Buzzfeed and Parents: A Child's Panic is NOT Funny

I always hate when I see these videos or photos that make fun of "overdramatic" kids who clearly are either panicking or over their threshold of being able to function because they just don't understand or can not handle what is going on around them.

I just saw this video of Buzzfeed called: Little Girl Deserves An Oscar For Her Performance While Getting a Flu Shot. In the video, a young girl, maybe eight to ten years old, is getting a flu shot. Unfortunately before the shot, her brother told her "It's worse than you think - way worse," and the girl then has a panic attack. The post comes complete with video and then captioned .gif's of the girl's terrified face with comments underneath such as: "Someone get this girl an agent."

I am a parent, I get the absurd humor that comes when you child is freaking out over something that is not a big deal, and we accidentally laugh. However, I have seriously tried to keep my accidental laughter or my judgement that my son's reaction is not valid to myself. It's real and valid to him, and I can either shame him and make fun of him, or, help him work through it so he knows how to deal with fear, frustration, anger, and overwhelm on his own in the future. This is an important life skill.

In the video, the little girl actually is actively trying to keep it together. She does not fight off the nurse, she is saying "Yeah, yeah, ok," indicating that she understands that she needs the shot. At one point she even says "I just can't help myself!" She follows the advice to press a button to distract herself (good idea from the nurse), but she is clearly still panicking. She is "laugh/crying," which some people think means the person is fine. It does not! Laugh/crying is a response to fear or stress. She is trying her hardest to get through a triggering situation yet everyone in the room is laughing at her. Then her parents and the world post it on the internet and joke that she is "dramatic," as if her visceral response is unwarranted and invalid. Tell the next adult who starts jumping around and screaming because of spider on the floor that their reaction is dramatic and not valid.

As the nurse is putting the bandaid on the girl's arm, you can see her shaking her head "yes," trying to get it together while at the same time her eyes roll back in her head and she looks like she might faint. If you know people who faint while getting blood drawn or for other reasons, you know that they don't just decide "Hey, I want to be dramatic, I shall faint, right now." Then, if you look at the screen shots of the video, the look on the girls face is sheer panic and terror, which I do not think is funny, at all. She's not acting.

I am hoping that this girl's parents also talked to her about the amazing amount of bravery she showed in getting this shot and trying to manage a terrifying situation. She cooperates, she tries to distract and sooth herself, and she even thanks the nurse at the end. She does all the right things that will help her foster the ability to handle panic in the future, as long as she is not shamed for it and is taught that she needs to hide it and that fear is not normal.

When we make fun of children for being scared or overwhelmed, we teach them that such reactions are to be hidden and not dealt with, which means they never learn coping mechanisms. This can contribute to developing a panic disorder in the future for many people. It also teaches kids to not have empathy for other people. Sure, some of us have inappropriate responses to accidents, like laughing, but people with empathy catch their response and then comfort and help the other person. If we continually laugh at and invalidate a child who is panicking, then they learn that when they have a friend or family member who is scared, that they should make fun of them as well, which does not help the situation diffuse and does not foster healing. It fosters an inability to emotional connect with others, which can lead to violence and oppression.

I am not saying that we all will have perfect responses to kids, or adults, when they panic or something bad happens. Part of human nature is often inappropriate responses due to trauma and surprise. What I am saying is that we should not promote making fun of other people's fear, it is very shaming and makes people feel bad about themselves and their emotions.

P.S. My husband pointed out the question: why was the mother filming this? What prompted her to start filming? Why would you randomly film your kids getting flu shots?

Blessings,

Rev. Katie

Disney's "Frozen": Why Elsa Matters

I have a few posts planned in reflection on the new Disney movie, "Frozen." For this post though, I want to talk a bit about why I identify with the character of Elsa in "Frozen" and why characters like her matter.  (Note: while I do not tell you exactly what happens in the movie, there are spoilers and the ending will not be a surprise.) Simply, I like her because she shows how scary it is to be taught to fear yourself and be told you might hurt the people you love just by being who you are. This happens when you live through abuse and trauma in many different forms.

