Creating a Feelings Jar: A Simple Exercise for Self-Compassion

The world is an incredibly challenging place for many of us right now. While it has never been easy to be human, social media and constant reports on all things good and bad has made living in modern times much more complicated.

This complexity has many of use asking: what is one to do in the face of a news cycle – or life – that brings a never-ending stream of hardships and heartbreak?

Many of us have developed self-care tools: taking breaks from social media, exercising, getting lost in a good TV show when we need to, etc.

But often, despite our best intentions, feelings persist.

One of my favorite tools to manage this phenomenon is a Feelings Jar.

The beauty of a Feelings Jar is that it can be used by anyone – adults or kids.

Here’s how it works:

1.     Think of a challenging situation that has happened in your life and fairly present for you every day – could be a tough dynamic at work, something happening in the larger world, a loss, etc.

2.     Now take a piece of paper and cut it into squares.

3.     On each square, write an emotion you have about the situation you’ve identified.

4.     When you’ve written down every emotion you can think of, go through each and write down (under each emotion or on the opposite side of the paper) 1-3 things that you can do to help yourself when you are feeling that particular emotion.

5.     When you are finished, place the squares of paper in a jar (or other container).

6.     Keep this jar handy. When you are lost in a swirl of emotions, pull the squares of paper out and ask yourself, “What feeling(s) is most present for me regarding this challenge today?”

7.     Figure out what you need on that day to honor that feeling(s).

For example, let’s say you have recently gone through a breakup. Most of us have experienced this and know that there are a whole host of feelings that can come with the end of a relationship. Some of these feelings can even be contradictory.

You might feel angry, sad, abandoned, anxious, relieved, confused, peaceful, lonely, distant, or any number of other emotions depending on the day/hour/minute.

Creating a Feelings Jar can help when these emotions become too much and you need to find a way to manage or understand what you are feeling.

Just the act of taking a moment to identify our whole range of feelings can be useful. It can give us a more complete picture of just how many things – and what – we might be feeling about a situation.

When you wake up feeling overwhelmed with emotion and unsure what you need, you can grab your Feelings Jar and take a moment to look through the squares of paper.

Using the same example, inside of a breakup, this might help you identify one day that what you are feeling most is abandoned and anxious.

Having identified these feelings, turn to the self-care steps you previously identified. Examples would include calling a friend/not being alone (when feeling abandoned) or going for a run or listening to music (when feeling anxious).

It’s important to note that the self-care will be different for everyone – one person might want to be alone to breathe when feeling anxious and another might need to call a friend and just talk. There is no right or wrong. There is only you.

Using a Feelings Jar can help remind us that it is normal to experience many emotions about a situation, and that it is okay to need different things on different days. It also allows us to extend deep compassion and understanding to ourselves in any given moment.

Parents and caregivers can use this exercise with kids to help teach them about emotions and self-regulation, as well as self-compassion.

The world’s challenges are unlikely to end anytime soon. While we may not be in control of this, we can learn to ask ourselves more often what we need inside of these challenges. And when we can hold ourselves and our feelings in a compassionate way, I believe that gets us all a little closer to peace.

Gail Cowan, MSW, is EOI’s Director of Development. A former therapist, she also runs her own coaching business. Find her at www.gailcowan.com or gail@eyesopeniowa.org.

Building Social Media Literacy: An Unconventional Experiment

Last year, during the pandemic, my husband and I gave into our nine-year-old and let her open an Instagram account.

I know, I know.

But there are important things to explain about this decision. First, she has a grand total of 10 followers to her private account. Each follower is a friend or family member, someone we trust. Second, with a few exceptions at the end (more about that later), we did not let her post pictures of herself.

Third—and most important—she was actually asking to open the account and discuss it with us as she went. It was, essentially, an invitation to a sacred and rare parent-child communication space that we couldn’t pass up. And with all the togetherness of the past year, it was easy enough to do.

We also made the decision because we are fully aware that in five or six years, our daughter will not be inviting us so willingly into her social media space.

In general, I am of the belief that, just as in sex education, we must start communicating with our children about challenging topics far sooner than we think.

And so I figured that while we were stuck at home together, allowing her to post pictures of puppies to Instagram and then chatting about her account was a great and gentle place to introduce her to the concepts of privacy and safety and overall the purpose of social media.

Here are a few things that came up during our experiment (which, BTW, only lasted a few short months before she grew bored and moved onto drawing cartoons from a series of tutorials on YouTube):

- She received requests from people we didn’t know, who wanted to follow her on Instagram. This allowed us to chat about why we don’t accept requests from strangers, especially as a child or teen. Over time, she would increasingly report when she rejected a request, telling me with pride, “I don’t know this person, so they don’t get to see my posts!”

