Almost anything can affect us negatively. Pretty much anything can affect us to an extreme degree, even if we don’t expect it to. It can be the major, like aspects of a relationship (friend, family, romantic, or others) that hurt someone, to what feels like the minor, like unpredictable changes in routine.
Over the years, your child may have been able to pinpoint exactly what it is that triggers or upsets them, and have likely developed some sort of skill to help them manage the negative emotions tied to that instance. If their sibling makes fun of them, they may have learned to laugh it off and play along instead of letting it get to them. If they take unexpected changes in their routine really poorly, they may have come up with ways to adjust and become more flexible.
However, sometimes they may find yourself reacting the way you used to before developing these coping mechanisms, and that can lead to a whole other level of bad feelings.
Let’s take a bad grade, for example. Say your child didn’t do well on a paper, and they find themselves experiencing depressive symptoms, and overall just feeling really bad. And when these self-blaming thoughts begin to happen, they then find themselves getting angry too. They may be thinking: This isn’t the first bad grade that you’ve gotten, so why are you taking it so hard now? You’ve taken other bad grades really well before, and know that you’ll survive this one too, so why are you experiencing these feelings that you know are tied to your depression or anxiety? It’s easy to slip into these thoughts that someone is no longer good at their coping mechanisms or all the growth that they’ve made to combat these negative things in their life is all of a sudden going away.
In these instances, it’s important to remind your child that bad feelings and getting upset about things that they thought they’ve grown past are just natural feelings that occur. Growth is not a linear line, and there’s never truly an end goal where you’re cured and never going to feel those bad emotions again. Life – and the progress that you make in it – is more like a scribble than a line. Even if one feels like they’ve built a tough exterior and don’t let the negatives phase you doesn’t mean they’re completely immune to them, because ultimately, everyone is a human who feels human emotions.
Did your child ever get upset about anything specifically when they were younger? Do they no longer react to these things anymore? Have you ever talked to your child about progress, and if so, how did you talk about it?