If you read my last blog post, I might have left you with a wrong impression so let me start off by saying, all things considered, I had a great childhood. I grew up in a suburban, middle-classed neighborhood where Happy and Joy were present and connected with us daily. Excited was responsible for leading the daily, outside games. Love and Joy kept track of any problems that neighbors encountered and responded accordingly.

Our school system was full of Pride where accepting responsibility for our own actions was expected, a sense of belonging was felt, rules were followed and a sense of fairness existed. My parents came to our activities with Pride and Joy, often accompanied by Worry for good measure as my mother felt most comfortable having her tag along.

Yearly, Love and Happy made sure that we connected with our extended family in Iowa. Those memories I truly treasure! And I felt Acceptance when I became a member of my church at age 12.

So imagine my cultural shock when I began working in the juvenile court system in 2001. Anger’s wrath, and fury permeated the walls and oozed from the tiled floors. Security stood guard at the entrance and guarded each courtroom as if to tell Anger that he was not welcome. But Anger doesn’t listen. It simply doesn’t function like that. In spite of the Court’s attempts to contain a child’s Anger; loud, blaring alarms often sounded and all available personnel would converge to wrestle and control it. Temporarily, Anger was seized and contained but the root of the problem still existed and was likely responsible, or at least in part, for the 25,411 referrals that were experienced in 2001 (partial picture of crimes listed below):

Murder, 3

Assault & Menacing, 1,322

Sexual Offenses, 184

Arson, 879

Aggravated robbery/Robbery, 863

Kidnapping and Extortion, 27

In addition, crimes were being committed by children 10 and under. Those referrals included:

Assault, 108

Sexual Offenses, 27

Arson, 91

Robbery, 50

Theft and Fraud, 64

My last year of employment at the court was in 2008. Anger, again – at least in part, was likely responsible for the following partial list 20,465 referrals:

Murder, 5

Manslaughter, 1

Felonious and Aggravated Assaults, 68

Felony Assaults, 91

Assaults, Menacing and Stalking, 865

Kidnapping, 5

Rape, 79

Sexual Assaults, Prostitution and Obscenity, 94

Arson, 23

Inciting Riot and related offenses, 20

Domestic Violence, 522

Carrying Concealed Weapons, 88

In 2012, based on this article – 22,000 referrals occurred at juvenile court. Clearly, we were not going in the right direction. https://www.daytondailynews.com/news/local-govt–politics/incumbent-two-others-seek-juvenile-judge-seat/ILqTtum1xV6M6PBxnNozZN/

Anger seemed to have crept and crawled into every crevasse of our society. The following sobering picture comes to my mind. Imagine, 22,000 children standing alongside one another with their arms stretched out. Based on the average height of 5 ½ feet, they would span 23 miles. And if you take into account the impact that these 22,000 crimes inflicted onto their victims and the impact it had within the victims’ families as well as the defendants’ families, the larger, bigger picture becomes painfully bleak. These statistics depict the state of affairs in ONE of the EIGHTY-EIGHT counties in ONE of our FIFTY states, Ohio. A connection crisis exists and seemingly to the degree that we have become immune to it. Each of these 22,000 referrals were children with names and their own life story. I saw the pain on their faces, the scars on their skin and felt the hurt in their hearts.

My internal yardstick began measuring my story against their stories. This was yet another humbling experience. My childhood was a walk in the park compared to the heartbreaking stories I was hearing on a daily basis. Their stories allowed me to look at my own life with a softer lens and a more grateful heart.

Having struggled with Anger as I have previously shared https://www.facebook.com/discoverytales/photos/a.388822801190872.91254.338669412872878/2014333611973108/?type=3&theater, – and knowing how long it took me to develop coping skills, heal and function somewhat “normally,”  I felt a sense of urgency to proactively help the children prior to being involved with the court system.

But in order for me to pursue my “calling,” I knew I needed to find and connect with co-workers who were not only functioning in this vast bureaucratic, ineffective system but could be my guiding light. In my first week, I sought and found my confidante as well as four other co-workers that acted as my bright spots. I sought their help frequently to navigate my naïve self through unchartered waters.

WE are our society. We all carry emotions are emotions with us, it’s inevitable. When we greet and connect with others, it is important to know who you are bringing on the stage with you; Anger, Worry, Fear, Regret, Anxiety and/or Love. The decisions of how we connect daily with others impact our society, as emotions are contagious.  In every encounter, as Sparky says, we can either BE the light or BLOCK the light. We choose. In every act, we choose.

