Learn to Surf

Today I want to talk about the one life changing thing you can do for yourself and your child. Learn to surf. Surf your feelings, that is.

From childhood on, most of us have successfully developed a wide range of arsenal to help us avoid experiencing painful, difficult, negative feelings. We over eat, we obsessively shop, we become addicted to alcohol/drugs/sex/social media/you name it. We will do almost anything to numb the pain of our "difficult" emotions.

We are taught some version of "look on the bright side", practice gratitude for what you have, remember others are in worse situations.

What about when it comes to our kids' emotional pain? 10x the above. When they experience pain we will pretty much contort ourselves into a pretzel to take it away from them, fix it, distract them, and then in the tradition of our family and culture, we teach them what we were taught: look on the bright side, others have it worse, be thankful etc etc.

How has this been working out for us all? Let me tell you, not so great.

When a child is taught to distract from difficult feelings, or to "look on the bright side", what we are effectively teaching them is how to become masters at numbing pain, which may later lead to addiction issues, low self worth, and an actual split from their true selves. We are helping them create a false, outer shell. A shell that puts on a smile when things are down, a shell that looks to the outside world for a "fix", a distraction, anything to help take away the pain they are feeling on the inside.

Now, don't get me wrong: there is true value in understanding perspective, in seeing the good in a seemingly bad situation, in having a positive outlook on life. The problem is that we tend to jump to that point way too fast. Before feelings that we consider negative or difficult have been processed, acknowledged, validated, felt. We want to bypass the uncomfortable bits and just get to the part where we can move on. Unfortunately, that's not how this works.

What can we do instead? Learn to surf.

Feelings are like waves, I'm sure you've heard this before. They rise and they fall. When we are taught to enter the present moment, accept the surge of feelings and rest assured that we are strong enough emotionally to handle it, we start learning to surf the waves. We start understanding that feelings move through us, we learn how to flow with their movement, we learn not to be afraid of the Tsunami surge, and we learn that no matter how devastating and suffocating it may feel in the moment - the wave will eventually subside, and as all waves do, it will also come again, and we will have to surf it once more. THIS is how you build emotional resilience.

Why is it that we will desperately do anything to "fix" our children's pain? It is because we ourselves have not learned to surf the waves of our own feelings. We have not learned to "sit" with a feeling and let it wash over us. We have no trust in ourselves that we can handle emotional pain, so how are we to teach our kids how to handle it? When we witness our kids' emotional despair we get triggered and feel our own emotional despair and helplessness.

How empowering would it be for a child if we could just tell them that it's ok to feel emotional pain. That we don't have to fix it, or change it. That we can sit in it together until it passes. When it does pass, we can open up a discussion about how good things may come from what seems like a bad situation, or about how fortunate we are to have the things we do have. However, in the moment of pain and suffering - can we sit still, can we be in the eye of the storm, can we be truly present, can we trust that we and our children have the emotional resilience to get through this pain, can we learn to surf?