I have a teaching that God gave me years ago, to help me explain what happens when a girl goes through puberty but it can also be a great tool for anyone to use if you find yourself in an overly emotional state. Often times hormones of aging can change, or living in chronic pain can cause us to become more emotional.
The important thing is that we try to recognize and acknowledge those things, to ourselves and others, that we are feeling emotional at the moment and need time to process things. This not only helps us but also those around us, give them patience with our behavior for a bit.
I taught this to my daughter long before puberty began so that she could be prepared.
I told her that we ALL have an “Emotion Scale”. It’s what we base our actions on when considering something emotional that we’re feeling.
It’s a 1-10 scale and when things are in balance, we can usually trust it in making decisions.
However, there would come a point in her life that something that SHOULD feel like a 3, all of the sudden FEELS like a NINE! In that state, there isn’t much anyone can do to rationalize the feelings away.
The problem is that, to everyone else it’s still a 3 and they can’t understand why you’re treating it like a NINE.
At this point, the best thing for EVERYONE is for you to go to your room, pray about it and let yourself calm down. After a little while, you’ll usually realize that it’s actually a 3 and then things will be much better for everyone involved! Then you can rationally address the issues.
I also informed the men/boys in the house that trying to MAKE her see things their way was a waste of time and would make things worse!
A quick but VERY important piece of advice for any man, NEVER tell any woman that she’s “just being emotional”!
That is a form of Gaslighting and pushing the blame onto her. She may be feeling the emotions more intensely but that doesn’t mean that there still isn’t an issue that needs to be addressed, when she calms down.
Using her emotions as a weapon for you to win a war is abusive and another issue all together, that the man needs serious counseling for.
They could be completely correct in their assessment of the situation but trying to force someone to rationalize while they’re feeling intense emotions can only make things worse for everyone involved.
Give the emotional person the time that they need to calm down and feel what they’re feeling and then approach the situation after they are ready. That is, assuming that the emotional person deals with themselves in a healthy manner.
They should not be allowed to stay in this state, as an excuse for bad behavior, for days or weeks. No, this should still be addressed in a timely manner, because our emotions are not a license to abuse others and behave badly, disturbing everyone else around them.
Given them an hour or two and then ask if they’re ready to talk calmly about the issue. If they aren’t yet, let them know that you’ll wait another hour and then you’ll talk. Our at the most, let them sleep on it, and rest. That will give them the opportunity to wake up with a new perspective.
At that point, all of the people involved have had the time to settle down. It’s also often good to have a peaceful listener to help guide the interaction and be an “interpreter“ of sorts.
With young people, that can be a parent, but with an adult that might require counseling, if the issues can’t be resolved over time.
I also let the men in the house know that, even though they can’t physically see the symptoms of their emotions, they TOO have hormonal ups and downs and would have these types of moments as well! I can attest to the fact that sometimes my husband can be even more emotional than I am, it just comes across differently.
I hope this teaching might be of help to some of you! I can say, from personal experience, that this works! I have very, well balanced, young adult children, and this has also helped me on a regular basis too!
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