- One day, she wanted to post a picture of her newly pierced ears. I said yes, which led to a series of posts from her that were clearly modeled after so many staged Instagram posts—“duck lips” and all. This led to a really important conversation about how and why there is so much staging on Instagram, as well as what is real and what is not real, etc. We also talked about body image and social media content. Ultimately, we removed the posts together.

- She posted a ton of cute puppy pictures she found online. From this I learned that puppy pictures make people really happy.

This tactic of working through social media together with children is not for everyone. But I do believe there are lessons to be learned from my experiment.

Too often, we give children far too little information to prepare them for real life: in sex education, in financial literacy, in social media safety, etc. Then as they become young adults, the bulk of our preparation entails telling them, “You’re about to do X thing. As you do, please just remember not to do the “wrong” things like get pregnant or go into debt or engage in unsafe online behavior.”

This type of “preparation” does not work. If we truly want to prepare children for adulthood, then we have to educate them fully. And sometimes that means going against the grain and allowing your nine-year-old to have limited access to social media. I’m hopeful our experiment served as just one of many important building blocks for the future.

We’re curious: what experiences have you had in bucking traditional wisdom in order to prepare your kids for the larger world? Or for the social media world? We’d love to hear from you!

Gail Cowan, MSW, is EOI’s Director of Development. A former therapist, she also runs her own coaching business. Find her at www.gailcowan.com or gail@eyesopeniowa.org.

Teaching Young Kids to Set Healthy Boundaries: a Focus on Sharing

If you spend any time at all in the modern parenting world, there is a verb you will hear over and over, usually attached to a little child’s name.

“We SHARE our toys, Brianna.”

“Finn, please share one of your trains with that little girl.”

“You need to share, Joe.”

On the surface, this seems simple enough. I mean, sharing is a nice, lovely thing to teach our children.

Right?

I don’t know.

I mean, how would you feel if, every day as you were sitting down to lunch, your boss stopped by and said, “Sarah, you need to share that sandwich with your co-workers.” Or “Jerome, please share that bowl of noodles with Kevin. Look how sad he is that he doesn’t have any.”

That would be weird. And annoying.

So this idea that we pound into our children to share, share, share is a little unsettling.

It’s unsettling because we are giving our children a very strong directive without any context whatsoever. We’re failing to give them internal decision making skills related to when to share, how much to share, and what to do when it doesn’t feel safe to share, etc.

Instead, we’re giving them the blanket notion that if they don’t want to share, it makes them bad.

This can have so many outcomes, many of which we perhaps never intended:

· Adults who have a hard time saying no to others.

· Children who rebel and don’t want to share anything.

· Endless amounts of guilt around whether we are doing enough in and for the world.

· The inability of teens and young adults and adults to say no in sexual relationships.

My intent is not to be reductionist in this area. I know that the above issues have many causes. But what we teach our children about sharing does play a role.

As a parent of three young kids, I’m still learning as I go. But here are some ideas about what we can do instead of insisting that sharing is the gold standard about 500 times a day:

1. First and foremost, back up a little.

At a local play space we frequent, it is not uncommon to see five kids playing at a train table and then at least two parents hovering over the table, narrating their child’s every move (“Caleb, we share our trains with the other kids.” “Samantha, move over to give that boy some space.” “No, Mason, that’s not yours.” blah blah blah.)

Two things about this:

a) This type of behavior can make kids incredibly anxious. To understand this, simply imagine someone hovering over your shoulder and talking to you like that all the time.

b) When we stand back and let kids negotiate something like a train table themselves, they actually really do figure it out most of the time. When left to their own devices, children naturally learn to navigate the world as it exists for so many adults.

They learn how to handle it when others don’t share (e.g., children will often walk away and find something else to do), how to ask for things from other people, and how to decide when and with whom they want to share. For most kids, when left uninterrupted, these things are no big deal and help build some great decision making and boundary setting skills.

So perhaps, if we only do one thing, we can learn to give our children a little more space to figure it out on their own.

2. When we have more than one child, we can stop encouraging them to share everything with each other. Especially, again, when their natural inclination is to give everything all the time.

The other day, my child who is a natural giver was eating a sandwich. Her brother wanted some. Because I was tired and didn’t feel like listening to an argument, I said, “Come on, just share some.” She looked and me and yelled, “But I don’t want to share!”

Message received. She was eating her sandwich and I was asking her to share in order to make my life easier. Not really the best teaching on my part.

