Encouragement for the Long Run

The expression, “this is a marathon, not a sprint” is a familiar one, and frequently has been used in spaces of political activism. In 2020, the expression is more relevant than ever as we are facing many more months of the Covid-19 pandemic, the power of the social justice movement, and increasing unrest and divide in our country. If you are feeling triggered by these external forces and find they are tapping into scars and fears of your own lived experience, you may be feeling overwhelmed, unable to relax, or, alternately, shut down and unable to engage in your normal routines or activities.

 Many are suffering “Covid-19” or “Quarantine” fatigue and are reluctant to wear masks or physically distance (we can stay socially connected, even when physically six feet or more apart.) It makes sense that we are eager to return to pre-March conditions or some sense of normalcy. But our new normal is here to stay for the foreseeable future and cultivating emotional and psychological endurance is essential now. This is especially true as we see the incidence of Covid-19 cases spiking in the South and West.

 So what support endurance, or tenacity, for the long run?

 For one thing, we have to accept that endurance requires short- or even moderate-term sacrifice for long-term benefit. It is what we call upon when we study hard for an exam in high school because we envision pursuing a career we are passionate about or project even further out into the future, envisioning a decent income and a comfortable home and lifestyle. It is what we do to postpone instant gratification for long-term gain. So the next time you feel the impulse to go to a party with fifty people, perhaps you can project forward to a year from now when you and your friends are healthy and you will be able to attend many parties with unlimited numbers of people.

Surround yourself with supportive people, resources, reliable news sites that support your long-term goals, and your current protocol regarding safety and the pandemic. When we’re training for a marathon, we devote even our social time and energy by connecting with people who share or at least support our ambitions. Support groups such as AA rely heavily on the understanding that a social network should resonate with our goals and values. Speak to your friends who are also making immediate sacrifices and perhaps spend less time with your friends who are more impulsive and/or emphasize immediate gratification.

 When we cultivate tenacity/perseverance/endurance, we also need to draw upon our creativity and substitute our rewards. Disappointed that you can’t see your mother for her 75th birthday. The pandemic has resulted in many creative approaches to celebrations, both large and small. While Zoom graduations may have been less than satisfying, certainly teachers who have driven by their students’ homes have added a personal touch. I recall a video of a father whose four-year-old daughter was disappointed that she couldn’t go to McDonald’s. He took the time to create a home “drive-thru” store complete with a Happy Meal and delighted his daughter. So if you find yourself dwelling on all you cannot do, shift your focus to what you can do and flex your creativity muscles. And reward yourself with activities that you enjoy. A couple I know recently took a virtual tour of Yosemite and talked about their postponed trip to the national park with an understanding that they were actually more eager to plan their trip there in 2021 as a result of all they had seen and learned through the online site. These are some examples of positive reframing and adaptability that will make this long year much more manageable.

 This next suggestion may sound contrary to all that I’ve previously stated but is not. It is to feel your sadness, disappointment, anger, frustration. Facing into understandable feelings is an important aspect of healthy adaption. There are important losses, not just of people, but of milestone events, annual rituals, favorite pastimes. We will all have feelings about this to varying degrees and allowing for the feelings is distinct from getting stuck in them. Emotions are short-lived, for the most part. It’s more often the stories we tell ourselves about our emotions that keep us stuck either in heightened states of anxiety or in depressed states of despair. And, paradoxically, the more we ignore or minimize our emotions, the more they have a way of intensifying in order to be felt. Have the experience of real disappointment that you will not be going to an annual family reunion. And then shift into your flexibility, creativity, adaptation.

 Finally, remember that marathons have milestones. Periodically, pause and celebrate how much you have succeeded at so far, how resilient and resourceful you’ve been. Appreciate what you’ve already accomplished or even endured. And take this pandemic one step or perhaps one week at a time.

