Teaching My Kids to Express Emotions I Don’t Want To Feel

The simultaneous learning of a mother and her sons.

Photo by Christian Erfurt on Unsplash

Early in my mothering days, I was aware of wanting to give my sons language to express emotions, especially a range of emotions.

Some of this was informed by what I knew about how boys can be socialized at early ages with messages to “man up,” “suck it up,” and “rub some dirt on it” (“It” being pain, sadness, weakness, disappointment, vulnerability, fear, and anxiety to name just a few).

This, however, was mostly a front.

I was more concerned about my own limited emotional range and wanted my boys to be able to understand and feel their inner worlds more adeptly than me.

Although I certainly felt and expressed a range of emotions as a child, over time I settled into two primary emotions — elation and anger.

Anger, My Default Emotion

Anger has been my default emotion instead of, say, grief, or disappointment. I would prefer to avoid those. Like the plague. Sure, they pop up from time to time but I am quick to wrap them up and tuck them behind anger.

This was not always a conscious awareness. But throughout my adult life, I have become more and more aware of how comfortable I am with anger, and how afraid I am of other emotions, like sadness or fear. If these begin to rear their ugly heads, I panic, afraid they will overtake me and I won’t survive.

This was never more striking to me than when my dear friend lost her years-long battle with brain cancer. I first experienced numbness that quickly turned to anger. I was angry with her. I knew this was not reasonable.

It was problematic in fact. But I couldn’t seem to get around it. I eventually shed some tears, tears I quickly swallowed.

The grief was too painful, too all-consuming, too…just too much.

Anger was more familiar.

And we humans cling to what is familiar.

Although I understood, intellectually, that grief and sadness were important responses to the death of a close friend, I was too afraid to go there.

So, I got a tattoo. Naturally.

There was something about getting a tattoo, the marking and the pain of it, that harkened to stories of people, often girls and women, who cut themselves to relieve the pressure of pain not expressed. It was a tangible way to try and access something I couldn’t get to.

It was just easier to be angry. Less scary.

Well, less scary to me anyway.

Anger isn’t so great for people near me.

Anger and Marriage

Early on in my marriage, my husband and I had a pivotal conversation wherein one of my moments of seething anger I asked if he would move towards me and hug me. This was not what either of us expected.

Deep down I was actually feeling sadness and fear but the vulnerability of expressing those emotions was too great.

But somehow, in this one moment, I was able to squeak out a seemingly crazy request.

Through clenched teeth, the sadness trying to break through, I asked, “Could I please have a hug?” I was acknowledging this seeming contradiction. “Yes, I am angry and hostile, but would you come into this space and be with me?

Hold me?”

Based on the dance of issues my husband and I were having (and continue to have because apparently, marriage often uncovers deep-seated patterns that ebb and flow ad infinitum), there was nothing in his own inner world that signaled it was safe to move towards an angry woman. He was protecting himself from an emotional attack.

These are fun dynamics.

I was masking my vulnerability and sadness with anger and hostility so I wouldn’t be overtaken by other, truer emotions. My husband was masking his vulnerability and fear with stoic withdrawal so he wouldn’t be overtaken by my anger.

It was helpful that I was already familiar with the powerful work of the Drs. Gottman highlighting the relational destruction that can occur when these unchecked forces play out in a marriage. They have done extensive work discussing the “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Criticism, Defensiveness, Stonewalling and Contempt.”

It is important and exhausting work.

It is also a much slower process than I like. But I am committed to it because I am experiencing small tastes of relief and freedom when I feel the more accurate emotions.

So, I am in process, trying to understand how to access true emotions in healthy and valuable ways while raising two boys who I want to have a better, and earlier, grasp on this than I did.

Teaching My Boys What I’m Learning Myself

I find this one of the great cosmic jokes of parenting, that I am both learning life lessons like this while simultaneously teaching my children the exact same lessons. This is particularly exasperating for me because I have such a warped idea of how my human development should go.

In my ideal fantasy, I would do the work required to be a complete, healthy, and functional adult who is generally content with herself. Then, I would have children and impart my wisdom to them.

Apparently, the human experience does not work this way. We, as parents, are simultaneously growing and evolving while our children are doing the same.

In fact, I understand through many other stories, that this might be a best-case scenario, being a parent committed to personal growth while parenting.

So, I am talking with my sons, encouraging them to identify, access, and express a range of emotions and I am learning all of this as well.

We are learning together.

And here is one byproduct of this experience: empathy for my boys. Empathy is a powerful tool in parenting.

When my son is showing anger, or being aloof or smug, I listen for him and quietly assess the possibility that there might be other emotions behind that. I pay attention to my suspicions that he might be disappointed or frustrated. And because I am aware of the challenges in this emotional dance, I can turn towards him with empathy in a spirit of “I get it. I feel this tension too.”

This is not to make this about me and project my own experience onto him (which I am quite good at when I’m not paying attention) but to listen for him with a wide-open spirit that extends understanding to him.

In this posture, I am less apt to tell him to calm down or, my favorite, yell at him to stop being so hostile, and I’m more apt to ask, “what are you feeling?” Perhaps I might even gently offer additional identifying words, “That is very frustrating.”

Containment is also a key feature in my personal work while parenting. While I am on this journey of self-examination, the process can be messy.

And I work to contain some of this messiness from my children. Not in a “I need to be a perfect mother” sort of way (although there is definitely that temptation) but rather as an important understanding that some of this is my own work and I want to avoid intermingling my own shit with theirs.

My personal preference (or another wild fantasy of mine) is that I do my self-work in a vacuum-sealed bag where none of the contents leak out onto the people I love.

It appears, however, that my bag is leaky.

Sigh.

So, for now, it seems I will continue having a lot of repeat conversations with my children that go like this. “I was feeling really angry. It’s about my stuff I’m experiencing. I’m sorry for yelling at you and putting it on you. Will you forgive me?”

Choosing the Harder Road

It seems like it would be much easier to just keep my own experience locked away, saved for private introspection, and separately go about teaching my boys a healthier version of emotional expression.

More of a “do as I say not as I do” approach.

But I don’t want to choose the easier road.

So, I am dedicated to dismantling my inner-world fantasies, continuing to learn with my boys, hoping that I’m not just teaching them more emotional options, but also helping them be okay with life as a process.

And by them, I mean me.