My son says Elsa is like me because: "She is scared of herself, that she might hurt someone she loves with her power. She has to learn to love and trust herself, and then she is ok."

Photo from Disney's blog.

For me, Elsa is an important character not just because she needs to learn to accept herself the way she is, but because the writers show through her just how devastating and terrifying it is to fear your own soul. There is no terror and sadness like that of thinking you are bad when you do not want to be. It leads to a type of self-sacrifice and shame that actually makes you unable to heal. On accident, Elsa's parents taught her to be afraid of herself and taught her that the only way to protect others was to sacrifice herself. They shut her off from the world and gave her the mantra "conceal, don't feel, don't let it show." She becomes filled with fear, never learns to have compassion for herself, never learns to control her power, and thus she never knows love and belonging. This is a trauma for Elsa that makes her use the only survival she has ever been taught, that of shutting herself away and attempting to shut off her own emotions. No one trusts that she can be safe and thus she never learns how to control her own emotions or use her gifts well.

This can be seen in the song, "Do You Want to Build a Snowman?":


Many people can relate to this archetype, especially people who have been physically or emotionally abused and were told they deserved the abuse because they were "bad." I am glad we finally have a character in mainstream media that shows how trauma can effect you and that bad behavior does not mean you are a bad person. (Which is why I also love Elphaba from Wicked.) My son says the most important line in the movie Frozen is in the song "Fixer Upper," which the trolls sing. They say: "People make bad choices if they're mad or scared or stressed." For some people if they are scared enough, even their ability to make a choice and control the fear is compromised. I feel like this scene from the movie best shows Elsa's fear and how much she wants to never hurt anyone. However, she was never allowed to learn to work with her gifts and abilities, so they remain largely uncontrolled. Elsa assumes she is out of control because she is bad, but really, no one ever gave her the tools to be in control. ("For the First Time in Forever, Reprise.")


Frozen seems to also illustrate Dr. Brene Brown's research on vulnerability, fear, and shame. Shame, the belief that "I am bad," is what destroys people because it takes away the things we most need in life: love, belonging, and connection. I see Anna and Elsa both, in the end, as saving themselves by learning the components of true love. I am going to challenge the typical definition of true love (selfless love for another person, often a romantic love) and say that I think true love is radical compassion. Compassion for others and for yourself. Anna's love came from learning to have compassion for someone that was struggling, even though they hurt you. Elsa's love came from learning compassion for herself, which I do not think was only due to Anna's act of true love in the end of the movie. Elsa started on the path of self compassion when she chose to "let it go" and be herself. She then needed the act of love (compassion) on Anna's part to round out that self compassion. She had to learn that she could be herself within a community of people, as long as that community was compassionate and did not vilify her. No one can live well and be healthy in a community that has no compassion for you. Anna's act of love taught the whole community to be loving and shame-free.

If you do not have compassion, you are unable to accept and truly love yourself or anyone else. Without compassion we engage in shaming and blaming ourselves and others, rather than seeing life as fluid and full of mistakes and success. Shame, blame, and fear keep us from healing. How could Elsa ever even think she could control her emotions if she believed she was inherently bad?

I find that in treatment for mental illness, compassion is frequently left out of the equation, and shame is the norm. No one ever learns to heal themselves and understand their mind when other people shame them and tell them they are a bad person.

Trauma is a main contributor to mental illness for most of us (and trauma looks different for every person.) We did whatever we had to do to survive, and sometimes those survival skills don't work well in the rest of our life, but they are the only skills we know and they are the only response our brains are programmed to go to. Compassionate treatment tells us that we are not bad and that our brains just have not learned yet how to survive in other ways now that the trauma is gone or now that we have some agency in how we interact with that trauma due to being an adult. Sadly, most treatment focuses on shaming us for our behavior rather than getting to the reasons behind the behavior and teaching us how to reprogram our brain from old survival responses to new, more healthy survival responses. Bad therapy and treatment is basically what Elsa's parents accidentally did to her. Good therapy and treatment looks more like the relationship between Elsa and Anna. Anna did not continue to shame and blame Elsa, but rather saw that Elsa was struggling and helped lead her to self compassion and better ways to survive.

