In today’s world, most parenting advice ignores the world of emotion entirely. It focuses on how to correct misbehavior while disregarding the feelings that underlie and cause the misbehavior. Regardless of how far we have progressed, the goal of parenting is still to have a compliant and obedient child, not to raise a healthy adult. The goal is to raise a child who is “good.” Our justice system takes the exact same approach with regards to misbehavior. We are concerned with correcting misbehavior and creating good citizens while being unconcerned with the feelings that motivate such misbehavior. Good parenting involves emotion. Good relationships involve emotion.

Recently, I ventured to the movie theatre to see the film Inside Out. I have been chomping at the bit to see it because it is an animation film all about emotion—just my cup of tea. On the way to the cinema, I had my hackles raised (metaphorically speaking), all prepared to be potentially disappointed by an archaic idea of emotion. I sat there in the dark theatre with my notepad and pen ready to take notes to discuss later.

A smile spread across my face within the first five minutes. The film turned out to be an absolute pleasure. It is clear that research went into the film on account of many of the highly accurate aspects of the storyline. All in all, Inside Out is an imaginative triumph of an artistic depiction of psychology as it applies to emotion… or should we say five emotions: fear, disgust, anger, sadness and joy.

In the film, these five emotions essentially control the everyday life of the main character, named Riley. In the beginning (mirroring the beliefs of our current American society), it is clear that sadness seems to serve no positive purpose. In fact, sadness is downright unwanted and thus resisted by happiness. Again, I was gearing myself up to be disappointed by the message of the film, but without spoiling the entire plotline, I will say that I was more than pleasantly surprised when the moral of the story cast sadness in an entirely different light. In fact, the film conveyed that sadness was essential to the integrity of Riley’s personality structure. Numbness was the “villain” of the tale, which spells one thing out for me so loudly that I was nearly skipping back to the car in the parking lot after the film finished: SOCIETY IS WAKING UP AND HUMAN CONSCIOUSNESS IS EVOLVING. The overall message of the film was to embrace emotion, even the ones that don’t feel positive.

I would highly recommend seeing this film, with one exception. I would not recommend taking young children to it. Why? Because the film itself requires abstract thinking. Why? Because unless you can grasp the idea that it is a film made for entertainment value as an artistic depiction, the film clearly conveys the idea that emotions control you. Regardless of verbally telling a child that they really can deliberately choose to influence they way they feel, the visuals of the film could easily trump that message and cause a child to feel powerless to their emotions and thus afraid of their own internal guidance system. Today, most parents make three crucial mistakes:

1. They disapprove of their children’s emotions: The parent who disapproves of their child’s emotions is critical of their children’s displays of negative emotion and reprimands or punishes for emotional expression.
2. They dismiss their children’s emotions: The parent, who dismisses their child’s emotions, disregards them as important, ignores their child’s emotions or worse, trivializes their child’s emotions.
3. They offer no guidance to a child with regard to their emotions: The parent who offers no guidance may empathize with their child’s emotions but does not set limits on behavior or assist the child in understanding and coping with their emotions.

The bottom line is, emotions matter. We must see the importance and value in each other’s feelings. We must show respect for each other’s emotions. We must listen for the feelings behind the words. We must open ourselves to being understood and open ourselves to understanding others. Statements of acknowledgement and understanding should always precede advice. If you tell someone how they should or shouldn’t feel, you are teaching them to distrust themselves. You are teaching them that there is something wrong with them.

Since we struggle the most with negative emotions, the way we deal with negative emotions dictates how healthy or unhealthy our relationship is emotionally. When we are dealing with negative emotions, there are concrete steps we can take to address those emotions, develop emotional connection with the other person and enhance our intimacy. This goes for our children as well as the adults in our lives.

Finally, we come to one of the most important parts of emotional health: The fact of the matter is that we are in a relationship with ourselves. This means, our own emotions must matter to us. This means we must acknowledge and validate our own emotions. This means we must not dismiss or disapprove of our own emotions. We must first apply these steps to ourselves before we can truly be supportive of those around us.
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Emotional expert and YouTube sensation Teal Swan was born highly intuitive. A survivor of ritual sexual abuse and torture, she now travels the world teaching others how to heal by discovering and owning their self-worth and self-love. Her new Hay House Publishing book, Shadows Before Dawn: Finding the Light of Self-Love Through Your Darkest Times, is a beacon of hope for anyone who has suffered trauma, struggled with fear or lost touch with their authentic emotional self. Teal Swan is the founder of Teal Eye, LLC and the accompanying nonprofit, Headway Foundation. Her vision is to enable everyone on earth to live free, joyous and healthy lives and she is determined to make that vision a reality. For more information, visit www.TealSwan.com.