FAMILY MATTERS

Insight:

An Essential Inner Skill for Parents and Kids

As we've discussed in recent columns, grown-ups and kids alike need inner skills as well as outer ones -- and the essential inner skills are self-awareness, letting go, insight, taking in positive experiences, and choosing well.

How the Inner Skills Can Help

In order to see some of the ways these skills could be really helpful, the last column applied them to a mother trying to get dinner together while her toddler and preschooler race around, and then her husband calls to say he'll be getting home an hour late. Naturally enough, this mom is primed to overreact to her husband's call by:

A stressful day with young children

Being depleted in her body from her pregnancies and all the stresses since

Her personal experiences as a girl when she was put in the position of having to wait for others too many times

Without insight, these factors will turbocharge her reactions way out of proportion to what has actually happened, making what is actually a "3" on the Bad Things Happening scale seem more like a "7" or "8." But with some insight - easy to cultivate with a bit of effort and practice - she'll be alert to the factors above, and thus able to catch them in the act before they hijack her mind, able to put in correction factors to compensate for their distortions, and able to keep a grip on herself and ride out the storm without overreacting. Insight is like waking up from a bad dream and realizing it was all make-believe.

So now let's focus on how both parents and children can cultivate the inner skill of Insight. Yes, of the five essential inner skills, this is the one that is least accessible to children, especially younger than seven or so, since it requires the development of certain cognitive capabilities, such as understanding cause and effect relationships, and basic conceptualization. Nonetheless, there are still many ways to help children see into themselves and their reactions - just adapt our suggestions to the age of your child.

What Is Insight?

The essence of insight is seeing into the causes of a person's reactions, whether it's you or someone else. Here's a list of potential causes, and we suggest you take your time with it, asking yourself how each one could be at work in your life, or with your family:

The daily realities of family life, such as the age and number of children, or how many hours a week (including commute and paperwork at home) mom and dad are working for pay, or whether a child is going through teething - or puberty

The softer, deeper emotions of hurt, disappointment, insecurity, etc. that underlie surface feelings such as resentment, alarm, or anger

How your brain was naturally, unavoidably trained in childhood - in terms of unmet needs, decisions about life, patterns of relationships, emotional residues, etc. - in ways that still affect you today

The ordinary accumulation of the day's events, like how a worrisome trip to the pediatrician could make you especially hungry for reassurance from your partner

The case you've been making in your mind about your mate: his failings, her bad behavior, how he/she has done you wrong, etc.; sure, there's some truth to it, but come on, it's almost certainly selective and exaggerated - if your mind is anything like our own!

Your basic temperament; for example, most people tend toward anxiety, sadness, or anger - and knowing which way you're inclined to tilt can help you keep in mind a kind of "correction factor." Similarly, some of us have bodies that are particularly sensitive, excitable, or reactive - you know who you are! - and understanding that about yourself enables you to take preventive measures (e.g., more frequent breaks throughout the day, more internal self-soothing, more reaching out to others), and to "discount" the feedback from your body if you're getting upset: we read our internal state as a guide to how important/bad/threatening a situation is, and if you know those inner signals tend to be overly intense, you can thank them for sharing but not take them too seriously.

Physical factors like getting depleted after having children, or being up at night for many months straight with an infant, or a nagging cold, or a subtle but powerful kind of depression pervading your body

Conflicts among parts of yourself - whether it's your superego at war with your id (thank you, Dr. Freud), your animus (masculine) tugging against your anima (feminine) (and you, too, Dr. Jung), or the yelling match between the voice that says "Get up, sleepyhead, and go to the gym!" and the voice murmuring "Sleep! All I want is sleep!"

Lifestyle factors, like too much alcohol and not enough exercise, too much work and not enough play, too much time staring at a computer screen and not enough time with friends and family, too much fat and not enough vegetables . . . or a crazy commute, or a job going nowhere, or a neighbor who won't fix the fence . . . or even just that doggone dripping faucet!

Fundamental, universal factors like clinging and craving in a world that is always changing; or living life as an isolated "self" even though we are all profoundly intertwined so that it makes no ultimate sense to separate "you" and "me"; or not being true to one's deepest, innermost sense of virtue and benevolence.

A Moment's Reflection

If you can, just take a moment right here to reflect on the causes making you and your children feel better or worse, especially the ones inside the mind or body:

What are the causes of well-being or suffering at work within you? How do they affect you? And, what would you like to do about them?

Similarly, take another moment to reflect on your child(ren). What's at work in their life? How are they being affected? And what could you - and they, if possible - do about that?

Of course, this reflection raises a very basic question: Are you willing to do something about the causes of stress, upsets, or pain in your life? With the whirlwind of raising children, plus the hurly-burly of jobs and traffic and this and that and the next thing, it's naturally easy to feel overwhelmed and outnumbered - and thus at least a little resigned and passive.

