Children, Art & Emotions

When we're raised in family systems, Virginia Satir has to be my favorite for information on this topic, we either LEARN (caregivers teach you) to express the spectrum or we don't.  As humans, an emotional response is natural and as our beliefs change, so does our emotional response to the same stimulus.For example, when someone gives instructions in a gruff manner, the breakdown might look like this:Gruff manner (stimulus) = the person is angry or impatient with me (belief that a gruff manner means this) and the emotional response might be fear.Then the individual learns that what the other person is feeling/thinking is what they are feeling/thinking and it is separate from me which perhaps creates a different emotional response (is the fear I'm sensing mine or does it belong to the other person?).Curiosity.  A great response to an event. The ugliness, the rage, the messiness is where the potential to learn is the greatest.Here, the sisters were painting their conflict and initially they wanted to paint rainbows and jelly beans.  But then when they understood it was an exercise of expressing their emotions in a conflict, they got right into it.