Living well in the world of COVID-19: Skills for staying calm, hopeful and active

Crisis are normally short-lived. We gear up for them and then we recover when they pass. The COVID-19 Pandemic challenges us on so many levels.  It began as a fairly localized public health crisis, first in Wuhan, China, where it felt only faintly concerning because of the geographic distance that supports our healthy sense of denial, and then more locally as New Rochelle, Westchester County, NY became a hot spot. But this crisis is ongoing and in some ways is requiring us to adjust to a long term “new normal.” As such, it is requiring us to adapt physically, socially, cognitively, and emotionally.

During this “pause” many people have time for some self-reflection. My hope is that many will get to know their own coping strategies, be they effective or ineffective ones, better. It’s important to know if you are someone who amplifies risk or is counterphobic and are therefore taking more risks around your and others’ health. Are you taking the pandemic seriously or are you at some level minimizing your fears by denying the gravity of the situation. While denial is an effective defense in some instances – for instance, on a day to day basis, most of us deny our own mortality – it can be dangerous and even reckless. This pandemic needs to be recognized for the real risks it poses to health and economic well-being. Or are you someone who is so panicked that every news item sends you in a tailspin? Or, alternatively,  are you finding yourself tired all the time, shutting down, forgetful, etc..? Depending on your tendencies, you will need different coping strategies.

As mammals, we are born with a nervous system that supports us in preparing for fight/flight/freeze responses in the face of threat or danger. Our sympathetic nervous system will kick it up a notch or more to get blood pumping to our extremities so we can fight a predator or, if it’s more powerful than us, potentially outrun it. This is in contrast to our resting state that is largely managed by the parasympathetic branch of the nervous system that enables us to “rest and digest.” In the natural world, animals are able to shift quickly between these states but as humans, we are equipped with our powerful brain that enables us to create meaning or stories and to anticipate on potential future events or reflect on past events. Often this is helpful to us and supports us in being creative, adaptive, even resilient. But when a threat is ongoing and largely invisible, that wonderful part of our brain can create havoc for us. 

Some of us will get stuck in a chronic state of high alert. If you’re someone who falls into this category, most likely you think of yourself as anxious, stressed, wired, etc… For you it will be important to practice strategies that allow you to release the excess energy or charge you carry and other tools to calm your nervous system.  Exercise is very helpful for a release. While your gym may be closed, get creative. If you can’t go for a run or a vigorous bike ride outdoors, do an aerobics class or Zumba class online. Or jumping jacks. Or run up and down several flights of stairs (in apartment buildings, you might use the public stairwell provided you wear a mask). As for calming strategies, these include everything from:

·      slow deep breathwork - with the exhalation being longer than the inhalation –

·       yoga

·      meditation

·       supportive self-touch using your hands across your chest in a butterfly formation or with one hand on your forehead and the other support the base of the back of your head)

·      orienting to your immediate environment through your five senses

·      prior

·      hugging someone in your household provided neither of you is positive for COVID-19

·      prayer if you have a faith practice

·      craftwork like knitting or needlepoint

·      grounding exercises such as bringing your awareness to your feet on the floor, your thighs on a chair, etc…

In addition to this list of “to dos” there are some activities you should limit or avoid. Certainly limit your exposure to the news right now. Yes, you need to be informed but you don’t need to be informed daily about infection rates, deaths in your community or what your leaders are doing to address the pandemic. Decide to limit your exposure to the news to once or at most twice a day. Limit your conversations with friends and family that are COVID-19 related. Limit your consumption of caffeine, alcohol, and sugar. And do keep to as much of a routine as you can.

For those of you who are more on the spectrum of depression/shutdown/emotional and physical exhaustion, you will want some of the same strategies as well as some different ones. Like the group above, you too will want to push yourself through your initial inertia to get up and go. Start with small goals such as a daily walk.. If you’re unable to or fearful about going outdoors, then walk around your apartment or house. Use your smartphone if you have one to track your steps. Try to increase a little each day. Notice how you feel in your body when you have walked for more than five minutes, paying particular attention to what feels more alive in you. Other energizing tools or activities include:

·      dance

·      singing/playing music

·      humor/laughter

·      creative pursuits or hobbies

·      gratitude practice

·      connecting with others remotely

·      volunteering

There is a great deal of research supporting the finding that people who daily focus on what is positive in their lives experience more joy and more energy. Volunteerism promotes a sense of personal control along the lines of “I can do something.” It is particularly important that you find ways to feel you have a sense of agency or control in some small way at this time when so much is happening so rapidly and we are often playing catch-up and feeling like we are being restricted or directed. Even deciding to bake a cake or call an old friend who lives alone can help you move out of a stuck or frozen state of being.