We can also respect this instinct in younger, pre-verbal children when they don’t want to share. Instead of teaching them that they are bad for having this instinct, we can realize that very often, they are picking up on and rejecting our manic energy about why we need them to share (so other people don’t think we are bad parents, so we don’t feel awkward around our friends and their kids, etc.)

Smart kids. We really could learn from them.

3. We can talk to our children, when they are old enough to understand, about how to make decisions around sharing. We can talk to them about when they feel the urge to share and when they do not and how to manage other people’s disappointment or frustration.

We can talk to them about the importance of staying in their own lane – if Damian and his mom are having a disagreement about what he can bring to school for lunch (he wants chips, mom packs carrots), we can teach our children that it is not their business to get involved and fix that for Damian by giving him our chips. Especially when we love our chips.

Also – and this is so important – we can talk to them about what to do when it does not feel safe to share. Doing so is a key building block for so many things that keep us healthy as adults, not the least of which is maintaining healthy physical boundaries, which can help preserve our energy, prevent sexual assault, abuse, etc.

At EyesOpenIowa, we know the importance of teaching young people boundaries in sex education programs. And we know that many of you do, as well. We can help expand this beyond the classroom by talking about the concept of sharing with our kids and with our friends, in order to change the narrative around this important issue.

Gail Cowan, MSW, is EOI’s Director of Development. A former therapist, she also runs her own coaching business. Find her at www.gailcowan.com.

New Year's Resolutions

Here we are again, the in the land of New Year’s resolutions.

Losing the (Quarantine) Weight.

Eating Healthier

Sticking to a Budget

Being a Better Person (whatever that means…we’ve done it too)

And yet, every year, it’s easy to track that after the initial hype, we’re all sort of over New Year’s resolutions by January 6th or so.

Many of us work with young people to help build their self-esteem. This work is critical and can be so rewarding. But it is equally important to keep track of and nurture our own relationship to ourselves as adults.

Usually, New Year’s resolutions are a thinly veiled mechanism for telling ourselves we are not enough and need to be BETTER.

This year, in addition to/instead of reliving the typical New Years resolution cycle, we offer you the following strategy for learning more about yourself and finding greater freedom within:

Step one: Pick one of your resolutions. For instance, “I want to lose 10 pounds” (a familiar one to many of us).

Step two: Instead of immediately proceeding headlong into an almost-sure-to-eventually-fail cycle of diet deprivation and positive/negative self-talk, try first asking yourself, “why do I want to lose 10 pounds?”

Common answers include, “to feel lighter, to feel as though I have more energy, to feel better about myself.” Sit with the question until you find one that feels the most true for you.

Step three: Pick your answer/one of your answers and make a list of all the ways and places in your life that this statement isn’t true – outside of weight concerns.

So, for example, if your reason was, “I want to feel lighter”, make a list of all the places in your life that feel heavy:

“I feel really bogged down at work with projects I keep saying yes to but don’t want to do” or

“I feel the weight of friendships or family relationships that don’t give to me as much as I give to them” or

“The grief I feel from having lost my mother feels like a weight in the middle of my chest.”

Step four: Decide to take a step to heal one of these places. For example, seeking therapy to work on why you constantly find yourself in relationships where you give, but don’t get, very much. Or to process grief. Or to examine your patterns at work.

It doesn’t mean we can’t carry on with weight loss or self-improvement. But doing this deeper work is the only thing that can provide the kind of freedom we seek in making New Year’s resolutions in the first place.

Wishing us all love and a little more lightness in 2021. And let’s go easy on ourselves – we survived 2020, which is no small feat on its own.

Gail Cowan, MSW, is EOI’s Director of Development. A former therapist, she also runs her own coaching business. Find her at www.gailcowan.com.

5 Ways to Improve Communication With Your Teen

by Danielle Miller Hajdini, LCSW

It’s difficult to compete for your teen’s attention in the modern world. Not only are parents up against the old regulars - social circles, homework, job responsibilities and extracurricular activities, now they must contend with the entire world wide web and it’s wild sister, social media! And let me tell you that sister is trouble! So many of us are left to wonder how we can communicate with our children in a fashion that leaves both parties feeling heard and valued. As a child and adolescent therapist, I’ve learned a few ideas that allow parents the opportunity to build a solid foundation of healthy communication with their adolescent.

Lead with the truth. Many times parents avoid truthful conversations with their children out of a desire to protect them. I caution against this as children are much more perceptive to other’s feelings than we give them credit for. They are always paying attention and picking up on even the smallest of comments and behaviors. If we don’t tell the truth to our kiddos then it leaves them to make up their own stories in their head and those stories can sometimes be much worse than the truth. No one wants their children to experience undue anxiety. Not to mention, if our kids know they can come to us with the difficult questions in life and we will be open and truthful, it will build a sense of safety and connection in our relationship that will last a lifetime. Everyone benefits from the truth!

