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Written by Dr. Tim Ong
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Sunday, 29 October 2006 |
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Word Count: 725 Acknowledging Your Emotion: Why is it important?
A couple of days ago, my seven year-old daughter performed in a dance
concert. It was her first public performance and we were all very proud of her.
She was very excited about it. We know how much she loves to dance.
Her routine was the first performance and we all thought she did rather well and
were happy for her. At the end of the concert, my wife presented her with a
present, personally wrapped up by her with a beautiful blue coloured wrapper.
To our surprise, my daughter not only did not say thank you to her mother but
actually complained about her present. She said she did not like the colour of
the wrapper and did not like the present inside it. She was grumpy all the way
from the concert hall to our house. This was so unlike her.
The next day, she was still upset. When we invited her out to the shopping
complex for a movie, she declined, claiming that she wanted to stay and rest at
home.
I knew that something was bothering her and it was not just about the present
but I didn’t know what it was. Anyway, the rest of the family went for the movie
and had a nice time. Then it struck me that my daughter may have been upset not
so much with her present as with herself. Perhaps she had felt that she did not
perform as well as she could have. She does have very high expectation of
herself and is quite a perfectionist when it comes to her dance.
Once we returned home, my daughter was at the door to greet us. I knew she
wanted to talk and took the opportunity to ask her once again why she was upset.
I advised her to tell me the real reason why she was upset and when she couldn’t
say it, I asked her directly whether she was upset with herself because she
thought she did not perform as well as she could have — and she said “yes”.
Once she acknowledged her real feeling, I was able to console her. I told her
that we all loved her performance and that it was more important for her to gain
experience from her first public performance than to demand a perfect
performance from herself.
Then I told her how much her mother has painstakingly chosen a present for her
and personally wrapped it up in a beautiful wrapper for her, and that because
she had not acknowledged her true feeling to herself and everyone else, she had
instead taken out her anger on her mother’s present. In this way, she not only
upset herself even more and felt bad about it, she spoilt the occasion for
everyone in the family. Perhaps she had reacted unconsciously. We all have this
tendency to deny our feelings and lash out at something else instead - children
and adults alike - and some poor innocent person unwittingly gets the blame.
I then helped her to realise why it was important that she honestly acknowledge
her feelings. The outcome would have been more desirable and the unpleasant
feeling would have been resolved much earlier and easier had she been honest
about it in the first place. In addition, her mother would not have been hurt by
her reaction to her present and she would have had a wonderful day at the movie
with us.
By not acknowledging her true feeling, she reacted in a way that created a chain
reaction of anger that was directed at everyone in her path and basically
created more problems for herself and everyone else. These problems could have
been avoided or would not even have existed had she been honest about her
feelings from the beginning.
I thought this was an important lesson for her and for everyone, and was glad to
have the opportunity to talk to her about it.
P.S. About an hour later after our talk, she came over and whispered a “thank
you, daddy” into my ears and I could see that she was back to her normal self
again. It was as if a burden has been lifted from her little shoulders.
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