And for those who want this to be over and get back to life as it was prior to late February, I understand your longing and your need for the time being to hold onto your sense of how things should be. Be gentle and patient with yourself if this is your tendency. Your self-protection around a loss of power, safety, or certainty probably is essential to you as a lifelong strategy. But become curious about this habit as it may not serve you so well during the pandemic and may expose you and those you love to unnecessary health risks. Learning to be available to feel your feelings of doubt or fear may take time. Find a way to make the time. As has been said by so many, we will get through this and we have choices regarding how we get through it. This global event holds within it a hidden invitation to become wiser and, somewhat ironically, more connected to ourselves and to others.

Our Wish for Certainty, Control and Connection During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Certainty, control, connection. As human beings, we crave all three of these,  what I like to call, the three “C”s. COVID-19 is challenging them all.  So much has changed in such a short matter of time that many people working from home, barely going out except to walk, bike or buy groceries, are still in the first stage of adjusting to fundamental changes.

As scientists and strategists continue to work on understanding the virus, its origin, its behavior, and, ultimately, its cure, we have more questions than answers. As individuals and families, we ask how to disinfect our clothes, what kinds of masks are safe to DIY, whether we can go visit our 85 year-old-mother, etc… We want experts to give us answers about when we can return to work or some semblance of our lives prior to March of 2020. And for many people, the lack of clarity and uncertainty triggers anxiety and even fear. The current situation may tap into old experiences from our childhood when our parents who were supposed to provide us with a sense of security and predictability failed to do so. It’s not surprising that I have clients who struggle most with this aspect of the pandemic.

Finding predictability now is therefore going to be more important to people who especially crave certainty and are reacting to the pandemic by feeling that everything in their lives has been uprooted and turned upside down. For you, key strategies to cope more effectively include the following: creating and maintaining routines. Keep to a regular schedule. Clarify roles and responsibilities with the other members of your household, even school-aged children. Create order and structure where and when you can. You don’t know when you will be returning to your office. You can know when you will be eating dinner and it can be the same as it was last night and will be tomorrow night. Routines, schedules, and rituals help people navigate time, particularly times of crisis and change, more effectively.

“We are masters of our destiny.” Some people live by this creed even though it is, to a large extent, an illusion. And yet our society is very much built on the notion that as Americans we can do whatever we set our minds and bodies to. We are a competitive society and believe that grit and hard work will lead to positive outcomes. And we also value individual free will and self-determination. This foundation has been severely and abruptly shaken by the COVID-19 virus. Our political leaders are prescribing how we can live right now to some degree and for many people, this triggers strong reactions. I have clients who complain of being “trapped”, “tethered”,  “oppressed” as just some of the terms they’ve mentioned. And yes there are real restraints on our capacity to move and to make decisions. We can’t go to the movie theater or gather together with our extended family or friends.

Many people respond to this with anger and resentment. Having an authority set rules can trigger memories of overly strict and even abusive parents and people with that past experience are more likely to be feeling irritable or to be rebelling by finding ways around the restrictions. It’s important to recognize that even before the pandemic, there were things we did not control. We had to be at work at a certain time, attend meetings we might not choose to, etc… And now, what I tell people who feel caged is that they are banging against the three sides of the cage but, if they turned around, they’d notice that the fourth side has an open door. There are many opportunities for self-expression, growth and emotional freedom (at least for those not on the front lines nor facing basic challenges around shelter and sustenance) this pause has unveiled. Reframe how you see the constraints and confinement and notice the real opportunities for creativity, connection, peace, rest, humor, etc…

