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When Mia was seven years old, she
watched a movie one evening. I was not watching, but I could hear
teenage kids running all kinds of manipulating games in the movie. I
even told Mia, who was fascinated with the movie, that I wanted to watch
the movie with her one time and just see how many games we could detect.
That night, after giving her the usual hug and kiss, she called me back
into her room with already a whiny voice and asked for another hug and kiss.
I responded from the kitchen table: "Not right now. I am doing something else!"
That was it. It blew her right
into the emotion of self-pity. She started crying, yelling, "You don't
love me anymore."
I could hear her complete
involvement in the emotion, and I was curious about her reaction. I
asked her to come to the table, which she reluctantly did. I took out my
body chart and showed her where she was on an emotional level. Then,
I started to help her understand the feeling that emotion created in her
body. I asked her: "Where do you feel it? What shape does it have?"
She started to get somewhat curious
and said it was black and round, sitting right in her heart area. I
told her that I actually saw where she just learned about that emotion.
I pointed out the scene in the movie she watched earlier, and I told her
that she was just trying it on to see how it felt and to see the result it
would create.
I then added, "Now here is how I
look at it. You can have that emotion and go to bed, or you can snap
out of it and go to bed. It will not really matter to me. All I
want you to know is that you actually have a choice of what you do."
She looked at me with her big brown
eyes and said, "Well, that was interesting." She gave me a big hug
and was happy as she went back to bed. |
