When I was a kid, I would always get in trouble for getting upset. No one ever wanted to know why I was upset. They just wanted me to shut the fuck up and I often had a hard time doing so. I really wish things would have been handled the way you describe. My siblings didn’t have the same problems as me in this way so it has always made me feel alone in feeling what I feel. Now as an adult, I never know if what I’m feeling is real and valid… usually I think it isn’t.
I don’t think it’s tangentially related? You have effectively contrasted the Right Thing To Do comment with your experience of the Wrong Thing To Do as well as its terrible, lifelong impact.
I too had that flavor of (let’s say unkind) upbringing and now I devote every waking moment to tearing that garbage out of me and installing something more like what u/moakley described
Thanks for helping to validate my comment haha. I do appreciate it.
Is there anything specific you’ve done and would recommend to help swing in the other direction like you’ve stated?
Was curious as to what you might have found helpful. I had tried the beginnings of CBT in the past, but it just makes me feel bad and frustrated. I have always been taught that my thoughts and feelings are wrong, and that’s effectively the core of CBT. I don’t like it because it just propagates how everything I think and feel is invalid. Yet it’s the “trendy” thing to do nowadays so every therapist and their mother uses it as their modality.
Interestingly though I don’t think that this issue necessarily stems from deliberately toxic parents. My mom did the best she could and is very loving and nurturing but I was just too much for her to know how to deal with in this way.
CBT is not supposed to teach that your thoughts or feelings are ‘wrong’ just that they can be harmful or unhelpful, and give you strategies to move past them when thats the case. Thats what emotional regulation is, and what ideal parents would teach chldren. Its perfectly valid to have a negative emotion, but not all responses to it are appropriate, and there’s no point in getting stuck on a negative emotion jist because it’s ‘valid’ especially if that can be harmful to yourself or others. Its fine to feel sad or angry, but its not healthy to want to stay that way. Youre suplosed to recognize why you’re sad and angry, take steps to fix it if you can, and move past it.
I think every generation just tries to do better than the previous one. I don’t know if I really got in trouble for my “big feelings” growing up, but I was often made to feel like my emotions were silly or too strong for a given situation. It got to the point where when something genuinely bad happens I almost revel in it, like I crave authenticity so much that I look forward to “legitimate” pain.
So I try to keep that in mind. When one of my kids cries about something silly, we have a discussion about whether it’s a big thing or a little thing. Sometimes I’m strategically dismissive, because they need to have a little thick skin, but if that doesn’t work then we go into feeling sharing mode.
Then we make a distinction between what we’re feeling (which is always legitimate, no matter what), and what we do about it. They can still get in trouble for bad behavior, but then we try to give them the language to express their emotions in a healthy way.
And if it’s just a genuine emotional breakdown, whatever the cause, I remember back to when I did that as a kid and was met with a cold response, and I stop what I’m doing and hold them until they feel better.
When I was a kid, I would always get in trouble for getting upset. No one ever wanted to know why I was upset. They just wanted me to shut the fuck up and I often had a hard time doing so. I really wish things would have been handled the way you describe. My siblings didn’t have the same problems as me in this way so it has always made me feel alone in feeling what I feel. Now as an adult, I never know if what I’m feeling is real and valid… usually I think it isn’t.
Anyway sorry that was only tangentially related.
I don’t think it’s tangentially related? You have effectively contrasted the Right Thing To Do comment with your experience of the Wrong Thing To Do as well as its terrible, lifelong impact.
I too had that flavor of (let’s say unkind) upbringing and now I devote every waking moment to tearing that garbage out of me and installing something more like what u/moakley described
Thanks for helping to validate my comment haha. I do appreciate it.
Is there anything specific you’ve done and would recommend to help swing in the other direction like you’ve stated?
Was curious as to what you might have found helpful. I had tried the beginnings of CBT in the past, but it just makes me feel bad and frustrated. I have always been taught that my thoughts and feelings are wrong, and that’s effectively the core of CBT. I don’t like it because it just propagates how everything I think and feel is invalid. Yet it’s the “trendy” thing to do nowadays so every therapist and their mother uses it as their modality.
Interestingly though I don’t think that this issue necessarily stems from deliberately toxic parents. My mom did the best she could and is very loving and nurturing but I was just too much for her to know how to deal with in this way.
CBT is not supposed to teach that your thoughts or feelings are ‘wrong’ just that they can be harmful or unhelpful, and give you strategies to move past them when thats the case. Thats what emotional regulation is, and what ideal parents would teach chldren. Its perfectly valid to have a negative emotion, but not all responses to it are appropriate, and there’s no point in getting stuck on a negative emotion jist because it’s ‘valid’ especially if that can be harmful to yourself or others. Its fine to feel sad or angry, but its not healthy to want to stay that way. Youre suplosed to recognize why you’re sad and angry, take steps to fix it if you can, and move past it.
Not really a tangent. This stuff is important.
I think every generation just tries to do better than the previous one. I don’t know if I really got in trouble for my “big feelings” growing up, but I was often made to feel like my emotions were silly or too strong for a given situation. It got to the point where when something genuinely bad happens I almost revel in it, like I crave authenticity so much that I look forward to “legitimate” pain.
So I try to keep that in mind. When one of my kids cries about something silly, we have a discussion about whether it’s a big thing or a little thing. Sometimes I’m strategically dismissive, because they need to have a little thick skin, but if that doesn’t work then we go into feeling sharing mode.
Then we make a distinction between what we’re feeling (which is always legitimate, no matter what), and what we do about it. They can still get in trouble for bad behavior, but then we try to give them the language to express their emotions in a healthy way.
And if it’s just a genuine emotional breakdown, whatever the cause, I remember back to when I did that as a kid and was met with a cold response, and I stop what I’m doing and hold them until they feel better.