Chapter Seven
Emotional Intelligence
Having
established a framework for family therapy and done some initial assessment, it
is time to introduce, model, and practice a language of feelings to talk about
these issues. It is, after all, the
emotional content that distinguishes function from dysfunction, that drives
thought and behavior, and that disconnects or connects people in
relationship. Here I recall the
psycho-education material from the second session, often replaying my training
presentation for the child or adolescent to illustrate my point. Then, using Daniel Siegel’s hand/brain
demonstration (2003, p. 173) I ask parents and children to hold up a hand as I
describe the parts of the brain and their roles in physiological functioning,
storing pre-conscious emotional memories, and decision making. My hand up flat, pointing to the wrist I
start.
“The wrist represents the brainstem,
the earliest, oldest part of the brain, responsible for involuntary functions
like respiration and temperature, the part that sends our hearts racing and our
skin sweating when we are excited or scared.
Now fold over your thumb like this.
The thumb represents the emotional brain, the limbic brain, also
primitive in development, active before birth, and responsible for storing
memories of early experiences before our conscious awareness. This is the part that remembers the first
time we sat on our bottoms or how it felt to be held and fed, or how it felt
when Mom was stressed out about being pregnant, or how it felt to be left alone
and hungry. Next, fold your fingers over
your thumb. This represents the thinking
brain, the cortex, neo-cortex, and pre-frontal lobes that start forming in
utero but are not finished until about 25 years old. This is the part of the brain that remembers
experiences with words and stories, that learns math and science, that makes
decisions about what to do or not to do, most active after the age of
four. Now these three parts are
connected and communicate with each other, except when they don’t, for example
when we are excited or scared. That’s
when we sometimes ‘lose our minds’ and go into what’s called
fight/flight/freeze mode, when we need to fight back from attack, or run away,
or stay still because we are in danger or think we might be. This is a good thing. For example, if you are driving down the
highway and somebody almost hits your car, your brain tells you there’s a
threat to your life and your body needs to defend itself. The eyes widen to look around, the arms and
legs get tense to drive the car, and the heart and lungs start pumping blood
and oxygen to make everything work faster and stronger. You do not stop to think, ‘That guy probably
just had a bad day,’ no that part of your brain is not on, you need to save
your life. So, you hit the gas, or you
hit the brake, or you stay right where you are.
Then, when the danger is over you begin to think about what to do,
whether you are hurt, whether the car is damaged, whether to call the insurance
company or the police. Your thinking brain
comes back on. The hard part is that for
some people who have experienced scary things, even things they can’t remember,
their brain disconnects and they go into fight/flight/freeze when they are
excited or scared even when they are not in any real danger, but think they
are. It can happen often all day long
like when a car cuts us off in traffic, or a teacher raises her voice, or when
Dad tells us to turn off the X-Box.
Then, when someone talks to us we can’t hear them because that part of
our brain is not on, and it sounds like Charlie Brown’s teacher, ‘Wah, wah,
wah, wah, wah.’ That’s what the teacher
means when he says, “Put your thinking caps on.” That’s why it’s important for
us to know and parents to know when it happens so we can help get our brains
back on. It’s also important to know
that sometimes we overreact because our baby brain remembers when we were alone
or hungry and as if we’re going to die. Because,
babies can die when they are alone or hungry.
It takes our thinking brain to tell us we’re going to be OK. But first the thinking brain has to be
on. And, that’s what we’re going to work
on, getting back to calm, so the parts of our brain can work together.”
This silent visual
then becomes a signal or sign language for when a child or parent
feels regulated and calm or
dysregulated and upset. Time and time
again throughout the process I will ask or the child will volunteer how they
are feeling using the hand gesture, sometimes with closed hand indicating they
are ready to delve deeper into distressing material, or slightly open hand
indicating they need to be nurtured and soothed and it is time to breathe and
play. Similarly, I put my closed hands
together to represent the left and right parts of the brain, how the left brain
is responsible for logical thought and the right brain is responsible for emotional
experiences, and how we are going to help the two sides of the brain work
together.
The
next activity is about developing an emotional vocabulary. I like to start by having parents read their
child a book like Today I Feel Silly and Other Moods That Make My Day by the
actress Jamie Lee Curtis (1998). I
specifically ask the question, “Is it OK to be angry?” The reason is that some parents and people send
children and other adults the message, directly or indirectly, that anger is an
inappropriate or unacceptable emotion.