Use active listening. Active listening is a term often used in therapy. It involves a high level of engagement upon your part. Giving you the opportunity to act as a sounding board, active listening builds validation for your teen and as a result he/she is much more likely to keep talking. Kids always hope their parents are actively listening and you can show them you are by doing the following:

● Put away cell phones or any other distractions

● Make and hold eye contact

● Withhold interruptions, judgement, advice and attempt to remain neutral

● Ask questions for clarification

● Smile, lean in - show you are interested

● Be absolutely present in the moment

Emphasize connection. The more you connect with your children through healthy conversation the less correction you will need. Teens who feel secure in their relationship with their parents will feel less of a need to rebel or act out (even though this can sometimes be a normal part of adolescence.) Isn’t that what we all want? Connection equates to quality time spent together in the present moment. How you spend your quality time is up to you: it could be going to lunch on the weekend or spending an extra 10 minutes together at night talking about their day. Agenda-free presence is all it requires.

Pay attention to the small things. Our kids will come to us for countless reasons throughout their lives. Something I think every parent wants. I recommend trying your best to field those small questions, concerns and comments with as much time and respect as you do with the big moments in life. If kids know they can come to you about a game they are playing or a sandwich they are eating and you will give your full attention and care no matter how trivial the topic, they are much more likely to come to you if they have questions about the big things in life like healthy relationships, problems with friends or thoughts and feelings of depression and anxiety.

Don’t assume the worst. Teenagers get a bad rap. They have a reputation that many times or most of the time (if I am being honest) precedes them- selfish, overly emotional, lazy, disrespectful and combative. You name it. As a therapist, I have heard it. While it may be true at times, the same can be said about adults. Parents have their problematic days too. If we are going to be forgiving of our own poor behavior, we should be forgiving of our teen’s questionable choices as well. We all have good days and bad days. Teens are exploring, learning and making mistakes. It doesn’t mean they don’t want our support, our concern, and our attention to help them navigate the difficulties. They beg us to love them through sometimes the ugliest of behaviors. They aren’t awful teens. They are simply people like us who are craving connection, validation and acceptance.

It’s up to us to guide our teens and support them even on their worst days. As parents we have the opportunity to take the lead and improve communication with our young people. If we practice these skills consistently, we will build relationships with our children that are overflowing with love, honesty and mutual respect.

Guest Blogger - Danielle Miller Hajdini, LCSW is the founder of Family Mind Wellness. A psychotherapist based in Atlanta, Georgia, she specializes in the holistic treatment and prevention of anxiety disorders. As a consultant, speaker and educator, she works to help families everywhere make the connection between mental wellness and healthy lifestyle choices. For more like this, visit Family Mind Wellness on Facebook

It's Never too Early to Talk About Consent

Parents can find a wealth of information about caring for their young children. One area of information, however, is often overlooked: Sex education. Including consent. This absence may be because we as a society are not comfortable talking about sexuality and consent in general, let alone thinking about it as important for young children.

However, experts say that talking about sexuality and modelling consent early in a child's life can have a lifelong positive impact. Age-appropriate sexuality and consent education may help prevent sexual violence or help children and teens to talk about it. This awareness may increase the chances of older children and teens developing healthy relationships and recognizing harmful ones.

Fortunately, there is a growing library of guidance available for parents of young children. Here are some tips for starting the consent conversation with young children:

Start with these simple steps!

• Show toddlers and young children that they have control over their body: ·

Parents and caregivers can model consent by asking young children if it’s ok to give them a hug. · Adults can also ask young children how they would like to greet relatives, rather than forcing children to “give auntie a hug.” · Caregivers can talk with children about the importance of listening to their “tummy.”. Affirm children's feelings when they say something feels “icky.”

• Demonstrate that it is safe to talk about sexuality: ·

Parents and caregivers can begin teaching children at a very young age the correct terms for their body parts. · Adults can read age-appropriate stories or watch videos that include correct terms for body parts and model healthy friendships. Parents and caregivers can build these steps into daily life with their young children and, eventually, it will become part of the normal routine. As children grow older they will be able to build on these steps with greater understanding of their bodies and relationships.

Resources for age-appropriate consent:

Iowa Coalition Against Sexual Assault, Partners for Prevention project, blog posts, information and resources for talking about consent with all ages of children.

Amaze Junior: video clips starting for age 4, coloring books, and other resources.