“Feelings are just your body talking to you about how you’re doing in the moment. Even if you’ve gotten used to ignoring them, they’re still talking to you.”
—Allyson Dinneen, Notes from Your Therapist
One Sunday morning, I was co-teaching a children’s religious education class at my church. One of the students was clearly having trouble with the transitions between activities, and expressed it by yelling at another student and me. Since I was in the middle of a stressful semester at seminary, I hadn’t prioritized sleep and self-care for weeks. In other words, my patience was pretty darn thin. I allowed his anger to spur my own, and I was having a hard time choosing what to say to him without yelling back.
Once I caught up with him, though, what I saw in his eyes wasn’t anger: It was fear. I immediately felt like a jerk for losing my patience with him.
“We can stay in the hall if you want. Come sit with me?” He begrudgingly sat down on the floor beside me with his face in his hands. I asked him if he wanted to share what was wrong. Big was the word he used to describe his feelings. He said they were too big to even talk about.
“We don’t have to talk about them,” I said, “but would it be okay if I tried to teach you ways to make them feel smaller?” I taught him a somatic exercise I’d learned from my therapist: I gently tapped my cheekbones. “See? Just simple taps already make me feel more relaxed. When things feel too big, use this as a tool to calm down enough to talk about it with a friend or family member.”
He tapped his cheekbones, and I watched his anxiety and overwhelm settle. He needed guidance, I realized, for how to navigate the emotional rollercoaster of life as a neurodivergent kid—not judgement and impatience from a neurodivergent adult who had been taught to repress those big feelings.
Being an adult means I have the responsibility to unlearn a lot of the crap I was taught as a kid. On top of that, being a liberal religious educator means I have the responsibility to teach myself and others how to show up every day, centering love. Sometimes that means teaching a sweet kid how to calm his developing nervous system. Most of the time, though, it means tending to my own reactive nervous system and allowing a sweet kid to remind me how to chill out
Prayer
O Spirit of grace and gentleness, hold us as we learn to show ourselves the kindness we seek to model for those we love. May we accept help and remember holy acts of self-care so that we can take care of one another, centering love always.