Nothing could be less helpful. The
message of this children’s book and all other clinical work, reinforced by
therapeutic language and activities, is that all emotions are valid. Identifying, expressing, and managing specific
and multiple emotions are essential to healing.
And, hearing and validating feelings are essential skills to strengthening
relationships including the parent-child relationship. Active or reflective listening does not come
automatically or naturally to some, especially those who have never been on the
receiving end. A game like Candyland can
be a simple start. I call it “Feelings
Candyland” and ask parents and children to play together and sometimes I join
in to normalize feelings and normalize the expression of emotions so that as we
move through difficult experiences we can focus on emotional content. For Feelings Candyland I use the gingerbread
men pieces, a die, but no colored cards.
I ask the child to give a feeling word to each color on the board from
red to green to yellow to purple. I may
offer suggestions to make sure we cover the big ones; happy, sad, angry,
scared. Often adults are stuck with a
limited vocabulary for emotions. A side
benefit, although not the most important one, is that I can determine whether
the child can count and knows colors in addition to feelings. Then, each participant tosses the die, moves
that many spaces, and describes a time when they have that feeling or what
makes them have that feeling based on the assigned colors. We play for a few minutes. I sometimes suggest it for family
activities. Children often ask to return
to the game sometimes with creative sophisticated emotional language.
Another
fun theraplay game is Feelings Tic Tac Toe.
The grid on plain paper has nine emojis each representing an
emotion. The child is encouraged to
place an M&M or fish cracker, or if you want to be healthy a carrot coin,
on each face and tell when they have that feeling or what makes them have that
feeling. The rules are, if they fill up
the card, they get to eat the “game pieces” but they may not feed
themselves. I take a beat here to wait
for the child, and parent, to figure out how this can happen. Often traumatized children feel the need to
take control of everything because they do not trust adults to do so, and
parents consider that an older child should feed themselves and that feeding an
older child seems like coddling them.
However, just like the couple at a wedding who feed each other cake, the
parent feeding the child is not just an important symbol of their nurturing
role but a chance to recreate an early developmental experience. I encourage parents to do it often with food
and bottles, baby bottles, juice boxes, or sports drinks, even for much older
children, and to make it loving and playful.
The same goes for other parent-child activities like reading books, lap
rocking, backrubs, combing hair, hide and seek, and wrapping in blankets, as
long as it does not trigger the child.
Aristotle
provided a good definition of emotional intelligence, “to be angry with the
right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right
purpose, and in the right way.” It is
difficult for adults let alone children.
Scaling emotions is a start. I
start by laying out colored paper each with numbers one through five. Using angry and happy as an example, I act
out examples from the child’s life that would rate anger at level 1, like not
getting ice cream for dessert, to moderate anger, 3, like a friend saying
something mean, to the highest level 5, a family member getting hurt on
purpose. I start quiet with a
disappointed facial expression and no body movement, move up to words, “I’m
upset” with clenched fists, up to a full loud jumping tantrum, “That’s not
right!” Parents and children may
acknowledge that the child’s emotional scale has a default setting of
five. Then I ask the child to
demonstrate using the emotion happy.
Children usually need some guidance from parents to rate the amount of
emotion to match the event. Sometimes
parents are not comfortable with the extreme levels of emotion children may
feel or express in relation to rather serious trauma events like being starved
or sexually abused. Often the level of
emotion children display over rather mundane issues is really about the
traumatic events. Sometimes parents are
not comfortable with any but the most urbane expression of emotion. Culture plays a role here, too, what is
acceptable in different families. This can keep parents disconnected from their
children because they are not able or willing to attune to the child’s emotions,
many times because they have difficulty acknowledging the depth of the child’s
trauma. Certainly, parents may display
extreme emotion when a child is misbehaving.
It takes some coaching to help a parent display extreme emotion over
events that seem past for the parent but are very present for the child. This is what I attempt to model.
This
activity can be used in two other ways.
Having identified several typical life events and acted out the
associated feelings, we then talk about the various places in which emotions
happen. Then, using the 1-5 scale we
talk about in which places different emotional expressions would be acceptable
and safe. For example, “it’s probably
pretty important to stay on a 1 at a restaurant or church, but where would it be
OK to go all the way up to a 5?” The
child or parent may say, “Nowhere.” Most
often I suggest a tall mountain, the beach, or the backyard where others are
not around. Parents will often suggest
the child’s room. The point is there
must be a safe place, both emotionally and physically, for a child to express
extreme emotions, and most beneficially with their parents. Next, I ask the child to stand on the number
and color that represents the level of emotion their parents expect most of the
time, particularly at home. With back
turned toward parents the child will often stand on 1. I send a signal to parents to move the child
to 2 or 3 demonstrating that the parent does not expect the child to be perfect
and will accept high levels of emotion.
