why being a master of calm can be more effecting than using force
by Donna Wiliams
Here’s what I’ve been doing with some parents….
A very cheap home made self calming strategy that is great modelling and good medicine to others in the household.
been having some good success over here with a very simple technique thought I’d pass on.
I hold up my fingers and ask the parent to show me where on that scale of 1-10 they think their own adrenaline level is. Its often up around 9-10.
Then I ask, what happens to your body when you listen to calming music.
Then I ask what happens if you listen to raging, excitable music.
I tell them that their child feels their own adrenaline levels and picks this up like music, so they pick up on and take on the anxiety/adrenaline state of those around them. Just like animals do.
I tell them I need them to change the music in their own body, for their own health and also to model such self calming in a non-invasive indirectly confrontational way in the household so their child can pick up these patterns (but NEVER forcing the child to do so, it is modelled as though for the parent’s own benefit, and it HAPPENS to have an hypnotic and calming effect on others who are around).
As I talk, I start off where they are but I gradually soften and slow down my voice till their body has relaxed.
I ask them, are you feeling calmer now?
They notice they are and wonder how this happened.
I show them what I did with my voice.
I then tell them I’m going to count backwards from 50 and I want them to eventually join in. A start and at 40 I have them join me. We progressively get slower and softer at each interval of 5 so at 35, at 30, at 35 etc the pace slows and the voice softens.
several parents have now managed to notice their own adrenaline levels and ‘count these back down from 10/10 to 5/10 and they’ve done this in the presence of raging children who have become much calmer. One fell asleep snoring after the mother did this ‘for herself’ twice back from fifty then once from 0-529 at which point he was snoring his head off.
other sequences can be used instead of numbers, alphabet, lists of countries, types of furniture, names in a telephone book etc.
its cheap, its easy, and it seems to work in some very full on cases.
… Donna Williams *)
www.donnawilliams.net