The Art of Empathy (39 page)

TEACHING CHILDREN HOW TO SELF-SOOTHE

Screen time can be soothing in its way, but obviously, so can being held, rocked, and loved. However, in order to develop Emotion Regulation skills, babies also need to learn how to soothe themselves. Games can help them learn. My niece Holly's game of peek-a-boo had an important rhythmical flow to it, and that rhythm was guided by her daughter's ability to regulate her emotions and return to a calm, grounded state. Holly helped her daughter cycle up into shock, fear, and raucous laughter, and then she waited until the baby calmed herself down before she scared her again. This cycling is crucial to my grandniece's development of Emotion Regulation skills, because she needs to learn not just how to feel and identify emotions, but also how to ramp up into them, complete their actions, and soothe herself afterward.
Self-soothing is absolutely vital for the development of healthy emotional and empathic skills.

In
Chapter 5
, I gave you three self-soothing skills—Grounding, Rejuvenation, and Resourcing—to help you return to a calm, focused, resourceful state. These skills help you intentionally down-regulate your emotional activation. I've also given you ways to
activate
your emotions safely, with Conscious Complaining, Burning Contracts, and Conscious Questioning. Notice, however, that all of my emotional activation skills are cyclical. There's a clear beginning, where you set your intentions and get yourself focused; an activation of your emotions; an action component; and a clear ending, where your emotional activation is resolved and you can return to your grounded, focused state. Each of my empathic mindfulness skills helps you learn to work with emotions in the way a healthy developing baby learns emotions.

It's never too late to learn basic developmental emotional skills that help you feel and activate your emotions, complete their actions, and then downregulate and soothe yourself again. But it's also never too early to learn these skills, since self-soothing skills are essential to a baby's social and emotional development. Peek-a-boo teaches many things, but self-soothing is a crucial part of the game, and it's a crucial part of emotional, empathic, and social development. As you empathically observe the emotional development of your children (or the children you know or work with), take a close look at their self-soothing behaviors—not just in terms of the calming capacities of these behaviors, but also in terms of their fundamental contribution to social, emotional, and empathic development.

Here are some examples of self-soothing behaviors: rocking, self-hugging, reaching for hugs, thumb sucking, pacifier sucking, hair smoothing, hair chewing, making repetitive sounds, scratching, self-talk, toe walking, hand flapping, spinning, humming, devotion to favorite objects (toys, blankets, stuffed animals, etc.), repetitive movements, running, intentional stillness, snuggling, fort building, foot stomping, object stacking or organizing, climbing, sensory seeking, squealing, singing, dancing, or, my old favorite, fidgeting. This list is not exhaustive, but I'm including a lot of different selfsoothing examples so you can identify these types of behaviors in the babies and children you know—and, of course, in yourself.

Self-soothing behaviors are crucial for Emotion Regulation and the eventual development of all other aspects of emotional skills, empathic skills, and social skills. If you can look at them developmentally, you'll see that most of
these behaviors are rhythmical and that many of them appear in connection to specific activities, emotions, or situations—thumb sucking in an unfamiliar environment, dancing in response to joy or anxiety, humming during intense concentration, spinning after returning from a noisy day at preschool, or floor pounding during angry outbursts. Each child is unique, and each self-soothing behavior is a unique expression of emotional skill and awareness. But
all
children find ways to manage the emotions and situations they encounter with self-soothing behaviors.

Sadly, most of us haven't been trained to look at these behaviors empathically. Instead, we try to extinguish most self-soothing behaviors in children (and we absolutely don't allow them in adults). As a direct result of this repressive bodily control, we don't tend to realize, for instance, that a humming, rocking, self-talking, book-stacking, thumb-sucking child requires a great number of self-soothing behaviors for some reason. Instead, we attempt to shame away and extinguish at least some of these behaviors.
Don't.
Do
not
do this. Self-soothing has a crucial purpose, and taking away a child's coping mechanisms is simply cruel.

