Coping with distress?

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I wonder what this picture evokes for you? A lot of you will know this face well… whether it be your own child, your niece/nephew, grandchild or child your work with. Does it produce some discomfort? Do you want to soothe them, do you want to look away?

I use this picture as an example of the incredible challenge of learning how to tolerate another’s distress for the purposes of enabling them to develop their own sense of self and life enhancing skill set. As a sleep deprived parent who has recently spent time teaching a 7 month old how to settle themselves to sleep I feel the emotion of this picture acutely. Sleep training is a great example of an instance where a parent is required to put their own distress of seeing their baby upset to one side for the sake of teaching the child a very important & necessary life skill, sleep 😴
When we rush in to “fix” every time our child (or anyone) is upset we are not giving them the very valuable opportunity of learning how to regulate themselves, how to problem solve, to grow resilience in the face of stress. This starts young! Babies have more capacity than we give them credit for.
I need to preface that I am not advocating for neglect, what I am suggesting is very far from this & potentially requires a whole separate post… but a critical element in all of this is being able to remain calm, warm & connected to the person in distress without trying to fix, change or carry it on their behalf. Another critical element is the question of ‘are they safe?’ If the answer is no, then this post is not applicable.

What do you do when faced with another’s distress?

Your child with tears in their eyes saying that they don’t want to go to school, your colleague coming in late & saying they feel overwhelmed, your friend bursting into tears at your weekly coffee catch up… I could go on but hopefully this helps expand the concept beyond babies.

How can you stay calm, warm & connected but still allow space for the other to rise to meet their own challenge?

Managing our own discomfort in this is hard & will likely require a lot of effort on our part, but I would suggest that it may be the most loving thing we can do.

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