When Two Nervous Systems Meet

Someone shared a Facebook post the other day that said something to the effect of:

"Never in the history of calm down has anyone calmed down by being told to calm down."

And I about died.

Because dang. How often do I repeat that pattern?

Especially with my 13-year-old son.

He is lovely and smart and sweet and kind. And the only thing a teacher was ever able to share with me for him to improve upon at a parent teacher conference when he was younger was, "He needs to learn to ask for help."

And dang, this is true about him.

He faces obstacles and tends to have a very short fuse. He expects he should NOT be facing the obstacle and then gets frustrated when he can't seem to handle the problem.

Apple. Tree.

You know what they say about that.

So today he was packing up to go fishing.

I heard some banging around in the garage and went out to see what was going on.

I found him with tears in his eyes, anger all over his face, stuck in a pile of fishing rods that were all tangled up.

He was mad. Slamming things around.

Like that ever worked to untangle a big mess.

So once again, being such an evolved person, I said, "This is not an emergency. We will get them untangled."

Except to him, it kind of was.

He was already late to meet his friend. The fishing rods were a disaster. And WHO ON EARTH would have put them away like this and caused all of this?

You can probably hear his anger and complaints from here.

I knew better than to try to give some motivational speech in that moment.

But ALSO.

He can't be banging shit around and throwing a tantrum every time he faces an obstacle.

We got the fishing poles figured out and he went on his way.

But something about how I handled it didn't feel great.

I hadn't lost my cool. I hadn't yelled.

So what was bothering me?

And then I saw it.

I had been reacting to his reaction.

I saw him banging, slamming, crying and escalating, and MY nervous system responded to HIS nervous system with:

AW HELL NO.

I kept "calm."

But I couldn't handle him not keeping calm.

I couldn't empathize with the fact that he was frustrated because I was too busy being frustrated by his frustration.

I only saw the frustration.

Not the 13-year-old boy feeling it.

Oof.

Because AFTER the moment, I could see what I couldn't see INSIDE of it.

I could have said:

"Yeah. I can see why you're frustrated. You're already late and these are a mess."

And then:

"But you can't slam things around. Let me help."

Both could be true.

I could understand his frustration without accepting the behavior.

His frustration triggered my frustration about his frustration.

Two nervous systems.

This whole people-ing thing is so dang hard.

And apparently life thought I needed to practice this lesson immediately because a few hours later, I heard yelling in the garage.

Again.

I walked out to find him kicking his bike.

I said, "STOP. What is going on?"

He couldn't get the battery off.

And this time I caught it.

Not perfectly.

But I caught it.

"Yeah. I can see why that's frustrating. Let me help."

We got the battery off.

And only later, once the battery was off and nobody was kicking anything, did we talk about his need to ask for help when he feels that frustration starting to rise.

Because he does need to learn that.

He needs to learn that frustration doesn't mean something has gone wrong.

He needs to learn that he can feel pissed off without slamming things around.

He needs to learn to ask for help when what he's doing isn't working.

But maybe I have something to learn first.

Because I keep thinking my job in those moments is to help him handle his frustration better.

And maybe sometimes my first job is to notice what his frustration does to me.

To see the person before I react to the behavior.

Because there were two nervous systems in that garage.

And his wasn't the only one that needed some practice.

With you, still learning.

Still coming home.

— Stacie