Dear 21st Century Dad, it seems all I have to do is look at my 14 year old son and my heart is beating crazy. My breath rises into the top of my chest. I can hardly breathe. I know I’m shouting but I can’t stop myself. It gets so bad sometime I don’t even hear myself. I know I’m in the room because my son is yelling at me. And it’s not a dream from which I awake. This house is hell. The slightest misstep and we are screaming at each other. We’ve had so many disputes over what time he should be home, homework and the friends he keeps, maximum volume has become the way we mostly address each other. Then my husband starts yelling at both of us to stop yelling and vacates to his workshop. I’m living in a kid hell. How can I get my kid to be normal? He won’t listen to anything I say. He’s said he hates me so often in the last month, I don’t pay any attention to it anymore.
Dear Let’s Turn Down the Volume, Way Down,
We need to address the level of tension in our house before any of us blows a gasket or the less experienced with life’s difficulties starts some self-destructive behaviour.
We are going to learn about time outs. When the emotional temperature starts to heat up, recognize the physiological signs of our anger and tell the other person we need to time out. Go to a safe and a private space. If we have the personality that needs to walk the anger out of our personality, tell the other person when we will return.
A time out does not include visiting friends.
No visits to friends applies for adults and teen alike.
We will have 10 to 45 minutes to be alone. We will observe that our minds are a whirlwind of thoughts and caustic emotions. Heavy duty arguments flood our physiology with adrenaline which props us up in a fight situation and drops us into a benumbed state of fatigue after the fight or flight is over. We have to deal with these effects during our time outs, or the time out will be an excruciating experience not wished to be repeated.
We can sit still on the end of a chair to keep our backs straight. We want to breathe in a relaxed way, to let the breath rise up and down the length of our back from our bellies to our upper chest. We don’t need to force our breath to do anything. We will breathe out our nose and sense the air coming in and out of our noses above our lips. If we are mouth breathers, we will sense the air touching our lips as it leaves the mouth.
So what’s going on here? Don’t we breathe all day anyways? Why are we sitting here alone, when there is an issue to be resolved?
Yes, we do breathe all day. Sometimes we lace our breathing with fury and sometimes we hold it so still with fear, we can go blue in the face. Neither method of breathing allows us a clear insight into the resolution of our issues. Our dysfunctional breathing influences our thoughts.
In our time outs, we sit and sense the air coming in and out of our noses as it flows past the upper lip. Our attention will soon wander.
We can notice that our minds want to return us to the argument, or suggest a trip to a hot Thailand beach, or give us reasons why this time out activity is stupid and accomplishes nothing, or seek revenge, or wonder if it might be better to bail out and sell the house. The activity of our time out is to return our attention to the breath coming out of the nose. We will observe after a few minutes that we become calm. If we are really freaked out, we can walk around the room and start over. After the second or third time, we will be calm.
If we need to walk outside, start an in breath on every fourth step and maintain that rhythm the length of the whole walk. We can put our attention upon the sensations that flood the feet when they contact the ground. Every step. When thoughts begin to interrupt the rhythm, restart the in breath upon every 4th step, and give attention to the sensations that floor the feet upon contact with the ground.
Time outs offer a moment to reflect. Is this argument so important we have to resume it? Are there more important issues to resolve? Does my anger help what we are resolving?
Even these questions will become unimportant if we do this exercise everyday and not reserve it for a time out period. We can watch ourselves change our perspective on life in the same way that we can strengthen or lengthen a muscle. We can repeat the exercise every day. We can observe how our whole life can change by simply observing it, and not getting caught up in it.
Key into YouTube different methods of stress busting:
1. Stress Relief Yoga: Breathing
2. Bobby Mcferrin - Don't Worry, Be Happy
3. Law of Attraction EFT STRESS BUSTER @ www.myGenie.tv
4. Laughing Yoga for stress
5. Stressbusters with Loretta LaRoche
6. hippo stressbusters
7. Progressive Relaxation For Stress Relief & Management
8. Bobby McFerrin - Ave Maria
9. …and a million more
No comments:
Post a Comment