Great article on how to deepen connections

https://chopra.com/articles/10-ways-to-deepen-your-connections-with-others

Below are links that you may find helpful:

A video on how babies rely on their parents for emotional support/emotional connection:

https://www.bing.com/videos/

Research conducted by Search Institute that examines 40 assets that children need to succeed. Well worth a look:

https://www.search-institute.org/developmental-assets-fr

A great article on Social/Emotional Competencies:

https://www.cssp.org/…/SF_Social-Emotional-Competence-of-Ch…

Suicide Prevention:

The Stellar Way, Discovering the Star Within, is a product of years of researching, creating and testing the bibliotherapy-based curriculum. In two separate studies it was found to be statistically significant in the areas tested. It’s a reflection of both personal and professional experiences and has been designed to ameliorate anger long before it becomes problematic. The supplemental guide is coming soon!

Find this book on Amazon at http://a.co/2NS5NXn

We need one another. Existence otherwise is unbearable.

The trauma that my mother and father both experienced growing up created a disconnection with their parents. So naturally this impacted the cast of Emotional Characters that appeared on their stage.

On my mother’s stage Love, Happy, Jealousy, Shame, Fear, Worry, Sad, Alone and Anger all vied, and argued for the spotlight. They would jockey for position based on what was going on around them. If Love felt safe, she would take center stage. If Love felt unsafe or insecure, Worry, Fear, Shame were lying in wait. But because of the unresolved trauma that occurred in her life Jealousy and Shame, often unwittingly hogged the stage.

As I mentioned in my post yesterday, intuitively or on some level I knew I needed to connect with others and found two places where I felt like I could belong, church and at high school. But because my mom often felt Alone growing up, her introverted personality was not comfortable seeking connections which impaired her ability to function – certainly not because she wanted it that way but because she didn’t have the connection with her parents or other role models to operate otherwise.

Growing up I never quite understood Jealousy on my mother’s stage. But despite her best attempts to wrestle and control it, Jealousy seemed to win out far too often. Of course, I can’t be for certain, but I believe that Shame and Jealousy were operating in tandem and she didn’t have the requisite skills to function differently.

Just as I experienced a breakdown in my defenses after turning 40, my mom did as well. Shame, Jealousy and Anger, slowly chipped away at my mother’s defenses for 40 years. Happy was no longer able to fend them off. When my mother and father divorced, Shame, Hurt and Sorrow made sure it was unbearable for her as having her own family eased the pain she experienced when she was young. She was faced with standing in the shadows of Shame again. The connection she felt as a family unit had been destroyed. Without that connection, albeit a difficult one at times, my mom was lost and her existence became unbearable. She attempted suicide.

As you might imagine, I was devasted to find her. Since feelings are contagious, Shame paralyzed me, Hurt erupted and Sorrow trailed behind.

But fortunately, when feelings are experienced and expressed they are temporary.  We can learn how to control and manage them, instead of them controlling us. Emotions are not to be Feared, they are to be embraced, experienced and expressed for it is then and only then can our life be a truly fulfilling one. If you are struggling with your own feelings, please reach out to a counselor in your area.

This post is dedicated to my mother, Marcia Bourne, who passed away in January, 2016 but rest assured, she is very much alive in my life – as I feel her guiding me every step along the way.

Below are links that you may find helpful:

https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=tronick+still+face&view=detail&mid=A5C0B957E116723A14C0A5C0B957E116723A14C0&FORM=VIRE

https://www.cssp.org/reform/strengthening-families/2013/SF_Social-Emotional-Competence-of-Children.pdf

When I met Anger on that fateful day in the department store I knew my life had dramatically changed. In that moment, there was simply no way for me to understand its impact but I could sense its threat and it terrified me. My body had felt the commotion when Anger unpacked, moved in and made himself at home and my spirit was repulsed by his unbridled presence.

Since I didn’t want Anger to have any voice or presence on my stage, I hate to admit it, but I bargained with him. I told Anger that in no uncertain terms that he was not to speak. He was not to be heard – not one syllable – not one breath. Well, as you might have suspected, we argued. I can’t recall the exact conversation but we came to an agreement. Anger would only be permitted to be on the outside of my body.

