What Tantrums can Teach us.

A dear friend of mine has asked me to write about tantrums.  She said that at the weekend she had a huge reaction to something and it made her feel like a child again, like she did when she was having a 'tantrum' as a young girl.  This came to her as a friend of hers is having difficulties with her little girl who is also having 'tantrums' at the moment.

Firstly, I think the word 'tantrum' is really interesting - here is a definition from Wikipedia:

"A tantrum or temper tantrum is an emotional outbreak, usually associated with children or those in emotional distress, that is typically characterized by stubbornness, crying, screaming, defiance, angry ranting, a resistance to attempts at pacification and, in some cases, hitting. Physical control may be lost, the person may be unable to remain still, and even if the "goal" of the person is met he or she may not be calmed."

I don't know about you, but I often have an emotional 'outbreak', I cry, I'm stubborn, sometimes I scream and I get angry.  And it takes a wise eye to see what's truly going on with me when I'm in this way.  When I'm feeling rageful or angry, it's often hard to accept the truth from whoever is with me at the time.  And I know I'm doing it, I know I'm behaving in a way that feels awful to me, but sometimes I just can't help it.  So I totally get why little children have these feelings, these huge bodily sensations - and it feels like they have control.  

For me the first step towards a way to work with this is through awareness.  The awareness that as adults, we do not have to 'act out' our huge feelings - that they can be experienced, communicated and felt with maturity and responsibility. 

Just like with any other part of our personality that plays out, reacts and runs the show for however long, I think it all comes down to a question of identity.  

When we take ourselves to be separate, small, insignificant.  When we believe we are our thoughts, our emotions, our bodies.  We will always feel like our ego reactions in this moment are everything.  It feels this way in the moment of anger or rage.  And yet it's not who we are.  

I believe that cultivating a practice of presence, growing into the space around us and intimately, simultaneously inhabiting our bodies will support us no end in watching these 'tantrums' happen.  We find a space where the possibility of allowing them to be what they are arises, and we take responsibility for our 'stuff'.  We get the option of not putting it on to our partners, our children, our friends and family.  I believe that the more deeply we experience our true presence, our essential nature, the clearer it is to us that we are something way more expanded, way deeper than our every day experience of ourselves. 

And I think this all comes from a daily practice - a practice of presence, stillness, awareness, self-observation and relaxation.  Through an intentional daily practice, we work the muscle of presence that determines our capacity for non-reaction, observing ourselves in the moment and finding that minuscule gap in ourselves, which opens the door to step out or through the tantrum - to make another choice.