Will I be the type of person to leave a mark or a scar?

Dear EQuipped Leaders,

Hello there. Today, I want to revisit your childhood experience in school. Yeah, let’s just dive right on in!

Backpacks and cubbies. School buses and drop off lines. Round bench seats on long cafeteria tables.

What was your school experience like as a student?

Can you think of any teachers in your experience who made a mark on you in a positive way?

Can you think of any teachers who left a scar on you?

As I reflect, I can think of several positive examples, and only one big moment jumps out to me as scar.

Of course, no teacher means to leave a scar. The teacher who hurt me probably thought she was helping me, but she unintentionally caused me harm. She was not EQuipped.

Also, I taught for ten years. I have to face the reality that I left scars as a teacher too. I, like every human being, have caused emotional harm. There is no EQ perfection. Only the ability to own my past mistakes, offer repair when people share how I’ve hurt them, and grow.

One way that I’m trying to grow is being more aware of the ways I respond to my own emotion.

We teach 5 ways to respond to emotion in the EQuipped Classroom:

The ways to respond to emotion that leave a scar: ignore, inhibit, invalidate.

The ways to respond to emotion that leave a mark: invite and instruct.

When I learned this, I was completely focused on how I did this for others. How did I respond to my students’ emotions, my own kids’ emotions?

How do I invite and instruct emotion for them?

How do I do this for other people?

Infuriatingly, I am learning over and over again, to turn my focus back on myself. To be aware of how I am doing this with myself.

It’s self-awareness. Not everyone-else-awareness.

Which is a real bummer, because it’s way easier and more fun to pay attention to how others need to grow. And way harder and less fun to own how I need to grow.

It’s taken me awhile to realize how truly terrified of my own emotions I’ve been for most of my life. I thought feelings would hurt me, that I had to control what I didn’t feel or did feel.

I did not know that all my feelings were okay. That I could feel everything,

make space for every single emotion,

and then decide how I want to behave.

I thought that bad behaviors were linked to bad emotions. So if I felt something bad, I would behave badly. That terrified me. I was so scared I would leave a scar on the people around me if I let myself feel my feelings. I really didn’t want to hurt anyone. I thought the solution was shutting down my own feelings.

Emotions were linked to destructive behaviors in my mind.

I didn’t know it was possible to grow self-awareness and self-regulation. To feel feelings and take a deep breath, or go for a walk, or ask for connection and then decide how to act.

I didn’t have those skills. I couldn’t pause, take some time to let what happened soak in, process it, and then decide how to act.

No safe, compassionate adults instructed emotion for me until recently, so I had to ignore, inhibit, and invalidate it in myself for most of my life. Those were the only tools I had.

I’m slowly learning I have choices. I don’t have to react my way through my life. I can listen to my emotions without putting them in the driver’s seat. I can trust myself to drive my car safely and in the direction I want to go.

When I learned about instructing emotion, I focused on how I would do this differently for the kids depending on me. How I would leave a mark instead of scar.

That’s a noble goal, and I stand by it. What I didn’t realize though was that whether or not I leave more marks than scars depends on how I respond to my own emotions. Because however I’m doing this with myself is how I will unconsciously respond to emotions in others. If I want to offer something healthier for those depending on me, I first have to cultivate this within myself.