Finally, our need for connection to other people is an essential aspect of being human. While the social distancing guidelines prevent us from sharing physical space with many if not all the important people in our lives, people have been connecting in other important ways. We are fortunate to have the Internet where groups are coming together in song, prayer, movement. Some are cooking together remotely. Others are doing craft projects or playing trivia games together. It’s not the same, but it still provides a real opportunity for connection, compassion and community.  And certainly you can go out for a walk, unless you are ill or in a really congested urban area, and maintain appropriate social distance while talking with a friend.

The economic hardship and the loss of life created by the COVID-19 pandemic are real. The fear and sadness they evoke are powerful. And still, there are ways for many of us to use this time to develop new emotional and cognitive coping strategies. My next post will provide more details regarding helpful tools for coping well.

Holding Hope: Working with Clients to Access Possibilities in the Face of Depression, Despair or Loss

“Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all -


And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -
And sore must be the storm -
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm -

I’ve heard it in the chillest land -
And on the strangest Sea -
Yet - never - in Extremity,
It asked a crumb - of me.”

  - Emily Dickinson

At this time of year, with its dark nights, so many reach for hope. Many come away empty-handed...

Whether it’s to reach past depression, to grab a child who is slipping away into drugs or truancy, to grasp a parent losing the fight to illness or aging, to reach for one’s partner across a growing chasm marked by bitterness and resentment, it is a basic human need to seek out hope.

Regardless of your political leanings, the appeal of the campaign of hope run by Obama in his 2008 race was so successful precisely because it spoke to this basic yearning and capacity. He said: "hope is not blind optimism. It's not ignoring the enormity of the task ahead or the roadblocks that stand in our path. It's not sitting on the sidelines or shirking from a fight. Hope is that thing inside us that insists despite all evidence to the contrary, that something better awaits us if we have the courage to reach for it, and to work for it, and to fight for it."

In some ways I liken hope to the dreams that new parents hold as they cradle their newborn child, while envisioning that child’s first step, drawing, middle school concert, varsity start, high school graduation, and so on. There is nothing in that newborn's body offering a glimmer of these future feats other than the parents' vision and commitment to supporting the child's growth in the direction of these future milestones. 

I view one of my central functions in working with individuals, parents and couples as holding hope. That is, I work to maintain an outlook in which I identify a client’s strengths and resilience, where I glimpse the potential of light even while joining them in their cavern of darkness. Hope is the act of holding onto possibility. This includes believing in the possibility of change, the possibility of having some influence to affect outcome, the possibility that what you think and feel and do make a difference, even when this difference is barely perceptible.

When I sit with my clients who struggle with loneliness, bitterness toward their partner or with their parents or maybe even with their children, deep depression or paralyzing fear, self-loathing or shame, I aim to reflect back to them not only acceptance but encouragement and a deep commitment to the principle of change.  A psychotherapeutic model known as IFS (Internal Family Systems) holds a view that people function optimally when they access certain inherent qualities – the 8 C’s . These are clarity, compassion, courage, calmness, curiosity, connectedness, creativity and calmness.

So this season, if the lights from the Christmas tree, the Chanukah menorah, the Kwanza kinara fail to raise your sprits, here are some things for you to try:

- First, acknowledge, be with and accept your pain or fear or sadness. Cultivating compassion for these heavy emotions and the thoughts that accompany them is one way to bring in a little light. Being mindful in general, by attending to senses and sensations, is also a means of accessing healing experiences as the present moment may offer small joys, say through a rich melody the warmth of the sun’s rays on your skin,

- Visualize a future that you long for. Use imagery to evoke the outcome you desire, evoke a picture of you surrounded by caring friends and then notice the sensations and emotions evoked. This exercise in itself creates new neural pathways, a key ingredient of change.

