Welcome back, families!
I hope you all had a restful and joyful holiday! Here we are, already in 2019! January always feels like a month of gentle touch-downs for me as we all return to our jobs, tasks, routines and school. I hope you are all moving into your schedules softly and one-step-at-a-time!
As many of us are exploring our goals and resolutions for the year, we might be attempting to put our best foot forward these days….trying to leave old habits, emotional baggage and negative thinking behind us. But too often we get the boomerang effect in February and we ask, “what happened?!”.
This whole phenomenon makes me think of the wonderful Pixar film, “Inside Out”, in which the emotions of the main character (Riley) are anthropomorphized into characters and Riley’s brain is laid out like a kind of brain map. The movie begins with Riley’s main emotion character, “Joy”, protecting all of Riley’s memories and attempting to block “Sadness” from coming through. All of her attempts to avoid Sadness fail until she realizes at the end of the movie that memories and experiences can have both Joy and Sadness in them. In fact, Joy realizes that Sadness is necessary in order for Riley to process and learn from her experience.
Giving our emotions and thought patterns their own names can be incredibly useful. By naming an experience as a separate character, we are admitting that it is only a part of us and not all of us. We can get some separation and even some temporary relief by simply naming what we are feeling.
For example, I’ve had clients name their anxiety “the bad neighborhood”. They may chuckle and say, “well, here I am in that bad neighborhood again”. A child or adult can call their self-doubt “Mr. Doubtfire” or their inner critic “The Bully”. I call my inner critics “The Committee” (that’s right - I have a whole table full)! Sometimes a painful experience can shift and become almost playful while doing this! My own children have their own names for different parts of their personalities/feelings and they’ve discovered patterns and tools for managing them.
This is a great topic for some good ol’ fashioned art therapy! The possibilities are limitless! Some children may be invited to create mind-maps similar to Riley’s in “Inside-Out”, or create small drawings of memories or colors for each feeling. The important thing is - we’ll have some fun and keep it playful!
Happy New Year to all of you!
Robin Bates, LMFT