In the face of emotionally broken children, this “empathy technique” is 10,000 times more effective than comfort!

Most of our parents grew up under the strict requirements of our parents when we were young, even under the stick, let alone “being empathized” and “emotionally accepted”. Therefore, many people’s “empathy ability” is relatively lacking.

Unfortunately, the cultivation of “empathy ability” cannot be achieved overnight. Sometimes, if you can’t even empathize with yourself, how can you empathize with your children?

Today’s article by Guoren Ma provides very practical “empathy words” and “empathy response methods”, hoping to help parents with weak empathy ability to solve their urgent needs. 

What is empathy?

Did you experience this as a child?

When I got a good score in the test and happily “showed it off” to my parents, they said, “What’s so happy about it, whoever did better in the test is not as happy as you are”;

When you were bullied by children outside and cried and looked for your parents, they said, “Cry why you cry, it’s useless, if someone beats you, you won’t fight back, you just know how to cry!”;

When other children come to the house as guests, the adults ask you to give them your favorite toy, but when you are unwilling, they say, “You are too stingy! Be a big brother/sister, let your younger brother and sister be more generous”;

Do you remember how you felt at the time? Is it really becoming “low-key and modest”, “strong”, “atmospheric”, or more angry, aggrieved, sad, sad…

Emotions are rivers, and strong emotions are like floods. When the flood in the river of children’s emotions hits, if parents just try to block it, the flood will only become more violent, and finally “wash out” all obstacles with a tendency to destroy and even destroy the river directly.

What is behind so many children’s “impulsive suicide” in recent years is not impulse, but the last fight after the emotional flood has been blocked for a long time. 

The daily mood swings of a migrant worker

To control the water, blocking is worse than sparse. In the face of children’s emotions, the best way for parents to see, accept and channel them is to empathize.

Empathy is understanding another person’s experience in the world as if you were that person. But at the same time, you always remember that you are still different from him; you just understand the person, not become him.

Empathy also means letting the person you empathize with know that you understand him.

Everyone has the ability to empathize, so they can be infected by the emotions in art, have emotional resonance with another person, and sympathize with the sufferings of the world. 

Many parents are unable to “empathize” with themselves!

Empathy is an important way to soothe a child’s emotions and improve their emotional intelligence. It is to fully see and accept another person’s emotions. Only when a child’s emotions are seen and accepted by their parents will they accept their own emotions and reduce emotional distress.

Many parents have the experience of “accompanying their children to do homework”. When children always make mistakes, many people may feel anger at first, but they feel that “anger is not good, you can’t be angry with children”, so they start to suppress, The result is more and more anger, until it finally explodes. This is the emotional agitation caused by not accepting emotions.

Why is there a “suppressed emotion” sound? Tracing back to the source, it is because many parents did not empathize with their emotions when they were young.

If parents can experience, understand, and accept their children’s emotions from an early age, the children will know that it is okay for me to have anger/sadness/anxiety/depression. Although these emotions are uncomfortable, they can exist. When they grow up and face negative emotions, they will be able to resolve them more actively and calmly, instead of desperately suppressing or denying them.

Of course, empathy is not something that can be cultivated overnight. It requires parents to have the courage to shatter their past selves and let them grow again in an environment of love, acceptance, and permission. But empathy also has shortcuts and techniques to learn.

As a teacher and psychologist, I don’t want to speak of empathy as a technique, but for most parents who have no professional training and who have never experienced empathy growing up, a quick boost Empathy is difficult for strong people.

Therefore, I introduce an “empathy talk” to help parents and friends solve their urgent needs. The reason why it is called “talk” is because it only contains the “skin” of empathy, but not the “bone” of empathy.

True empathy is “experiencing the other person’s inner world,” which is to be the other person. That is to say, only when parents become children can they experience what their children are experiencing and understand why children have such emotional experiences and behaviors.

For example, a 4-year-old child starts crying as soon as he enters the supermarket. Why? Is the child tricking or trying to eat candy? Only when parents really squat down and observe the supermarket from the child’s perspective can they possibly find out why the child is crying.


empathy talk,

A technology that can solve urgent needs!

The advantage is that you can get started quickly. As long as you pay more attention and practice diligently, parents can quickly learn and see the effect.