But he was determined to have a strong presence and insisted on a prominent stage. So I relented and told him that he could be a “chip” on my shoulder as that seemed the safest route and besides that was how I had learned to deal with him by observing my mom handle him in that manner. Although I can’t be for sure, I suspect that she had had the same conversation with Anger and came to a similar agreement. In fact, my mom and my dad, for that matter, seldom talked about any feelings and I know it was due to the way that they were raised as feelings were rarely, if ever, discussed in my mother’s or father’s childhood homes.

My parents divorced when I was 18. At this time in our society, divorce was uncommon. Shame took pride in this and used it against me frequently. But at the time, I did not know his name. I could only feel his presence.

So when he showed up at the department store, I recognized him. He seemed overly enthusiastic to be in my presence. The only thing that Happy thought to do was to frequently challenge Shame to games of Hide and Seek. Shame was sneaky though. He knew Happy’s motives and outplayed her. Shame could not and would not be reckoned with.

Growing up, I often felt a disconnection at home and believed many times that I had a miserable, rotten life. Fortunately, intuitively or on some level I knew to seek out other people who had strong, family connections and am so grateful for them. Also, I was blessed to have neighbors take me to their church and became a member of it at age 12 and although I seldom go now, I still consider David’s United Church of Christ to be my church family.

The other place I felt like I belonged was at Fairmont West High School and still feel a special connection with all my classmates because of the sense of belonging that I experienced at that time. Even today, when I am in the company of any of them, or attend a class reunion or connect through Facebook, I can recapture that same feeling. I am so grateful to have had these two places where I felt like I belonged as they filled the void that was missing within my own family.

But in defense of my own family; my mom, dad, brother and myself, we all did the very best with what we knew. It was only in 1990 that the term ‘Emotional Intelligence’ was coined by Peter Salovey and John D. Mayer describing it as “a form of social intelligence that involves the ability to monitor one’s own and others’ feelings and emotions, to discriminate among them, and to use this information to guide one’s thinking and action”.

So in closing, and in case you did not read yesterday’s blog, I want to share again my discovery of Saarni’s Theory of Emotional Competency and am doing so in a more specific manner:

• Awareness of one’s emotional state, including the possibility that one is experiencing multiple emotions, and at even more mature levels, awareness that one might also not be consciously aware of one’s feelings due to unconscious dynamics or selective inattention.
• Ability to discern others’ emotions, based on situational and expressive cues that have some degree of cultural consensus as to their emotional meaning.
• Ability to use the vocabulary of emotion and expression terms commonly available in one’s (sub-culture) and at more mature levels to acquire cultural scripts that link emotion with social roles.
• Capacity for empathic and sympathetic involvement in others’ emotional experiences.
• Ability to realize that inner emotional state need not correspond to outer expression, both in oneself and in others, and at more mature levels the ability to understand that one’s emotional expressive behavior may impact on another and to take this into account in one’s self-presentation strategies.
• Capacity for adaptive coping with aversive or distressing emotions by using self-regulatory strategies that ameliorate the intensity or temporal duration of such emotional states (e.g., “stress hardiness”).
• Awareness that the structure or nature of relationships is in part defined by both the degree of emotional immediacy or genuineness of expressive display and by the degree of reciprocity or symmetry within the relationship; e.g., mature intimacy is in part defined by mutual or reciprocal sharing of genuine emotions, whereas a parent-child relationship may have asymmetric sharing of genuine emotions.
• Capacity for emotional self-efficacy; The individual views her or himself as feeling, overall, the way he or she wants to feel. That is, emotional self-efficacy means that one accepts one’s emotional experience, whether unique and eccentric or culturally conventional, and this acceptance is in alignment with the individual’s beliefs about what constitutes desirable emotional “balance.” In essence, one is living in accord with one’s personal theory of emotion when one demonstrates emotional self-efficacy that is integrated with one’s moral sense.

Now with my new discovery, I have a roadmap to help me navigate Anger, Mortified, Shame, Sad, Happy along with all of my other emotions that I have. Emotions are not to be Feared, they are to be embraced, experienced and expressed for it is then and only then can our life be a truly fulfilling one. And just as importantly for me, as I believe this is my soul’s purpose, I can share this with the children and the families that I serve.

Let’s face it – stuffing my feelings for most of my life has caused considerable difficulties for me both personally and professionally, particularly given that Happy and Sad have predominantly been behind the steering wheel. It’s like driving a car with two gears. Except each gear has varying degrees; put on the song Rocky Top and it’s like Happy on steroids or watch a tender movie and Sad becomes waterworks.

