Feelings are a part of everyday life for children. They have a wide range of feelings and emotions that they experience, from big feelings to small ones.
Have you ever noticed when they have BIG intense feelings they lash out at you?
I call this “throwing the emotional hot potato”.
How I see it is that when children experience intense emotions their little bodies are flooded with sensations they aren’t able to contain. Of course, they want to get rid of them so they look to the safest person they know, which is YOU, and they throw you the hot potato.
Now, since you have an adult regulatory system and have been SafeSeating, learning to contain those intense feelings instead of acting them out, you’ll be able to alchemize them before returning to the sender. You’ll show your child they aren’t dangerous and that it is OK to share them with the safe adult.
If you haven’t been practicing and therefore take your child’s lashing out personally, you’ll catch that ‘hot potato’ of feelings and most likely lash out at them just like they did with you.
When this happens you are returning the ‘hot potato’ to the sender and yet it now has your intensity magnified and hurling towards your child.
For years now, I’ve practiced my SafeSeat and I still have moments when a thrown ‘hot potato’ activates a 𝑏𝑖𝑔 feeling that I’m not able to contain.
It’s gonna happen so when it does head on over to your SafeSeat to offer the one in you, who acted out, some tender loving kindness.
She just forgot that she had a safe base to go to.
The more you do this, the more capacity you’ll build.
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