Its limitations are also obvious. Children are the most sensitive to everything about their parents, especially when parents are inconsistent inside and outside, they can always be keenly aware of the parents’ true inner thoughts and feelings. 

Therefore, if parents often use words and ignore the practice of true “empathy”, sooner or later children will discover the “hypocrisy” of parents’ words and the true feelings of inner accusation, disgust, and boredom, and eventually lose their trust in parents.

With so much foreshadowing, I just hope that parents can use “empathy words” with caution. Next, let’s take a look at how to use empathy.

Specifically, empathy has three parts:

· Feeling, that is, expressing the child’s emotions and thoughts as observed or understood;

· Understanding, expressing an understanding of the nature of the event or problem that caused the child’s emotions;

 Guidance, that is, giving the child practical behavioral guidance and listening to the child’s feedback. 

These three parts are progressive, expressing feelings is the foundation and the most important part.

Only after fully understanding the child’s feelings, expressing them, and getting the child’s response, can the emotions be appeased, the activation of the emotional brain decreases, rational and useful understanding and guiding information can be transmitted to the rational brain, and the child can calm down. Consider and accept parental advice.
Let’s imagine such a scenario: 

Coming home from get off work one day, you find your partner sitting in the living room angrily, and the child stays in the room and refuses to come out. You walked in, and the child said dejectedly: “Dad/Mum always forces me to do things I don’t want to do, and he scolds me if I don’t do it.”

How do you respond then?

Some parents may respond like this:

  • Why does TA force you to do these things, don’t you know?
  •  TA is for your own good, you should understand him;

·You are not a child anymore, you can persuade TA.

Are these words very familiar, have they been said inadvertently? How do you think children will feel when they hear these words?

These responses are all very typical of no empathy. Not only can it not appease the child’s emotions, but it will also add fuel to the fire, intensify the conflict, and make the child more emotional. Looking at it in detail, the first type of response is “questioning”, with accusations and judgments; the second type is with high demands; the third type is “suggestion”, but it is not constructive.

So what does an empathetic response look like? 

I provide several here, you can also try to bring your child to feel the emotional experience brought by each response method, and find the most comfortable and most convenient way.

  •  Feelings only: “You feel angry and frustrated because they keep pushing you to do things.”
  • Feeling + Understanding: “Your thoughts don’t seem to be respected by them, so you feel angry and frustrated, and you want them to respect your wishes.”

· Feeling + Understanding + Guidance: “Your thoughts don’t seem to be respected by TA, so you feel angry and frustrated. You want TA to respect your wishes. You can actually express your feelings and thoughts to Dad.”

This kind of progress is made layer by layer, so that the child’s emotions can be seen and accepted, and then put yourself in the child’s point of view to help him find a way. Even if the parent’s advice may not be helpful, the child will feel much better at the moment.

This kind of empathy applies not only between parents and children, but also between husband and wife, friends and subordinates. Parents can first practice dialogue with their partners, on the one hand to enhance the relationship between husband and wife, and on the other hand to become proficient in technology. When the technology is proficient, it can be easily used on children.

However, I still have to emphasize that “skills” can only deal with the children’s temporary emotions. If they want to truly improve their children’s emotional management ability, so that children can have high emotional intelligence and a more self-consistent inner world, parents still need to let go of their bodies, open their minds and bodies, and Unconditional attention, acceptance and love for children can truly empathize with children, and help children develop emotional feelings, recognition, acceptance and management capabilities in a subtle way, and improve children’s emotional intelligence.


sympathetic response,

Be a mirror of your child’s emotions!

In addition to empathy words, let me talk about empathy responses.

Empathic response means that through a series of feedback, let the child know that you are not critical, pay attention to his physical feelings and emotional fluctuations, and feed back these small, imperceptible reactions or changes to the child to enhance the child’s understanding of the situation. The ability to perceive one’s own emotions.

Empathic responses can allow parents to become a mirror of their children, allowing children to accurately understand what emotions they are experiencing, how they react internally and externally, and how to understand and respond to such emotions.

 1So, how can you improve your child’s ability to respond empathically? You can start from these aspects:

Non-verbal information refers to all information that is not conveyed through language in communication, including facial expressions, voice intonation, body movements and so on. 