- Try some exercise borrowed from the new science of happiness.  Use your senses to connect to a sound, sight, smell, taste or touch that offers you a sense of comfort or pleasure. Rick Hanson, Phd.D., says that "The brain is like Velcro for negative experiences and Teflon for positive ones." To counter this negativity bias of our neurological wiring, savoring positive moments or nourishing the things that nourish you becomes all the more important. 

- Or notice and make a note of the positive things that you do every day. If even this is challenging, consider taking the VIA Institute on Character’s survey (http://www.viacharacter.org/www/)to help you identify your strengths. Even if you are having difficulty detecting your abilities and gifts, they are present and this survey may help you identifying them. Once you can name a strength, find an active way of applying them each day. 

Here's wishing that this year you will find that little light of yours...

Odetta's performance of this song is from the 2007 Grammy- nominated "Gonna Let It Shine", a live album of gospel and spiritual songs supported by Seth Farber on piano and the Holmes Brothers for background vocals.

The Better to Hear You With: A Brief Guide to Addressing Couples’ Communication Problems

“We have two ears and one tongue so that we would listen more and talk less.”

Diogenes

Were the couples leaving my consulting room to take away this one pithy message, this alone would be transformative for their relationship.  Having worked for more than twenty years with couples in distress, perhaps the most consistent pattern I have noted in unhappy couples is the tendency for each partner to jockey for airtime.  What a sharp contrast to the scenes, both Hollywood created and actual, of a young man or woman transfixed by his or her lover’s voice. The listening, the eagerness, and the absorption in this courtship phase are magical.  While the romantic song, written in 1934 and recut by Art Garfunkel in 1975 goes, “I only have eyes for you,” in fact new lovers also “only have ears for you.”

In contrast, couples that interrupt each other frequently or respond with such introductory phrases as “yes, but I…” generally struggle. Learning to slow down a conversation, to take time to listen to your lover’s thoughts and to reflect back something of what you have heard is a critical skill in committed relationships. While many people develop these skills in households where parents and siblings modeled this type of active and reflective, too often clients share with me that their parents “hardly ever listened to them.”

As therapy unfolds, I often mark progress when I see partners increasing their capacity to listen with curiosity and rapt - or at least eager - attention, to their partner’s concerns, stories, or requests. This usually reflects a growing sense that both parties know there is enough time to be heard. Implicitly, each party is thinking something along the lines of: “I have all the time in the world for you and I trust you will have time for me.”  Or perhaps even, “I can give you my full attention right now and at this moment, I don’t need or expect to get it back from you. I will have other opportunities.” This is a key shift to a growing sense of caring and being cared for.

John Gottman, the well-respected marriage researcher, talks about the importance of building basic trust in a marriage or committed partnership. He defines trust as a “cooperative gain” model in which each party maintains the belief that both partners can be “winners,” that is, benefit from the other’s actions or intentions.  The key to building this trust is developing and maintaining overarching view of your partner as being collaborative and supportive when it comes to your interests or needs. A primary and powerful way to build trust is through the art of listening.

So, how can couples use this information to effect change in their communication patterns?

The next time you sit down with your partner for a nice long talk, become mindful of how well (or not) you are listening. 

-       Do you stick with your partner’s topic and track it?

-       Do you ask questions conveying evidence of your attention and curiosity?

-       Do you respect and validate your mate’s concerns?

-       Do you offer emotional support and empathy in word, expression or deed?

or, instead,

-       Do you immediately jump in with your own agenda?

-       Are you rehearsing your response/rebuttal even as you “listen”?

-       Are you looking for holes or contradictions in your partner’s story?

-       Do you find yourself distracted by your thoughts, your smart phone, or events going on around you?

When you persist in modeling these skills, you will most probably discover your partner sharing more, criticizing less and, remarkably, in turn listening to you.  Even if you start out the use of reflective listening, validation and empathic in a manner that feels contrived or scripted, over time, your capacity to listen fully will grow, such that, recalling the wolf in the Little Red Riding Hood fable, you will have developed ears the better to “hear you with.”