The child is often surprised.
Then, I ask the child to stand on the 5, and with some cheering from me
and parents to really get loud. This is
the exact opposite of what parents usually do in trying to shut down an exuberant
display. Sometimes predicting a tantrum
can take the steam right out of it. In
this case, I ask the child to “scale it down” as they continue with an emotion
but with reduced energy. It demonstrates
that with their brain fully engaged, which is usually not the case during tantrums,
and the support and understanding of their parents, a child may have the
capacity at least to regulate themselves.
Parents are often surprised that a fun and exciting experience can lead
to a complete “meltdown” because the child cannot self-regulate. This is an
activity I either reference or return to throughout the therapeutic process.
Because emotional intelligence entails more than verbal expression I often use a collection of small percussion instruments from session to session. I demonstrate how each instrument is played then allow family member to experiment with several. In several different formats, I lead with an instrument playing a specific rhythm and then ask each person in the circle to match the rhythm. Each person takes a turn leading. Then I ask parents and children to play the major emotions; happy, sad, angry, scared. No talking is necessary, the emotion is communicated with rhythm, timing, and volume and heard and matched by the others which is the very definition of attunement. We attune and empathize through the use of non-verbal signals more than with language. To help parents and children communicate with each other without the intrusion of language, I ask them to “speak” to one another using the instruments alone. What results is a back and forth “conversation” the theme of which is usually pretty easy to follow. Then the pair explains what they were “saying” to each other, and more often than not their words match their communicated intentions.
Because emotional intelligence entails more than verbal expression I often use a collection of small percussion instruments from session to session. I demonstrate how each instrument is played then allow family member to experiment with several. In several different formats, I lead with an instrument playing a specific rhythm and then ask each person in the circle to match the rhythm. Each person takes a turn leading. Then I ask parents and children to play the major emotions; happy, sad, angry, scared. No talking is necessary, the emotion is communicated with rhythm, timing, and volume and heard and matched by the others which is the very definition of attunement. We attune and empathize through the use of non-verbal signals more than with language. To help parents and children communicate with each other without the intrusion of language, I ask them to “speak” to one another using the instruments alone. What results is a back and forth “conversation” the theme of which is usually pretty easy to follow. Then the pair explains what they were “saying” to each other, and more often than not their words match their communicated intentions.
Another important
emotion that is difficult for children and adults but which is at the core of
attachment trauma, especially adoption, is sadness. We must develop an understanding and skills
around grief and loss. For this I turn
to children’s books; Horace (Keller, 1991), Rosie’s Family (Rosove, 2001), or
other similar stories to open a conversation about sadness. Then I bring out the puppets to tell sad
stories. Using puppets takes the focus
away from the person and makes expressing sadness safer. Each person in the family chooses a puppet,
we go around and introduce them by made-up names, and I start with my puppet
telling a simple sad story about a classmate breaking my favorite pencil. By turn, each person uses their puppet to
tell a sad story. Almost inevitably, the
stories become sadder and sadder and much more real. If not, I go to my “born in a litter, raised
on a farm, sold to the city, living with strangers” farm animal story that
highlights the themes of separation from parents, siblings, and place of
birth. As parents and therapists, we are
“loss managers”, we have to have a comfort level around grief and loss as if we
are “running the funeral home” and know how to guide children through the process,
specifically by highlighting events and creating rituals that mark deaths and
other transitions. Rituals that include
letters to loved ones, poems, songs, pictures, candles, life books, flowers, food,
and other memorializing means are excellent in-session activities and homework
for families. Throughout therapy we must
be alert to sadness and not dismiss or overlook it. For example, a teenager whose biological
mother would not apologize for abandoning her fell silent. We could have moved on to school, sports, or
other subjects. But noticing the moment
and waiting in silence allowed for 45 minutes of comfort and connection between
child and parent with cathartic tears releasing years of sadness that had come
out in every other way than healing. It was a scene right out of the excellent
movie Inside Out (Disney Pixar, 2015) which illustrates the essential role of
sadness and all emotion in giving color and context to life. Without sadness we could not gauge happiness. Without emotion life would be rather grey and
boring. It is the rainbow of emotion,
both heat and light, that makes us human. Emotions are individual and never wrong. Parents and partners can agree with the
feelings and not with the facts of a specific situation.