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Are we born with a ready-made baggage of emotions? Not really. How their palette develops throughout life depends on our personal history. What influences its formation?
“When I’m worried, it doesn’t cost me anything to cry …” “I don’t know how to talk about my feelings. And why? “I am a very calm person, but sometimes – rarely – I can scream at someone terribly, and then I think: what came over me?”
Why are we so different? Why, even in the same circumstances, each of us will always react differently? “I have such a character, I have always been like that,” we usually think. And yet there are doubts that it is exactly as we are at the moment — timid or angry, enthusiastic or withdrawn — that we are born from the mother’s womb.
First emotional experience
“The very first bodily sensations of an infant are emotionally colored,” says developmental psychologist Galina Burmenskaya. It is no coincidence that we say that in life something “touches” us, “hurts” us, because a person receives the primary emotional experience through the body.
“The tactile or taste sensations of an infant can be pleasant, bringing comfort and pleasure, or, on the contrary, painful, frightening,” continues Galina Burmenskaya. “New emotions are imprinted in his memory, gradually adding to those that the child has experienced before.”
But if we all begin emotional development from a single “starting position”, then where do such differences between us come from? The answer is simple: emotions come to us in one way, but how exactly they affect our further development is purely individual. The way in which a child can (or not) accept his emotions, feel them and express them, depends not only on himself.
“A child is not formed by himself, but in interaction with the people who surround him,” emphasizes Galina Burmenskaya. It is relatives that have an unusually strong influence on the emotional development of the child: they serve as an example, but also help him understand what he himself feels.
How to express emotions at home
The relationship that a child will establish with emotions depends primarily on how his parents relate to what they themselves feel. It is very difficult for children of those who are in the power of experiences and do not know how to cope with them.
“Such an explosive experience of emotions, even if they are not directed at the child, the inability to adequately express one’s anger, one’s aggressiveness, constant screaming and irritation are very traumatic for children,” warns Galina Burmenskaya. “It is about children from such affective families that one can hear:“ He only reacts to a cry! ”Being under constant emotional shelling, they very quickly stop responding and learn not to hear.”
And a vicious circle is created: in order to get through to the child, the parents begin to shout even louder …
In other families, on the contrary, emotions are forbidden. Here they don’t talk about what they feel, you can’t admit that you are afraid, you can’t rejoice violently or get angry — it’s indecent. The prohibition may be unspoken, but the child very quickly learns that he must silence any manifestations of his soul. It’s like he’s turning the sound off.
“A child cannot kill his emotions, but, fearing to lose the favor of his parents, he will force them out,” explains Galina Burmenskaya. “However, such psychological defense is unproductive: the repressed problem does not disappear, experiences only accumulate.”
A special case: the emotional mask of the parents. “I don’t understand why I perceive everything in life so tragically,” the grown child will later say. “After all, my father was always so cheerful and relaxed!” But if the constant struggle with depression was actually hiding behind the father’s arousal, it is clear that the child perceived depression, which he unconsciously felt, as a model of behavior.
Whatever the mask behind which the truth of adults hides, it is with it that children identify themselves.
What can parents teach?
If a child depends on the lifestyle of his mother and father, he also depends on the way his parents help him get to know his own emotions.
“A child needs the words of adults to get used to what he feels,” says Galina Burmenskaya. — He himself is still in the power of his feelings, they overwhelm him, but he does not know how to talk about them. The great role of an adult is to teach a child to put emotions into words, to make them truly “his own”. And such help from parents is especially important when the child enters public life.
The first disappointments, the first friendly quarrels, the first insults, the first refusals — this is the emotional everyday life of a child who first entered the circle of his peers in a nursery, kindergarten, school. How many dramas worthy of the pen of Shakespeare, which are played out day after day in the school corridors … and which adults often do not attach importance to!
When a child’s feelings are underestimated
Whatever their personal relationship with emotions in adults, they, without realizing it, become captives of the popular view: the child is regarded as an immature person, who is presented in proportion to his height — small.
Hence everything else: adults underestimate the words of the child, downplay the importance of his emotions: “Just think, it’s a great thing — she will cry and forget!” They question the strength of his attachments: “Well, yes, we changed the nanny, but nothing, he will get used to it …” They believe that the child does not yet understand what is happening around, and therefore cannot feel as strongly as adults.
Think (not only) about the good
Moreover, adults often believe that they protect children if they protect them from strong emotions, for example, hiding the death of someone close, illness, divorce. “And by doing this, they make a mistake, because children always feel the untruth,” says Galina Burmenskaya. “Out of good intentions, wanting to protect, adults, on the contrary, deprive the child of a sense of security: how can you feel safe if parents lie or hush up something terrible?”
In such a situation, the child cannot express his feelings: “If my mother hides this from me, I cannot confess to her that I know about it and that I feel bad about it. After all, if I tell her, she will be upset and maybe even angry. And between the child and his emotions an abyss is formed.
“Of course, it is necessary to talk with the child, given his age,” explains Galina Burmenskaya. “But to cleanse his life of everything unpleasant, sad, tragic means not to let him become a person to whom both joy and sorrow are intended by nature — and this is her great wisdom.”
The child is excited. How to help him?
When children are faced with something unfamiliar, unexpected, or frightening, it is not always easy for parents to find the right words to ease their feelings. How to do it?
Recall: every parent does what he can — no one has a “perfect solution”. What will be said in a difficult situation is both important and unimportant at the same time. Because the most important thing for a child is:
For the words to be spoken. Thanks to this, his sadness will “speak” and move from the status of a crushing “blow” to another, of course, also painful, but which can be overcome.
That a loving adult is ready to listen to him. He recognizes him as a person who is trustworthy and arousing interest. He shares his grief and will always lend his shoulder.
What to say? And to do?
1. Sudden death
Truth is always painful, but never destructive—quite the contrary. If the child is supported, then the situation turns out to be favorable for him in the end. He comes out of it matured, as he is taken seriously. Therefore, it is very important to tell the truth, to give him the right to share grief with adults.
2. A quarrel broke out between the parents
It is important that the child knows that:
It is not his parents who quarrel, but the husband and wife — a couple that was formed in addition to his participation.
He is not the cause of the quarrel, even if it started with a problem that concerns children.
It is not for him to be a judge or a comforter.
Having indicated this, it is important to show that he can express his feelings (anxiety, fear) that the quarrel caused him.
3. He says his friend doesn’t want to be friends with him.
Explain to the child that:
This does not mean that he is not worthy of love.
Whatever he is, he cannot be loved by everyone without exception.
Perhaps he reminds a friend of someone whom he does not like. Or he did something, unwittingly, that his friend did not like.
There are many other children around. Who can he count on in class? What new friend could he make?
4. If he is angry
Important:
Separate anger from the reason that causes it. Emotion is always legal, each of us has the right to «get nervous», even if others do not approve of it.
Show sympathy, sympathize with him and talk with him about what causes anger.
If the anger is caused by the prohibition, this does not prevent you from supporting it: «I understand that this is difficult to accept, but the rule is necessary.» Having said this and making sure that the child is speculating on his anger, you can advise him to show emotions in a different way, for example, with the help of words. Or send him to deal with anger in another room, depriving him of the audience …
To help the child express emotions, one must also prevent him from speculating with them and teach him not to let them overwhelm him.