Blessings,

Rev. Katie

How Negative Reinforcement Dog Training is Detrimental For People with Mental Illness

Trigger Warning: This post contains descriptions of what may be considered by some people to be violence to an animal and a description of what the experience of PTSD is like, which both may trigger PTSD or traumatic memories. 

Most of us have heard that in order to train a dog, the "owner" needs to be the dominant one, "leader of the pack." Most trainers use negative reinforcement (causing discomfort to the dog to get it to do what you want) and insist that it does not hurt the dog, it just shows who is in charge. This means you yank on the dog, may use shock collars, yell "no!," use choke collars, some pushing or even swatting, and electric fences. Most dogs I know are trained this way and it is a decision that the owner needs to make as to what training method they want to use. There are articles and books all over the place that argue the benefits or disadvantages of both negative reinforcement training and positive reinforcement training. (Positive reinforcement is rewarding for good behavior.) Feel free to look them up and make your own decision. I am not a dog trainer so will not claim to know what is best for the dog. (I will say that I will never use anything other than positive reinforcement clicker training with my dogs as I do know dogs who have become more aggressive using the other methods.) I will give you advice though for what I think is best for a person with mental illness who is a dog owner and/or a possible Psychiatric Service Dog handler.

Positive Reinforcement Materials

I do not believe negative reinforcemnt training is appropriate for dog handlers who have mental illness. Many of us with mental illness have trauma in our backgrounds and training a dog with negative reinforcment means using methods that, even if you argue are safe for the dog and they like it, is still technically hurting another living being. Asking us to do this is extremely traumatic, whether or not people say it is "proven" that it really does not hurt the dog. For those who have expereinced trauma, even what other people consider "moderate violence" is a trigger for us. For instance, I can not watch slapstick humor like The Three Stooges. Other people find that funny, but I find it so upsetting that I can't even look at it and it triggers a Post Traumatic Stress Disorder response. This is what can happen to us if we are asked to use negative reinforcment with our dogs. Let me give you an example.

I went to a dog store and Rosie is still learning to be calm when greeting other dogs. When she saw the owners dogs, she immediately started jumping around, bowing to the other dog to say she wanted to play, barking, and pulling on her leash. The well meaning owner, wanting to help me, took the leash from me and told me I had to be forceful to train her. So he yanked on Rosie's leash, yelling no,  which yanked Rosie up into the air dangling from her leash with her front feet off the ground. Her ears went back, her tail went between her legs, and she was scared. She stopped barking and playing, and the person was explaining that this was showing Rosie how she was supposed to act. He pulled, yelled at, and yanked on my dog until I got what I needed and left. At one point he even put the leash in my hand with his hand over mine and yanked on her leash to get Rosie to know that I was in charge. He was very nice and helpful and to him, and most trainers and owners, he was doing the right thing. He was NOT trying to be mean or hurt my dog.

However, to see Rosie dangling in the air by her back (fortunately not her neck because we use a halter rather than attach the leash to her collar,) was extremely traumatic for me. I was shaking the whole time, felt sick, and was scared. I could not speak up for myself to even ask him not to handle Rosie. Not only did it make Rosie scared of him, but I was scared of him as well.

When we got into the car I could not drive because I was crying so hard. Not only could I not get the scared look and body language of Rosie out of my mind, but I felt disgusted that he had shown Rosie that I would yank on her and hurt her by putting the leash in my hand and making me pull on it. I was a wreck and my son was scared seeing Rosie handled aggressively.

For me, this was hurting another living being who is trusting me for their care, who clearly was scared and hurt by what was happening to her. I looked into her face and saw fear and was so immobilized with fear myself that I let it happen to her. There is no describing not only how terrible it is to watch pain being inflicted on someone else in order to control them, but to also be part of that process. Every time I think about that event, I see my son afraid and the picture of Rosie's fear and pain over and over in my head.