If you have a child who selfsoothes continually, then you have a sensory-aware, emotionally sensitive, socially receptive individual who's very likely a hyperempath. Your job is to put on your anthropologist's hat and use your full-bodied Einfühlung capacity to empathically assess this child's entire environment—socially, emotionally, nutritionally, aesthetically, and ergonomically—to see if there's any way to make these multiple self-soothing behaviors less necessary for his or her social and emotional survival. Selfsoothing behaviors are crucial for Emotion Regulation, and if a child is self-soothing continually, then he or she needs direct physical support, emotional and empathic understanding, and help with thresholding.

A highly sensitive and sensory-aware child might need a quieter environment, less social interaction, and multiple ways to calm his or her body—through movement, water play, regular baths, tactile play (finger painting, clay work), free play with no rules and no enforced purpose, snuggling time, more time with a calm and trusted adult, or more time with animals. Another thing that can help may seem strange, and that is to have less eye contact with the child. Eye contact is very emotionally intense—it's a major factor in Emotion Contagion. Although it helps some children develop emotion recognition skills, eye contact is sort of overkill for some hyperempaths (especially autistic ones). Some of us don't need eye contact to
pick up emotions, and eye contact actually creates a kind of emotional overwhelm—it's too much. I wouldn't simply stop meeting the eyes of a child before checking in, but if you can say, “I know that eye contact is very intense, so you don't need to look directly in my eyes. Let's see if there's another way for us to be close,” then you can address the unworkable empathic activation in one area while offering workable empathic closeness in another.

If you see children (or adults) who can't meet your gaze, understand this: You may be in the presence of a hyperempath whose Emotion Contagion skills are immense, but whose Emotion Regulation skills may not have caught up yet. One way to tell is to (respectfully) look for rhythmic selfsoothing behaviors. In adults, they get pretty tiny, because we're all shamed out of our self-soothing—but if you look, you'll probably see face touching, hair smoothing, finger drumming, subtle rocking or shaking, lip biting, throat clearing, hand gesturing, or some other repetitive movement. If you know these people well enough, you may also find the powerful self-soothing behavior we talked about in
Chapter 6
—orthorexia. If you've studied books on reading body language, you might mischaracterize self-soothing people as anxious and untrustworthy, or possibly as liars—
sigh.
But self-soothing behaviors are necessary for everyone, and hyperempaths tend to need a rich and varied assortment of them.

When I'm near someone who employs a lot of self-soothing behaviors, or when I realize that I'm in the presence of a very emotionally sensitive person or animal, I move into intentional emotional hygiene behaviors so that I don't make matters worse. I set very good boundaries, ground and resource myself, and soften my focus so that I present a calm and emotionally nonneedy presence. I make minimal eye contact, unless the person or animal initiates it, and I subtly get into their rhythm. I have a ton of self-soothing behaviors, so I often rock slightly to empathically signal, “Hi, self-soothing is normal and okay!” And I usually gain a new friend.

Contrast this to the way most of us were taught to behave around hyperempathic people who are trying to self-regulate in whatever way they can. Even if we don't say anything, we start to feel ungrounded, spiky, distrustful, needy, and pushy. Our very being seems to say, “Hey! Why aren't you
looking
at me? I feel lonely and you're the reason! Why are you so filled with tics? I feel nervous now, and you're the reason! Stop being such a freak; hold still and look me in the eyes, damn it!” I'll tell you a little secret: hyperempaths can hear this wordless behavior loud and clear, and it makes their situation worse.

Sadly, children hear these kinds of messages out loud, because it's completely acceptable to shame a child openly about such behaviors: “Stop fidgeting; do you have worms?” “Look me in the eyes, or I'll know you're lying.” “Take that thumb out of your mouth; you're not a baby anymore.” “Isn't nine awfully
old
to still sleep with a teddy bear?” These are examples of informal shaming, but there are formal versions as well. In many kinds of socialization therapies, children with autism, ADHD, and other forms of neurological diversity are actually forced to make eye contact and to extinguish their self-soothing behaviors, or to perform them privately, as if they're a source of shame. In the autism therapy industry, these behaviors are called
stims,
which is short for stimulation and which is a pretty creepy way to talk about the self-regulation that these hypersensitive and hyperempathic children are trying to achieve. But adult autistics are reclaiming the word, and the new attitude is: “Love me, love my stims!” I like that. I stim, and I'm proud! Free the stims!

