The History of Emotion Soup
Serving up: Emotional Regulation
Who do you think is responsible for your emotions?
I’d like to invite you over for dinner, I’m serving soup. Let me set the table for us, by explaining how I came to visualize soup as the atmosphere of my childhood home.
I absolutely love my immediate and distant family. And we all lived in Emotion Soup Households. As far as I can tell it started many generations ago. An Emotion Soup Household looks something like this: The soup is made up of every family member’s emotions, the “bowl” is what contains the family when they are together and sometimes even when they are apart. Upon walking in the front door of the ESH (Emotional Soup Household) you are greeted by a pool-sized bowl of soup. The soup is a mix of all family member’s feelings cooked in a single pot, I visualize a soggy minestrone. Inside the ESH you can’t help but FEEL all the feelings, you’re swimming in them! Someone is anxious or worried about something? Mum needs to rescue, because that anxiety makes her uncomfortable. Somebody else is angry about something? Dad needs to invalidate their feelings because his childhood shame is triggered. You climb into the bowl of soup because the whole lot of them are in there, in many ways you don’t have a choice. This is the state of a home with no inner (or outer) boundaries.
There is an alternative to an ESH, I discovered it through some hard work during a challenging period of parenthood. A healthy atmosphere in a home would look something like this: Upon walking into the Boundaried Household you are greeted with a warm hello and an offer to join the family for dinner. Everyone chooses their own cup out of the cupboard and goes to the stove to self-serve a little soup. There’s a multitude of choice over there, too. You can choose from a shmorgishborg of toppings to personalize your cup of soup. The beautiful thing is, you don’t have to climb into anyone’s cup, not even your own, there’s limited risk of someone else’s soup spilling on your pants. You know who’s cup is who’s and everyone takes responsibility for their own cup of feelings - I mean soup. This is the atmosphere in a home with clear inner (and outer) boundaries.
Would you like to join me for a cup of soup?
