Emotions are not you!

 

The Irish have a wonderful saying, “tá brón orm”, it means: “sadness is on me." I love this so much for many reasons. Firstly, it means that they have separated out the emotion from themselves, there is an understanding here that emotions come and go; they visit us and pass by. This is such a powerful concept. I love teaching this to children during Zen Club. It is very easy for youngsters to feel overwhelmed by emotion and carried along on a tide of powerful feelings. Empowering children to understand that emotions are separate from us and come to 'visit' helps them feel control. It allows children to see that THEY are not the emotion. They are not sad. They are not anger. They are experiencing this emotion and that is valid but the emotion is not who they are. They are still themselves before, during and after the experience. 

Children's eyes often expand when I talk about this with them. They are full of wonder at thinking about emotions in this way. Often, they will have been experiencing strong feelings and emotions and to understand that this is normal and does not change them or make them 'an angry person,' or a 'bad person' for feeling this way is a gift. 

Alongside this, I teach children that emotions can be a powerful signal. Our bodies are wise and full of innate intelligence. If we are experiencing a powerful emotion, this can often be the body's way of signalling to us that something is not quite right or that we need to pay attention to something going on in our lives. Helping children to see emotions in this way, to uncover the why, is also very empowering. Teaching children that their bodies are their friend, their trusted system, helps them to slightly detach from the feelings and consider what the emotions might be trying to tell us. Often, they can then think about why they might feel sad, angry, stressed etc and begin to find solutions. 

These are big concepts and something that lots of us adults struggle with! On the journey to becoming an empowered young person who is increasingly able to self regulate, I find this type of discussion extremely valuable for children.