decorating her classroom to reflect whatever historical lesson is next on the syllabus.

Yet I also see another side to Ms. Pierce: she will regularly yell at the children after the last bell rings to end the school day, the muscles in her neck straining, her face flushed with emotion, reminding the students to walk down the stairs, not jump—and to do so in an “orderly fashion.”

Ms. Pierce will often come into my room towards the end of the day and tell me, “I need a drink” and announcing “I’m done–checking out, shutting down, over and out.”

There’s a bit of Ms. Pierce in all of us: wanting the best in this life, giving it our all, and then—at some point—shutting down (or wanting to shut down). We care, oh we care so much and then we exhaust ourselves, feeling like our efforts don’t make a shred of a difference, so why bother? Or we push and push to change something and grow resentful while we simultaneously lean towards self-destructive behaviors.

Everyone wants something on this planet Earth. For some it’s more money, for others it’s better health, a better relationship, a fitter body. Ms. Pierce wants our students to walk downstairs in an orderly fashion each day at 4:05 PM. All of these things we want—whatever these things may be—we want because we believe we will feel better in the having of them. It’s the feeling we are after: The feeling of driving the new car, the feeling of that first kiss, the feeling of the toned arms (and for Ms. Pierce, the feeling of our students walking down those stairs in an orderly fashion).

There’s a famous quote by Dr. Wayne Dyer:

“You cannot always control what goes on outside. But you can always control what goes on inside.”

If we want to alter the course of our lives to acquire the feeling of what we desire, we must make how we feel matter most. Our emotions are on a continuum with love on one end and fear on the other. Each morning we wake up, we have a choice to make our feelings a priority. When we prioritize our own emotional wellness, we are in a better place to help others. 

Ms. Pierce only wants that drink because she has made her well-being a low priority. And no doubt, a little imbibing will help her relax, returning her to a better feeling state (at least, temporarily).

But if Ms. Pierce woke up and decided that her well-being mattered first and foremost, her moment-by-moment choices would alter until she momentum with the feeling she wanted all along. She might decide to go for a walk before heading to work, or she might meditate, enjoy a cup of her favorite coffee or tea while she listened to soothing music. These small changes—motivated by a desire to make her well-being a priority—would create a different law of attraction in her external world. By letting go of altering the children’s behavior, the students would see a more relaxed and happier history teacher. And perhaps, just perhaps, our students wouldn’t feel so eager to stomp down the stairs past her door at the end of the school day.

How you feel matters, so make your inner state a priority. Reading these words now, you can choose to relax your shoulders and smooth your forehead; you can choose to take a deep inhalation and focus on things you find pleasing. The butterfly effect of these small inner changes creates unseen yet impactful, significant consequences to the world around you.

*Name is altered for privacy purposes.