Dear Helcat:

You are welcome!

“Our son briefly cried when we playfully teased each other as a joke. Then we had to show him that we were just playing and joking and group hug“- just the right response to his distress, a group hug: excellent!

“I will do my best to work on the right level of firmness and be aware of feelings of anger around my son. I am usually not angry and if anything probably underselling the importance of me asking him not to do these things“- in  my lifetime experience, the way I perceived anger, was that anger is a bad emotion, dangerous and scary. Whenever I felt angry, I felt that there was something very wrong with me. I didn’t realize that it’s okay to feel angry, and that there is a positive usefulness to anger.

It is only recently that I feel (beyond understanding it intellectually) that anger is necessary for one’s mental health, that it’s as good of an emotion as any other emotion, and it needs to be expressed in appropriate ways. I suppose it’s about not overreacting to anger, on one hand, and not suppressing anger (underreacting to it), on the other hand.

is this little share useful to you?

anita