Stims, self-regulating behaviors, and self-soothing behaviors exist for crucial reasons. They have a distinct purpose in the development of Emotion Regulation skills, as well as in the development of emotional and empathic skills. They're necessary, they're purposeful, and they're an intrinsic part of the development of empathy. So respect the stims, my friend. If you see a lot of rhythmic self-regulation behaviors in someone, you're looking at an emotionally sensitive, sensory-aware, and possibly overwhelmed person. If this person is a child in your home, he or she needs a supportive, soothing, empathic terrarium with thresholds, boundaries, and a series of quiet and wonderful places that are set aside specifically for him or her. These places don't need to be big—you can build a secret reading fort with two chairs and a blanket, or you can create a magical ocean getaway in a bathtub full of toys and bubbles. You can create a secret den under a tree in the backyard, or you can help the child create a bed menagerie of stuffed animals so that he or she can sleep, safe and warm, in a forest or a jungle filled with animal protectors.

It's also important to carefully study the physical environment of a sensitive and self-soothing child and to examine everything that comes into contact with his or her body and senses, including clothing, bedding, scents, sounds, lights, and any other sensory inputs. Many of my autistic friends report that when they were little, the sounds of the washing machine next door or the scratchy feeling of tags in their clothing were excruciating, but they didn't have the verbal language to tell anyone about it. Instead, in response to these
sensory assaults, they increased their stims and their self-soothing behaviors. Sadly, many of their parents or caretakers focused on these behaviors instead of on what had made them necessary, and the children were punished, isolated, or exhorted to stop stimming. Very few people even thought to check these children's environments. Luckily, stories like this have helped many modern-day parents of autistic children become aware of the purpose of stims and address what's actually going on, rather than just attempting to extinguish these necessary self-soothing behaviors.

If you have a strong self-soother in your home, look at everything from his or her body outward—clothing, sounds, scents, flavors, lights (especially in the bedroom—is it dark enough and quiet enough at night?), social interactions, emotional tone in the home, emotional tone in child care or school, his or her relationships, and the quality of his or her eating and sleep. Find out whether there is anything you can do to help him or her feel more grounded, focused, protected, soothed, and regulated. Our empathic mindfulness skills may also help, so I'm including kid-focused versions of them here.

EMPATHIC MINDFULNESS SKILLS FOR CHILDREN

You can teach children intentional forms of grounding and resourcing when they're old enough to understand how to inhale deeply and exhale and let go of tension or how to find a place inside their bodies that's very comfortable and strong right now. You can also help children learn to do some form of Conscious Complaining so that they can unload all of the emotional impressions they gather during the day. In toddlers, you can even create regular Intentional Tantrum games (we'll explore more about tantrums below) to help them learn to playact, observe, experience, and develop humor about tantrums, which are a very important (though aggravating!) part of children's development of Emotion Regulation skills.

You can also help children create many different forms of rejuvenation play. For instance, you can help them imagine how they feel when they see their favorite place, pet, friend, or grandparent, and to breathe that feeling inside their bodies, from the top of their heads all the way down to their toes—delicious! Or you can create quiet rejuvenation forts and nooks around your home, where children can be surrounded by wonderful things like art, family photos, or collections of their favorite toys and books.

Conscious Questioning for anxiety is also wonderful for children, because so many little ones become filled with worry—especially when they get into
school with all of its incessant task-completion requirements. Helping children write down all of their tasks and all of their worries is a self-soothing act, and it's a very specific emotional-channeling skill that may help them (naturally) reduce some of the repetitive self-soothing behaviors that spring up when their worries and anxieties feel overwhelming.