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When my teenager is angry, I just want to make them feel better.

Lori K Walters


I recently wrote about ways parents can stay connected with our young adult children when they feel angry and I received a couple of replies, “But how do I make them feel better?”


Here’s my answer: You don’t.


I know this isn’t the answer you were hoping to hear. You want to know what to say or do to calm them down. You want the magic formula for fixing their problem and returning your house to normal.


I get it. We all crave peace and harmony. But when our kids experience anger, it’s not a quick fix and trying to do so creates more disconnection.


So, let’s delve into that urge ...


Imagine for a moment that you were having a lovely time on a sunny afternoon by the ocean, full of joy and wonder... And then someone told you to stop feeling so happy.


What?!? Why would they interrupt your experience? It’d be so confusing. Why would they stop you from feeling what you’re feeling? You'd be annoyed at them for disconnecting you from your joyful moment.



Trying to make your teenager feel ‘better’ is asking them to disconnect from their own experience.


To them, internally, it might sound like,

     “Stop feeling that."

     "The emotion you’re experiencing isn’t right/ acceptable.”

     “I know better than you what you should be feeling.”

     “I don’t love you as much when you have that emotion.”


Perhaps this sounds dramatic, but let’s remember that the message you intend to send isn’t always what’s received by your kid. You want them to be happy but instead, they feel dismissed or controlled. 


And we all know that this kind of emotional manipulation leads to trouble forming healthily attached adult relationships, seeking inordinate external validation, a constant not-good-enough feeling, difficulty expressing needs, lack of boundaries and anxiousness.



Emotions are part of the human experience; feeling them is essential to maturing and actualizing. Adolescents learn how to feel their emotions be feeling them. They learn how to navigate frustration and fury by navigating them. They find their good ways of expressing strong emotions by practicing expressing them.


Robbing them of their personal experience is not ok.


There are millions of people on the planet right now who never learned to feel their feelings, nor express them appropriately. So many people are stuffing them down or spewing them out in hurtful ways. This is the root of so many conflicts – in families, organizations and nations. So, please, can we give the next generation more confidence to be with all that goes on in their hearts and better skills for expressing it?



Emotions are messengers. Even when they don’t immediately make sense, they help your adolescent learn about themselves, their values and their truths. This is essential learning. Why would you want to steal this from them and “make them feel better”?


I know it can be a powerful urge, like an animal instinct. And my questions to you is, “What might be behind your urge in that moment?”


For some parents, it’s actually themselves they want to make feel better. They are uncomfortable with their child’s big emotions, and they want to stop the discomfort so they can feel safer and return to a harmonious state of being.


Pause here and ask yourself: Do I want them to stop being angry so I can feel better?


     What would you need to be noticing to make this distinction?

     How might your body tell you the difference?

     What changes in your heart when you recognize your own needs separately from theirs?


~


Here’s another consideration: In the phrase, ‘make them feel better,’ the word ‘better’ is embedded with judgements.


Better than what?


What I hear are the old labels of happiness being a ‘good’ emotion and anger being a ‘bad’ one. When we recognize that all emotions bear wisdom for us, we are shifting our collective emotional intelligence. Yes, some are comfortable and some are not. And they are all good because they boost our self-awareness and help us come into greater alignment with our essential selves.


If this sounds like an area for you to explore, I invite you into this practice:


For the next 15 days, each time you witness anger, whether it’s in a colleague, in a movie, in the grocery store or in your family, give your attention to your internal reaction. Write in your journal,

  • What’s the inner dialogue that starts up?

  • Where do you feel discomfort in your body?

  • What emotions arise in you? Fear, indignation, disgust, alarm, hurt, vulnerability, etc.?

  • And what does that feeling urge you to do or say (or not)?


As Dr. Gabor Maté says, “It’s not about feeling better; it’s about getting better at feeling.” When we allow ourselves to be present to our feelings, not only can they move through us, but we can also learn more about ourselves, our needs and our truths. 


~


One more thing about 'make them feel better’: the word ‘make’.  Say it out loud, “But how do I make them feel better?” It sounds like a prayer for control, a desire to force another person to experience certain emotions. That’s not within your power, my dear. Nor is it within your job description as a parent.


It makes sense that parents want their kids to be happy. It’s built into us to want them to be safe and have joyful, fulfilling lives. But wanting them to avoid, shrink or shorten their anger says more about what parents want in a tense moment than what their young adult kids really need.



When they’re feeling anger, the best way to help them is to meet them right where they are - IN the blizzard or volcano of intense frustration and rage.


This requires you to first notice what their anger triggers in you, tend to your needs and then shift into openness. Your role is to be a safe presence without judgements or an agenda to fix things or change their mood. 



Trust me, the more you become present to your own feelings in an anger-filled moment, the more natural it becomes to simply be present to them as they feel. And, as I’ve said, connection happens in the moments.


Our kids are moving toward adulthood, my friend, and we must let them move. Rather than trying to make it all smooth and easy, let’s stand beside them with love and patience as they struggle and scream, as they stuff it down or spew it all over the place and, may it be so, find their ways of experiencing their anger.


So they can go ahead and feel it and express it in good ways as they go out into the world.


Anger is fire, the element of transformation. From wood to heat to embers. From pain to love. I’m envisioning a future in which anger is welcomed for the change it makes possible.




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Lori K Walters

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