When “no one cares about me” simultaneously crushed me and enraged me

I want to share with you guys the way I implement this process of expansion in my real life through the gnarly, tricky, intense moments I have with my kids. My nine-year-old is going through a very intense season. He is picking up a lot of sarcasm at school, which to me is like one of the nastiest ways you can talk to someone.

Today, he and his younger brother walked in from a camp that they were attending this morning and they were both very tired and sweaty and very hungry, which is like the worst combination for my kids. Especially for my older son, who is more sensitive to being hungry.

Today he walks in and since he’s hungry, he was playing in a very erratic, ungrounded, sort of silly way, and his younger brother kept telling him to stop. And he wasn’t stopping, he was out of control, so I went over there and I physically intervened and said, I can see you’re trying to play, right? I acknowledged what he was doing. I knew he didn’t have bad intentions. Jace has asked you to stop, so now I’m going to help you stop.

And I kind of guided him away from his brother. I held the boundary. And he wasn’t ready for coaching. He immediately exploded. “Great, Jace. You’re the one that’s being mean to me, and now I’m the one that’s in trouble.” And I said, No one’s in trouble. No one’s in trouble. But it just seems like things are getting out of control. I keep hearing Jace ask you to stop.

“I’ve been asking him to stop too, but you don’t even care about me. No one cares about me.” And he goes into his bedroom and slams the door. Sarcasm, rudeness, door slamming, all of those things, right?

And what I’m learning through work I’m doing with a psychotherapist whose audios I hope to release and share with you guys on Wise + Wild soon is that the coaching does not happen in the moment. So a few minutes later, I knocked on the door to his room and I said, Can I help you get an audiobook going while you have a snack? Did not address what had happened. He listened to a story, he had a sandwich and a pretty substantial snack, actually. He was really hungry.

And I said to him as I saw him coming down, calming down, Are you ready to talk about what happened with Jace? And he said, “No, no one cares about me.”

And this is where the acknowledgement gets really important and where I really had to continue telling myself that I have the capacity to witness him through this moment. Because it crushes me that he thinks I don’t care when I literally am very intentional about almost all the interactions I have with them. Do I make mistakes? Of course. But to hear that he thinks no one cares about him really made me want to snap. My own hurt wanted to surface his anger.

And I kept saying to myself, I have the capacity to see this for what it is. He is hurt.

So I said, “You know what I think? I think it really hurt your feelings that you were trying to play and that Jace kept getting annoyed at you and yelling at you to stop because you knew you just wanted to play with him. And you’re very sensitive to how Jace talks to you. And the truth is, your sensitivity is one of your greatest gifts. You’re such a caring person.”

And he looked at me. And kind of huffed out a little sigh and rolled over. He was on his bunk bed listening to a story. And he said, “Okay.” And I could see him start to relax. He had been really worked up.

And I said, “Do you want me to hand you Guapo to snuggle with up there for a minute?” And he said, “Okay.” Just the tone of his voice was starting to change. So I handed him our little dog to hang out with him on the top bunk while he finished his snack and listened to his story.

And then a few minutes later, he came out of his bedroom and he said, “Jace, I’m sorry for the way I spoke to you.” And Jace looked at him, his younger brother, and said, “I’m sorry too, Cruz, but can you please stop when I ask you to stop? It’s super stressful for me.”

So this is the miracle, you guys. Feeling like we matter. Nothing resolves conflict faster than feeling like we matter.

And I had to use my phrase of “I have the capacity for this” 25 times during this interaction because it took a while for things to diffuse. He didn’t want to eat. He wouldn’t settle down and have his snack. It kind of felt like the tension was just building and building.

So as you repeat to yourself, “I have the capacity for this,” or whatever your stop-the-spiral phrase is, you are interrupting an old neural pathway that says conflict or anger equals danger. This new pathway says conflict is a leadership opportunity that I have the capacity for. And the more I choose that pathway, the stronger it gets, the calmer I stay, the more confident I get.

And that is what shifts your confidence and your calm by literally telling your brain what to do and to create new neural connections of confidence. This is something called staying in the gains.

Every time you handle a situation, now I need for you to acknowledge it to yourself. This will amplify and speed up your process. So your brain literally wires around whatever it is that you rehearse and you tell yourself. And if you rehearse failure and you’re like, “I was really trying to have more capacity for that moment, but once again I ended up yelling,” you strengthen your fear again and you stay stuck in your pattern. But if you rehearse small wins, you strengthen your leadership and you create your brain’s capacity to stay calm and to stay confident.

I’ll give you an example and we’ll use an example of how you can stop the spiral when it comes to siblings fighting and acknowledge your gains. Let’s say your five-year-old hits his three-year-old sister because he wants a toy and you say, “Okay, I have the capacity to lead my son right now.”

You say, “You really wanted that toy.” You remembered to acknowledge. “I won’t allow you to grab.” And then things get a little out of control, and he gets really angry when you take the toy back from him to give to his sister, and you end up snapping.

Instead of beating yourself up, what you want to do is say, “Okay, wow. Not only did I remember to stop spiraling, but I remembered to acknowledge his perspective. And I was very close to holding my boundary with safety. I’m doing great. I’m making progress.”

So what that could look like is: “Wow, you really wanted that toy. I won’t allow you to grab.” And then you coach with compassion. “Here’s what you can do. If your sister has something you want, try to hand her another toy and ask her to trade, even if she can’t respond to you. If she doesn’t want to trade, you have to wait your turn.”

And then acknowledge yourself for what you were able to do. And every single time that you were able to make some progress, create new neural pathways that say, “Every time I do this, I’m handling it better and better and better.”

This is how change sticks. Not because you did it perfectly, but because you interrupted the spiral, you chose a new response, and then you repeat it. And that repetition becomes the confidence, and then acknowledging each mini success in your brain becomes the new identity.

Teaching your brain we can handle this. You’re teaching your nervous system conflict is not danger. I have the capacity to keep everyone safe, and you’re teaching your child, you matter. It is safe for you to go through your entire emotional process, and that is how we create generational change. That is how we help our children be less anxious, less insecure, not as inclined toward pleasing others, but rather sitting with themselves and working through a true emotional process in a safe container that is their parents’ leadership.

So many of us have always been afraid of our own emotions, and we are teaching our children not to be afraid of their emotions while we are doing it for ourselves.

So this is the work. It is not clean, it is not perfect, it is messy, it is uncomfortable, and I am so incredibly proud of you for doing this. It is intense moments and slammed doors and hunger and sarcasm and hurt feelings and you deciding in the middle of it that you are going to lead differently and not be so afraid.

And every time you do that, even when it’s messy, even when it’s imperfect, you are returning to your truest wise and wild self where your spirit and your heart and your love can lead. That is the rewiring. That is the shift and that is how it becomes literally who you are in any stressful situation, not just in parenting.