I’m mad! So I yell at you, punch the wall, storm off, stomp my feet, shove the chair, and slam the bedroom door! I don’t care that you don’t like it! I don’t care that you now feel bad. In fact, I’m going to wait in my room until you come and apologize to me! Who am I?
I'm a 2 year old toddler throwing a fit, or a teenager dealing with hormones, social anxiety, and overwhelming schoolwork, or a full-grown adult covert narcissist.
How do you handle the situation?
For the 2 year old, you parent them. You take away their favorite toy, have them take a time out, and let them know that this behavior is not okay. You talk with them about emotions. Help them to learn how to handle being angry, and tell them that you love them.
For the teenager, you probably ground them. Take away their phone and the car, can’t spend time with their friends. Cancel their fun events. And encourage them to make amends. You talk with them about how their behaviors affect those around them, trying to help them to see outside of themselves. And you try to connect with them and you tell them that you love them.
For the adult covert narcissist, you tiptoe around them. Figure out what set them off and add that to your checklist of things to make sure never happen again. After countless attempts of trying to connect with them, resulting only in circular conversations, you instead wait for this behavior to disappear, for the abuse amnesia to set in, and you both pretend that it never happened.
The problem is this behavior is the same from a 2 year old, to a teenager, to a full-grown adult. As such, it is understandable from a toddler, expected from a teenager, and shocking from an adult.
What is Emotional Regulation?
When asked what is emotional regulation and how do you teach it to your children, let’s start by identifying what it is not.
It is not spilling your emotions all over the other person
It is not when someone is experiencing negative emotions and thus treats the people around them with sharpness, blame, rage, entitled anger, yelling, slamming doors, and breaking things. This is like kicking the dog because you are mad.
It’s not, “I’m mad, so I can do whatever I want. You better get out of my way.”
This is entitlement. While everyone does have a right to get angry at times, this does not give you the right to stomp all over everyone else’s feelings, to behave like a 2 year old or a hormonal teenager.
Emotional regulation also is not the sulking victim mode. Being cold and distant, using the silent treatment. Sulking around, dropping self-care, disassociating, addictions. Being defensive and hypersensitive. This also leads to the people around you walking on eggshells to keep you happy. Going out of their way to meet your needs and expectations to avoid the painfulness of your cold and harsh attitude.
So what does healthy emotional regulation actually look like?
Let’s look at it first in you and then you can work on teaching this to your children. You cannot teach this to your children if you don’t know how to do it yourself. You have to put your own oxygen mask on first and then help you child.
You may have heard of the saying “Do as I say, not as I do.” That really doesn’t work in parenting. You can’t tell them to spend less time on electronics, while your nose is in your phone all the time. They will do as you do, not as you say. You can’t tell them to treat others with respect while you walk all over people and treat them with disdain. This won’t help your kids to learn courtesy and respect.
You can say whatever you want. Your words mean nothing if you aren’t listening to them yourself. Don’t try to teach emotional regulation to your kids while you are emotionally dysregulated. So let’s start with you!
Identify your emotions
It starts with learning to identify your own emotions and admit them to yourself. Give yourself the permission to be human! Use the emotions wheel. Work on understanding how you are feeling. Don’t just ignore the chemistry that is going on inside of you. Instead, work with it and make peace with it.
Say things like, “I am overwhelmed today. Life feels heavy, scary, uncertain. This feels horrible to me. I really just want to take a break from the weight of it.”
Or “I feel really optimistic today. I am hopeful for what is coming, eager and motivated to move forward. This feels good to me.”
Everyday or most days write down how you are feeling in 2-3 sentences. Get used to acknowledging your feelings. Start verbalizing them. Tell them to a few trusted friends or family members.
Now, Help Your children
Help them to do these same things, especially after you have a little practice at it. Encourage them to write them down in a couple of sentences of their own. Give your kids an emotions pillow, keychain, or poster. Talk through all the different emotions on it. Get them a journal to use. Encourage them to write about their own feelings too. Identifying the emotions and learning to read them is a starting point. Now what do we do with them?
Express your Emotions
Learning to express your emotions in a healthy way is extremely important, both for you and those around you. What does it mean to express your emotions? Let’s begin again by looking at what it is not.
Not expressing your emotions is not emotional regulation. There is a misconception here and I want to address it here. Emotional regulation doesn’t mean don’t ever be emotional. We seem to put this expectation on ourselves. We over-regulate, putting a huge cap on our own emotions, shoving everything inside and bottling it all up.
In fact, we often praise people for being able to stay silent and controlled, swallowing their feelings, remaining stoic. They are so mature and capable. It’s like their feelings don’t exist.
This isn’t healthy and it isn’t sustainable. You become like a psychological grenade, just waiting to explode or implode. This can manifest as either or both physical issues and mental struggles.
Many victims of covert narcissistic abuse think that they are managing the situation really well by keeping their thoughts and feelings to themselves. Swallowing their own feelings, they stay silent. Anything else is too risky. Yes, this is a timebomb waiting to go off. And it doesn’t do our kids any favors.
Exercise for Emotional Expression
So how do we express our emotions in healthy ways? Write down each of the main emotions, happy, sad, angry, fearful. Under each one, write a few ways to express that emotion.
Happy
Sing and dance
Go for a walk
Call a friend
Sad
Curl up in bed with a stuffed animal
Hold you dog or cat
Have a good cry
Angry
Go outside and let out a scream
Hit your pillow or a workout bag
Go for a run
Spend time alone
Fearful
Call a friend and tell them about your fear
Listen to comforting music
Pray or meditate
As you get better at this, start including the more refined emotions, such as anxious, busy, vulnerable, or distant. Do this same activity with your kid. Help them make their own list. It can and should be different from yours. There are no right or wrong answers here. Learning to express your own emotions is an individual journey. Even for our young ones. Encourage them to be creative.
Healthy Expression of your emotions
Healthy expression of your emotions does not always come out calm and peaceful. It isn’t always controlled and mature. Sometimes it needs to be explosive and seemingly out of control. This is healthy, but must be done in a way that doesn’t stomp all over those around us. For example, you may have a strong emotional reaction to your child not being ready to walk out the door on time. You are so frustrated with this repeated offense, and you just want to get moving. You don’t start screaming at them, threatening them, grabbing them. You might tell them to meet you in the car, walk out ahead of them, get in the car, and let out a frustrated scream alone. You aren’t losing your mind. You aren’t going crazy. It is okay for you to have an emotional response to the situation. You don’t have to be stoic and unreactive, showing extreme patience, chasing away your own feelings. Instead, acknowledge how you feel, name it, express it, feel it and process it.
There is nothing easy about this walk, especially when you are in a narcissistic relationship. But you can do this! It gets easier too, the more you do it. Especially when you begin to see and feel the benefits. Reconnecting your head and heart back together is a significant part of the recovery from cognitive dissonance. Your heart already has its feelings. Help your mind to get on board with it. I wish you so much peace on your journey of healing.