Due to the trauma background of many people with mental illness, I do not advise negative reinforcement training. Even without trauma, we tend to be more sensitive to feelings and aggression than other people and it is really not safe for us to interact with our dogs in this way.

So what kind of training do I recommend? Positive reinforcement such as clicker training where you capture good behavior and reward for that. To see the difference between negative and positive reinforcement, check out this video by Kikopup. (Don't be misled by the title.) She has great training videos for any issue you have.
Blessings,

Rev. Katie

Blaming Mental Illness for Tragedy Harms Children with Mental Illness

Sadly we have had another tragic shooting in America. This time in Connecticut twenty young children and six adults were killed. There are no words for how horrible this is. The sadness of this event is felt by everyone in our country and I can only imagine how their families and the community of Newton, Connecticut are feeling right now. My heart goes out to them and I pray that they feel the support and love of our nation with them.

Always the first question after an event like this is "Why did this happen?," and rightly so. We really want make sense of things, to feel like we have some control again so we can have a bit of stability back. It is always very hard for me though to read dozens of comments on Facebook saying: "if only we had a better mental health care system things like this would not happen." Or news articles which say the motive for the shooting is a "mystery" but then adds that the brother of the shooter says the shooter "has a history of mental illness."

As blogger Kate Donovan writes, when you blame mental illness for such an event, this is what you are saying:

"Here is a terrible thing. The only thing that could possibly cause someone to do such a terrible, tragic thing is to have This Disorder. Because only people with This Disorder could be so dangerous/awful/scary."

This assumption of mental illness is extremely detrimental to people with mental illness, but especially so to children with mental illness. I have had mental illness since I was a child and this belief that only people with mental illness do bad things is extremely terrifying.

There has been a lot of great advice of how to talk about this shooting with your children because even kids who live no where near Connecticut can be traumatized by just hearing about the shooting on the news. Now just imagine if you are a child with mental illness and you hear over and over again that only "crazy" or "mentally ill" people do things like this. Some parents, in order to explain why this happened, tell their children that the shooter "had a sickness in his brain." Then as a child you hear other kids in school saying that people who are "sick in the head" do things like this.

You learn at a young age that you are to be feared, not trusted, and you are a danger to society. You learn that it does not matter if you have a good heart, save every stray puppy in the neighborhood, and care deeply about other people. If your brain is not right you could end up just like this person who did something horrific. There really is no way to describe the fear you feel as a child hearing everyone around you put you into the same category as a killer. I can attest to the fact that it does traumatize you for life, leaving you with a feeling that you must be a bad person and just don't know it. It means every time an event like this happens you are thrown into a terrible state of panic where for days or weeks you can barely function and never sleep.

UPDATE: After I posted this originally, Liza Long's blog post, "I Am Adam Lanza's Mother" went viral. I have a response to that and how it might cause people to link mental illness to violence but I wanted to add to this post how I feel Long's post might affect children. 

I hear that Long was writing from a raw emotional place and so her post was very honest. I did feel that comparing her child, "Michael" to Adam Lanza would be extremely devastating to him if and when he reads the article. Also, I know that any child who hears about the post and who has mental illness, especially with any violent tendencies or thoughts (which may never turn into violent acts), may fear that they will be the next Adam Lanza. Hearing a mother liken her mentally ill child to a mass murderer could easily scare kids into wondering "Am I Adam Lanza?" 

(Read more about the "I Am Adam Lanza's Mother" debate here.)
 
So, I ask you to PLEASE think before you speak. Don't throw mental illness out as the reason for an event like this. Think of the message you are sending to the nearly 4 million kids in America who have mental illness. We don't need to add extra trauma to a nation of children and adults who are scared and hurting.

UPDATE: Here is another great article on this subject: The Pain of Being Linked By Asperger Dx to a Mass Shooter.

Blessings,

Rev. Katie