So Depression seemed a natural suitor. At 35, he knocked on my door and I obliged. My father had passed away, the man that I thought I was going to marry thought otherwise, I thought I was going to lose my house and one of my best friends moved. Repeated pleas from my mom and friends led me to counseling.

Fear and Anxious greeted me in the counselor’s waiting room and kept me company while I waited. The counselor’s warm smile and gentle disposition seemed to ease them both. She asked, “What brings you to counseling today?” I recited the series of events to her.

She then asked me, “So, how do you feel about this?”

I said, “I don’t know.” As odd as this may sound, I truly did not know. And then the same scenario was repeated two more times with the exact question and the same answer. Doesn’t she have anything more in her bag of tricks other than ONE question? I thought. I stopped going because clearly she didn’t have any idea of what she was doing.

Several years later my interest in Anger began during my 8-and-a-half year involvement with the juvenile court system. It seemed every child who entered the court had a chip on their shoulder. While this chip manifested in different ways, Anger was its common denominator.

Determined to proactively help children before they became part of the juvenile justice system, I pursued and completed my master’s degree in counseling at age 51. I researched three main areas; anger, social skills and biblotherapy (a story with therapeutic value). One of my biggest epiphanies came when I found Saarni’s Theory of Emotional Competency. I felt like I had discovered the Holy Grail! It had the following eight components:

• Awareness of one’s own emotions,
• Ability to discern and understand other’s emotions,
• Ability to use the vocabulary of emotion and expression,
• Capacity for empathic involvement,
• Ability to differentiate subjective emotional experience from external emotion expression,
• Adaptive coping with aversive emotions and distressing circumstances,
• Awareness of emotional communication within relationships, and
• Capacity for emotional self-efficacy.

I read them and re-read them again. I only had one component – the capacity for empathic involvement. In that moment I flashed back to when I was 35 years old and sitting in the counselor’s office. I replayed the events in my mind as to what had happened and I became painfully aware that it had not been the counselor who had not known what she was doing but it had been me.

My passion is to help children develop connections with themselves and others so they don’t turn out to be middle aged and not know what they are doing.

The Stellar Way, Discovering the Star Within, is a product of years of researching, creating and testing the bibliotherapy-based curriculum. In two separate studies it was found to be statistically significant in the areas tested. It’s a reflection of both personal and professional experiences and has been designed to ameliorate anger long before it becomes problematic. The supplemental guide is coming soon! Find this book on Amazon at http://a.co/2NS5NXn

Tomorrow’s blog: The Beginning

I met Anger shortly after turning the age of forty. It was not an amiable introduction. No pleasantries were exchanged – not even a handshake and certainly no eye contact was made. Instead, my body felt like it had been taken hostage. I felt out of control as a foreign wave of emotion swept through me. My face was flushed, my hands were clenched and my feet seemed to be frozen on the floor of the department store where I stood glaring at the unsuspecting clerk. After being shuffled back and forth three times to two different departments to find an item, I yelled at her and told her to get on the phone and find out where the item was for me because I was the customer. Out of my peripheral vision, I saw customers backing up their carts. Anger had now met Mortified and Shame. The clerk reached for the phone to call for assistance. I tossed my items aside and we all walked to my car and drove home. I went to bed as I was hoping to sleep them off. Clearly, Anger was not going anywhere. He had been locked up for 40 years. Mortified and Shame seemed to be making themselves at home and had introduced themselves to Happy, my primary emotion, and Sad who had made some infrequent, special guest appearances.

I called my good friend, Sarah, in the morning and explained what had transpired. She was very empathetic and tried to normalize the situation for me. But nothing about it seemed normal.

I went downstairs and discovered the likely reason my body felt like it was buzzing. Happy had passed out on the floor from exhaustion clearly needing a break from its starring role of 40 years. Sad, Shame and Mortified were spewed all over my living room seemingly plotting their new roles.

Faced with a cast of unknown characters and to live a more honest and fulfilling life, and in my second attempt, I now found myself in front of a counselor seeking help to navigate my way through these unchartered waters.

The Stellar Way, Discovering the Star Within, is a product of years of researching, creating and testing the bibliotherapy-based curriculum. In two separate studies it was found to be statistically significant in the areas tested. It’s a reflection of both personal and professional experiences and has been designed to ameliorate anger long before it becomes problematic. The supplemental guide is coming soon! Find this book on Amazon at http://a.co/2NS5NXn

Tomorrow’s blog: My first counseling attempt