But that sense of overwhelm - and everything that comes with it - is itself a cause in your life . . . and one that can be understood, and addressed. No matter what our circumstances are - even, as Victor Frankl described, a concentration camp - there is always something we can do, even if it's just inside our own head, to feel and function better.

The key is intention. Do you intend to take on - in reasonable, do-able, sustainable ways - the causes of suffering in your life, or not? Do you intend to relate to them more like a hammer - or a nail?

That intention, to nudge the causes at work in your life in a better direction, is everything. Try to give yourself over to it. Deep in your heart, it's a kind of sacred flame that's vital to keep alive. Don't let anyone snuff it out! Not anyone outside you, nor any voice inside your own head. Make a sanctuary for it inside your heart, keep it safe, fan its flames - and every day your life will head a little more in a better direction.

Keys to Insight

Insight is a skill like any other, and here are some ways to get better and better at it:

Be Willing to See What Is True - The essence of insight is seeing what's real, what is actually the case. It really is the truth that sets us free. But since insight is founded on inquiry, curiosity, discovery - you have to want to find out what's so . . . even if it's smelly.

It can help to remind yourself that knowing what's true will make you feel better, at least in the long run - and that you only have to tell yourself, not anyone else. Remind yourself that whatever you see inside is just a small part of you that is surrounded by many other parts that are strong and loving and good and wonderful -- and the same is true for what you discover in others. Remember past times when you realized something important about yourself or another person, and how in the end it was good for you to be wiser, clearer, even disenchanted. Honor yourself for being brave and honest enough to see the truth.

Keep Looking - Keep bringing your attention to its target, whether it's a child's temperament, the ripple effects of the last fight you had with your spouse, or the lingering impacts of growing up with an alcoholic parent. When you're looking inside yourself, often it's good to relax and let things softly bubble up into awareness.

Of course, you may bump into what therapists call "defenses," which are ways the mind tries to help a person by keeping certain psychological material outside of her awareness. The signs of defenses include sleepiness, fogginess, rationalizations, or even a craving for chocolate!

Well intended as they originally were, defenses are now obstacles to your growth and happiness, and need to be overcome. Remember that they might have been needed when you were young and some things really were too much to bear, but now you are older and stronger and wiser and can handle the truth. Now you can risk experiencing certain things - you'll survive and be OK, no doubt about it. So when defenses arise, appreciate their function is to protect you, but then like a wise parent brush them aside and go back to looking under the carpet of your mind.

Sense the Softer Underbelly - A person's experience is layered like a crème brulee, with a hard coating of frustration, self-justification, and anger over a softer core of longing, hurt, fear, sadness, guilt, and insecurity. The sooner you get through that outer shell, the sooner you'll be getting down to where the action really is.

Sure, if you're in a quarrel with your mate, maybe you need to spew at first and get a few things off your chest, but as fast you can, try to start paying attention to the softer feelings underneath. Admit them to yourself, and then try to feel them, letting them flow through you without resistance - which will also help release the surface anger. See if you can do the same with your partner or child, trying to imagine the deep wants and feelings way back behind their eyes. Then, if possible, try to talk about these deeper issues: the real stakes on the table.

Look Down Into the Roots of Childhood - Humans have the longest childhood of any animal on the planet: we are meant to learn, and much of that learning is emotional or about fundamental patterns within relationships. Of course we bring that learning - most of which occurred before the first day of kindergarten - into our present day life: from evolution, we're supposed to, and it couldn't be any other way.

So there's no reason to be ashamed about these young reactions getting mixed into more adult ones. If your spouse's angry voice suddenly makes you shake in fear like you did when your father started yelling, if you're sensitive to criticism since your parents were quick to find fault, if you bristle intensely when big brother picks on little sister because you were bullied a lot in school -- well, painful as they may be, these are normal reactions.

Nonetheless, normal as it is, this childhood material is probably the #1 source of exaggerated, out-of-proportion reactions. Therefore, try to sort out a reaction into two piles, one that's young and one that's adult. With practice, you'll increasingly recognize the familiar tones or signs of childhood material.

Be sure to hold the young yearnings and feelings with compassion and tender concern; that alone is often deeply healing, since you'll be giving yourself what may have been shorted when you were little. Don't suppress the young material, disown it, or shame it back into hiding. Acknowledge the young parts to yourself, and maybe to the other person, but know that you do not have to act them out. Let them be, and let them flow and move on.

As you get used to this, the simple recognition of the young material will often lead it to dissipate immediately, like mists melting beneath the sun. As this happens, old, unresolved feelings from years past will be purged and released. Increasingly, there will be a kind of fertile empty space inside your mind, another kind of womb if you will, available to be filled with new positive feelings and wants and perspectives -- and that takes us to the topic of our next column: Taking In The Good. See you then!