Non-verbal information is an important part of emotional expression, and it is also an important clue for parents to perceive and feedback their children’s emotions. Parents should practice to observe their children’s expressions and movements attentively, be very sensitive to changes in their children’s voice and intonation, and then use accurate language to feed back this information to their children. for example:

Child: I was fine at school today.

Parent: Well, I saw that your expression was a little depressed, and your tone was relatively low. I feel that you may have had a bad experience today. Can you tell me about it?

 2、After responding in this way, the child may face his frustrations and frustrations more calmly, and open the chat box to communicate with the parents.对更深层次情感的反馈 

This requires parents to have a very keen emotional awareness and be able to see the core emotions below the surface emotions.

Pay attention to the emotional dislocation when you communicate with your child – that is, the child is describing his emotional feelings, and you have another emotional feeling, which may be that you and the child’s core emotions are resonating, and the child may still be Not aware of your core emotions. for example:

Child: I’m so pissed! I didn’t break the bowl, but grandma didn’t listen to my explanation at all.

Parent: Being criticized by grandma, I can feel your anger. At the same time, I think I still feel wronged by your words, thinking that grandma doesn’t believe you, and it hurts you very much.

After such a response, the child will gradually realize that what he really wants is actually the understanding and trust of his grandmother.

In the case of consistent communication, our verbal and non-verbal messages are consistent, laughing when we are happy and crying when we are sad. But in the process of growing up, if children’s emotional feelings are often denied by others, especially their parents, then they have learned to suppress and disguise their emotions. For example, if the mother does not like the child to cry, she gradually learns to laugh sadly.

Often, this conflict is caused by a child struggling or trapped in difficulties. If parents are keenly aware of their children’s conflicting information, feed it back to their children, and guide their children to further explore the cause of the conflict, the children may be freed from the predicament instead of going around in it all the time. 

Visualizing emotions is to visualize the child’s language or feelings into a picture to enhance the child’s understanding of emotions.

The development of a child’s thinking is a process of developing from figurative to abstract. For young children, replacing abstract truths with figurative pictures can help children understand more clearly what they are experiencing. In addition, the visualization of abstract emotions can mobilize the right brain of children and activate more resources to help children process emotions. for example:

Child: … (puckering his lips, not speaking)

Parent: When I saw your current state, what I imagined was that you were surrounded by teachers and classmates, and they were all saying that you did something wrong. You want to explain, but you feel like you can’t say or do anything, so you’re helpless and angry.

This method is similar to figuration, except that instead of using the child’s real experience, parents use metaphors to present some complex or indescribable emotional experiences. For example, comparing emotions to rivers allows people to “see” and understand abstract emotions.

Likewise, a parent can use objects creatively to analogize his emotional experience. for example:

Child: Dad, I am so sad.

Parent: Do you feel like a stone is pressing on you, making you very tired and in pain, and you can’t breathe? Then let’s see how the stone came to be, and then figure out a way to get it away.

 6、运用作品来回应 

Parents can also creatively use fairy tales, movies, books or picture books to reflect their children’s emotions. This not only allows children to have a strong interest in exploring and discussing, but also can be used to discuss some deep or embarrassing emotions and scenes that are inconvenient to talk to children directly, or that children are unwilling to talk about. for example:

Child: Me and the boy at the same table are just good friends, we are nothing.

Parent: Your experience reminds me of the two protagonists in the TV series “Little Joy”. They are neighbors, classmates, and good friends. Although they are a boy and a girl, the friendship between them is very beautiful and precious. They are also very calm and cherish each other. This kind of friendship can feel warm and precious.

Parents are children’s first and most important teachers, and children are naturally curious about everything about their parents. Therefore, if parents can reveal their similar experiences with their children during communication to express your understanding of his situation and feelings, the children will feel that the parents truly understand their feelings and are on their side.

More importantly, through self-exposure, parents can also euphemistically pass on their own experience and wisdom to their children, so that children know that these emotions are normal and can be successfully dealt with. for example:

Kid: I’m really sad about this game, I’ve worked so hard, I’m practicing every day, but I still lose.

Parent: Did you know? I lost once when I was your age, and I felt so disappointed and sad, sad for days. I struggled to get out.

Well, the above is my sharing on “empathy”. Finally, I want to emphasize again: true empathy requires parents to cultivate internal skills. Only when parents can “empathize” with themselves can they truly see and accept their children’s emotions.

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