In a desperate moment of parenting and motherhood after dinner, I told my six -year -old child, who was in the middle of gold, “Use your words!” He had just started screaming and hitting his eight -year -old sister because she was not sharing a stuffed animal believed to be. Both children freezed for a moment, giving me enough to stop to slow down my fast fast feelings.
If we look back, I realize that I have never explained to my children why the words could help. But the position of feelings in words is how we start naming what is happening inside us, and the name can begin to change the same experience. Sometimes, as the research appears, the words we choose to describe our lives can form our mental health for several months and years to come.
As a psychologist, he spent the best part of two decades, studying stress and flexibility in my country Human Health and Performance Laboratory At Carnegie Mellon University, I was exploring how our feelings of experience could turn. It can help manage hot moments, but also support healing is one of the most difficult moments of life. Research published over the past forty years about expressive disclosure – literally, using your words – especially about stressful life events, shows that it can lead to major health improvements. After writing about a difficult situation, people say Less visits of doctors, low pain, stronger immune functionsAnd better results for circumstances such as Asthma.
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There are some thumb rules that we learned from these studies with adults. First, writing about a difficult life event three or four times in the close caliphate (such as ON Successive daysIt tends to be more effective than publishing the sessions. Second, it appears that the sweet spot for each biblical session is at least 15 minutes; Luxor sessions can even bring in reverse results, Which makes health worse. Third, for those who do not like writing, speaking through one’s feelings also works. In fact, when One study Compared to the hadith and writing, the conversation is presented forward because we can express more in 15 minutes of talking more than writing.
One of the reasons that modern treatment can be very strong is that it helps people put words for their experiences in a safe and organized way. In one of the studies, psychologist Jonathan Adler continued a group of adults who He wrote accounts about themselves Over the period of 12 sessions of psychotherapy. It was found that when the treatment participants began to describe themselves with a greater sense of proxy – seeing themselves as active authors of their lives – their mental health improved. And note that the change in stories came first, followed by improvements in well -being. For parents, this is a reminder that helping children tell their stories with a feeling of choice and authorship, whether around the stadium’s struggle or family step, can sow the seeds of flexibility.
One of the sudden results for me is that translating our feelings into words can transform the feelings themselves. For example, neuroscience studies show that The act of naming the emotional experience (“Anger”) activates the circuits of organizing passion in the prey cortex of the brain. In scientific literature, this process is called “influence on signs”, and it has strong clinical benefits. In one of the studies, the participants with a spider phobia whose feelings were described during the treatment – while sitting next to the childhood – reduced Physiological stress response To spiders one week for the participants who used other strategies, such as distraction.
While taking hot feelings and putting them in words has an effective ability to direct their direct power, expressive disclosure can also reshape our emotional memories. When we narrate difficult experiences, whether in writing or speech, we do not remember simply memory. We pull it again from the long -term memory, reshape it with our words, then return it to the long -term storage as a new memory that has been changed. This process, known as the name Reopening the memoryIt gives us a window to change how this memory is organized. By describing painful or overwhelming events, we not only recover them. We reorganize them. We add the meaning, the emotional context and the decision. In doing this, we can reduce the distress of these memories that lead to making them easier to live with them.
When I was a student student, I saw how strong the words. One year spent reading and coding expressive articles from women who survived breast cancer. What surprised me was How many times have they talked about their feeling of goal, close relationships and personal values. These women were studying their emotional life, reuniting their memories and experiences and reaffirming what they were interested in.
Similar expressive writing programs with children and stems from work by psychologist John Gutman, who presented the approach of paternity and motherhood called Emotional training Two decades ago. A recent research review shows that these new expressive writing programs have Small but meaningful effects When improving the results of emotional well -being among children between the ages of 10 and 18. There are even some evidence that these programs can improve school achievement among children with major emotional problems. Even for young children, the novel and drawing can help understand great feelings, especially when guided by the teacher or the father.
Of course, not every child is ready or able to use their words in the same way. Children with early speech delay or children with nervousness may find a particularly oral expression in emotionally charged moments. For these children, emotional training may include images, physical claims, or joint organization through a quiet presence. It was a laboratory to develop a new Application of mind meditation Parents can help develop these calm presence skills, with some of our primary clinical research that shows that these quiet presence skills Reduces stress biology and It improves social communication. These skills are gradually evolving. The key is flexibility, patience and interviewing your child wherever it is.
“Use your words” is a tool, and like any tool that requires training to use well. If you try to say this in the middle of anger, you know this does not work well. Big feelings often close the child’s ability to think clearly, not to mention speech. In our family, we learned that the most important work often occurs outside those intense moments. My wife and I try to talk to our children when they are calm, and help them think of strong emotions that might have had earlier that day and how they want to respond the next time they feel angry or exhausted. These conversations build emotional vocabulary and give our children a feeling of choice on how to behave.
What can parents do? Try bed or breakfast with your child: “What is the most difficult part of your day (yesterday)?” Gently explore it with them: “What did you feel when that happened?” Parents can also design emotional language by saying something like, “I feel frustrated at the moment, so I will feel breathing.” These small moments can build the emotional vocabulary of the child and can help enhance a new family approach with how we are linked to our emotional life. These techniques can work especially in particular when combined into a daily rhythm, thus becoming the practice of namely a natural part of family life.
Sometimes we see her paying off. Our eight -year -old daughter now announces, “I am very angry!” When you feel frustrated – it is characterized by feeling instead of disposing of it. My six -year -old child is trying new ways to ask his sister to share her games, and sometimes she works. When their words help them get what they want or help to solve a problem, it creates their reward loop. Over time, these small moments of the language are not only related to resolving disputes; They help our children start seeing themselves as actors who are able in their stories, which, as research shows, is the basis for permanent luxury.