Meeting up with Shame

‘You can find shame in every house, burning in an ashtray, hanging framed upon a wall, covering a bed. But nobody notices it any more.”
- Salman Rushdie

 It’s rare for me to receive a call from a potential client asking to work on his or her shame. Yet shame, that basic feeling of inadequacy, of either not being good enough or simply not being enough, is a primary emotion often lurking in the shadows of all our lives.  Shame is closely linked to poor self-esteem, self-criticism and even some self-destructive habits but is distinct from all of them. It is such a painful and challenging feeling that many people, especially those who have received little empathy and support early in life, will go to great lengths to avoid experiencing it. Some people try to outrun shame by becoming workaholics or perfectionists. Others numb it with alcohol, drugs and other addictive habits or distractions.  

The sensations and postures associated with shame are distinct. Whereas the experience of guilt connects to a sense of “I have done something wrong,” shame is an earlier developmental experience of being wrong as in “I am wrong/unworthy/unlovable to even stronger feelings of “I am horrid.”  Shame is tied to attachment needs; it evokes the possibility of losing connection to the loved one who provides safety and security.  The physical signals – head down, avoidance of eye contact, chest caving in, and shrinking down/trying to hide – are social cues of submission. The sensation associated with pain ranges from discomfort to actual pain.

Don’t expect to rid yourself of guilt and shame. Both are universal emotions and psychobiological states and, when they develop in a caring environment, they motivate us to adapt to familial and societal expectations. This is not necessarily a problem.  One child benefits from learning she cannot yell out in the library or pull her sister’s hair.  An older child discovers the social consequences of copying off his classmate’s answer sheet or eating an entire gallon of ice cream that dad was saving for tonight’s company.

It is only when shame arises frequently, overly intensely and in the absence of caring adults that the experience of it grows intolerable. That’s when people go to great lengths to avoid feeling shame. Unfortunately, too many parents rely on shame as part of their discipline arsenal, failing to understand the potential harm they are inflicting. What makes shame so painful is the lack of contact with a supportive person.  In the throws of shame, people feel alone or, worse yet, experience others as threatening, harmful or rejecting. 

Shame emerges during the second year of life when the child experiences a parent’s displeasure and becomes very still in response. Most caring parents will respond to the child’s distress with a caring response such as a hug or words of reassurance, thereby repairing the momentary break in the child-parent connection. But for children whose parents do not respond in this supportive way, shame quickly becomes associated with the overwhelming fear of loss of love or or danger/risk of incurring a parent’s anger.

When I work with individual clients, I aim to create with them a setting in which they can bring forward aspects of their self that have had to be pushed away, or even denied. Shame is one of the key aspects to come forward as clients learn about its origins. But this is not an intellectual exercise. In therapy, you learn to feel the related sensations without becoming overwhelmed.  Over time, you learn to relate to these sensations with less dread and judgment and the experience of shame itself loses its intensity.

In working with couples in my office, a husband, for example, may fear that only scorn or anger or perhaps indifference is going to be reflected back when he risks glancing at his wife’s face, so avoidance and withdrawal become the safer option.  His wife may view him as rejecting or unloving when in reality he is protecting himself.  When a husband is then encouraged to look up from this much more familiar place of withdrawal to receive warmth, caring and concern the anticipation of shame is challenged and, with enough repetition, undone.

So how can you work outside of therapy on starting to heal the shame-filled part of yourself?

- First, approach it with curiosity and compassion. It is often judgment about shameful feelings that make shame seemingly unbearable.

- Second, see if you can find a trusting friend or relative with whom to share this aspect of yourself. Being met with acceptance and understanding is profoundly healing. Because shame is so tied to wanting to stay hidden in the shadows, the experience of revealing yourself challenges shame at its source. Because unhealthy shame arose in the past when a significant other (parent/lover/teacher/etc…) failed to offer repair and support, receiving this caring response in the present is also healing. If you cannot think of a safe and supportive person in your life with whom to share this aspect of yourself, consider evoking a favorite deceased grandmother, a universal spiritual presence such as the Dalai Lama, or a figure from fiction.

