This is something that keeps coming up in my sessions with parents and it is DEFINITELY something that I have found to be the case with my own children:
When our child is going through a particularly tough patch with anxiety or emotion regulation, it puts us in a bad place too. Of course it does! We care about our children, we want them to be ok, and it hurts us to see them hurting.
But more than that, we are humans, which means that our children's survival instinct is, as it should be, to signal us to help them when they are distressed. And our brains are hardwired to respond to their distress.
Here's the challenge though: in those moments when our child is distressed, or anxious, or dysregulated, if we ourselves are also feeling like this, what we are actually doing is signalling back to them that
something unsafe is happening
something isn't right
And this can in turn reinforce their feelings and basically make them feel worse.
If you picture it as a feedback loop, like the picture, what is happening is that their emotions are "down regulating" ours, which is then looping right back round to theirs, and then back to us.
What we want to try and do is say "no thanks" to their emotions, and instead project our calm, non-emergency like feelings towards them instead.
Is it easy?
ABSOLUTELY NOT.
But it's worth putting really conscious effort into staying a calm presence, rather than dashing to relieve them.
I found that this immediately helped my daughter through a tricky patch.
If we stop seeing their feelings as something they need to be rescued from, then we can project our calm instead, and show them that they will be ok.
Give it a try, by using phrases like:
"I see that you are finding this difficult. I am here and I know you will be ok."
"It's ok for you to feel this way."
"We have time for you to feel this way and let it out."
"I'm here with you."
And see how your calm presence regulates them.
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