- Third, offer yourself some comfort. This can range from putting your hand on your heart to taking some deep breaths to offering yourself words of comfort.

- Fourth, play with movement. That is, move very slowly and incrementally between the posture of shame (head down, eyes averted, chest collapsed) and the posture of pride (head up, eyes focused, chest and shoulders lifted.) Do this a couple of times then pause and notice your experience.

- Finally, naming the emotion of shame and its accompanying sensations having a narrative for your experience can help with mastering the experience. Instead of being in the grips of shame, a wise and mindful part of you can hold it. 

Facing the Dragon: Helping Your Child Cope with Fear

In the wake of the Paris terrorist attacks, there is an interview with a young boy and his father that has gone viral.  Part of the appeal, I believe, is the father’s capacity to respond to his son’s fear in an age-appropriate, genuine and so attuned to the child’s needs. For those who have not seen the video, after reading this post, I encourage you to watch it: Parisian father and son.

I am often asked by parents how much information to share with their child when it comes to upsetting or frightening news, be it earthquakes, tornadoes or terrorism on the wider world stage, or medical diagnoses, death, divorce and other dramas playing out within the confines of the family home.  Parents and even parenting experts can vary widely on this topic with some wanting to protect children at all costs and others erring too much on a perceived need to have their kids “toughen up.”

It is a biological and psychological imperative for parents to want to guard their children from harm, including shielding them from painful or scary news. But we do children a disservice when they sense that the grownups around them are distracted, anxious, sad or fearful yet are offering no explanation or understanding.

So what do you share? How do you share? How much do you share? The father depicted in this video provides a wonderful model for navigating these challenging waters. First, he crouches down to the ground and envelops his son, offering the protection and security of his own body. He listens closely to his son’s evident fear and concern about “the mean people” and does not deny or minimize his son’s concerns. In fact, he not only acknowledges the existence of “mean people,” he also adds that these threatening people exist throughout the world. He then goes on to offer his son concrete examples (not abstract reassurances or platitudes which, at this child’s stage of development, would hold no meaning) of how families and communities can respond to threat by pointing to the flowers that line some of the sites where Parisians were gunned down.  The boy expands upon his father’s offering by pointing out the candles and asking if these too are a type of protection. When his father responds in an attuned way, the boy looks again to the flowers and candles, visibly relaxes, and smiles. When asked by the interviewer how he is doing, he says he is feeling better.

When my clients seek parenting guidance for working with their children’ fears, I often encourage them to share basic information. For example, dad might begin the conversation by telling 8-year-old Joni that mom, who is losing the battle to cancer, is in the hospital and close to dying. Or mom and dad might tell 4-year-old Dan that they are going to have to find somewhere new to live because their home burned down. The next and perhaps most critical part of the conversation is to invite questions and then to watch, listen and, when needed, offer physical comfort.

If the child has questions, they should be answered in as clear and simple a manner as possible. More questions? Keep answering. No questions suggests that either your child is satisfied with the provided explanation or is only able to take in a little bit of the information for now. Parents should also provide opportunities to return to the difficult conversation at a later time. In order to reply with clarity and compassion, parents first needs to be grounded in their own truth about the situation and be calm, present and receptive. 

Children should not and, in fact, cannot be protected from danger or the fear danger evokes. We are wired to detect and respond to threat from the earliest age, but children, just like adults, do better when they face it in the context of a safe and loving relationship. For instance, a 2008 study found that participants perceived the steepness of a hill to be greater when they looked at it alone versus when they stood alongside a friend.  A 2006 study found reduced activity in regions of the brain associated with pain and with alarm when women undergoing a brain MRI held their husband’s hand, compared to a control group.

It is when parents offer support and guidance and stand with their child to face into their fears that children grow. Within the attuned and safe containment provided by responsive parents, children learn to tolerate the discomfort that accompany fearful sensations, ride the wave of these unpleasant feelings, and then return to sources of strength and comfort, often adding a new capacity to respond to the source of threat with new coping skills.