my name is Lu or Luke eithers fine and I used to be a teacher
when I was a teacher I— As a class we learned a lot about how to express our emotions in helpful ways. I worked particularly with kids who were struggling with that at the time, you see, you see they had often been excluded from other schools for swearing at or beating up teachers, trashing classrooms, breaking windows et cetera et cetera
It’s funny, you don’t need to be good at something to be good at teaching it. In my case I was bad at both (haha) but yeah uhh—
After repeating something 99 times you can’t help it: If you repeat something 99 times, whatever it is that you repeated 99 times, that thing you repeated 99 times, you start to do it automatically.
When I was a teacher, I’d go on and on about how it’s good to find good ways to express your emotions. I used to “model” it, which means I’d demonstrate how to do it so that other people (the children in the class) could copy me. The example I always picked up was:
I was running for a bus and the bus driver saw me and he could clearly see that I wanted to get onto the bus, and he could have easily waited for 2 seconds longer and even looked me in the eyes but decided to drive away instead of letting me on. It made me SO ANGRY because it meant I would be later getting to work (to school) which means I might not be able to get all my work done.
In that moment I felt very angry, and angry with the bus driver, and when you feel something to that extent, you feel like you— you might feel compelled to express that strong feeling in some way: It feels like it wants / needs to come out, and when you’re angry—
It’s okay to feel angry like it’s okay to feel any emotion but when you’re angry— What’s more important is how you express your— your actions— all I really wanted to do in that moment was shout at the bus driver “Oh for fucks sake”, “Fuck you” and “Prick” and so on. And for sure— Well, I didn’t admit to that in the classroom, but I did say that I wanted to shout at the bus driver or maybe I wanted to bang my fist on the window or door that he wasn’t opening if I could reach it.
Some of the kids had some ideas too: “I would destroy the bus”, “I would nuke his house”, “You would what??”, “I would NUKE HIS—”, “Okay okay thank you everyone for the creative ideas”.
We’ve all done things we regret when we’re “expressing our feelings”. It takes practice to— It’s [just] one of those things where there isn’t any secret really, you [just] have to practise picking helpful ways to express yourself again and again: 99 times, so… what can I do right there in that moment, to express my anger?
It turns out: I like to write, despite my hatred of [text], I like to write. That’s a good way to express almost any emotion, I find, for me personally, it’s completely different for everyone, but I know that I can express almost any emotion by writing a story or a script or a post or a talk, on my phone. It gets it out. Especially when I’m listening to music at the same time.
Everyone’s different though. Some people prefer to— “I’ll draw a picture”, “Oh yes, drawing a picture / making some art is a great way to express how you’re feeling. It usually works better inside, I suppose, or—”, “I like to shout”, “Oh haha yes shouting can be pretty good too, as long as you’re in a place you can shout, of course, like a big park or—”, “I run really fast, like the Flash!”, “Oh yes, of course you do, very good idea”
and of course, this is [just] one of many strategies up our sleeve, isn’t it? We can also think about “the size of the problem”: How big is this problem? compared to …. aliens invading? “It’s much bigger than aliens invading, Mr Wilson, because aliens don’t exist”, “Oh ah uh yeah you’re right”, “But if they did exist, this problem would be a very very very small problem”, Yeah, a problem can feel really big when you’re inside / in the middle of a problem, but when you take a step back and think of “the size of the problem”, this can help you express your emotions in a way that matches / measures up
and of course we can use our social thinking skills: How / What do we think the driver is thinking / feeling? “If he sees me running for the bus, with an angry face, he might—”, “He’s scared of you, Mr Wilson”, “He’s worried he might be late because he still has to drive to Algar Close, Park Road, Old London Road, Turnham Bridge, St Albans Gate, Park Station, Twickenham, Twickenham Stadium, Whitton Road, Upper Halliford, New Barn Cross, Trinnum—”, “Yes, okay okay, thank you, we don’t need to list out every— very impressive— every single stop but that’s absolutely right, he—”
These strategies and many others: When combined with— You can use them to— They can help you to get the right conditions / set up the right conditions so that you can express your emotions in a way that you won’t regret half an hour later.
I didn’t come up with any of these / this, by the way. We were told what to— As teachers, we were told what to— We were advised by a large team of many many clever people: We worked closely with an educational psychologist (EdPsych) who worked closely with the kids. There was also a speech and language therapist (SALT) who did the same and also an occupational therapist (OT) who worked closely with the kids and with us. We were [just] the ones who were there every day to – –. We were also trained / advised by some trainers for— specifically for working with children and adults who— with challenging behaviour, for example violent or aggressive behaviour, so we also learned / were told lots of de-escalation strategies from them.
The funny thing is:
Well, first, before we get to that, I wanna say that the kids that I worked with were actually really great and fine. It was only when they were new with us when they struggled really, in most cases. I don’t want you thinking they were really violent or troublesome. They just needed a bit of time and patience when they first joined with us and then it was all good :)
But yeah, the funny thing was:
By modelling.. by demonstrating how to express your— pick a way to express your emotions in a helpful way: If you— By repeating that way way over 99 times: By doing it time and time again.. I couldn’t help it: I demonstrated it so much while I was at work that I couldn’t help but do it outside of work too. I learnt to look for the creative / helpful / cathartic ways to express myself outside of work too and this is what led me to making a bunch of sand and doing all the creative coding projects that I’m now known for.
You see, as adults we’re: We’re no different from— We’re the same as these kids: We’re still human: We feel emotions and we feel them strongly, and when that happens, we need to get it out: We feel compelled / the urge to “get it out” somehow, and there are many many many ways of doing this.
You see, being late for a bus might sound like a really small problem, but it can be / mean: It can represent something bigger than the silliness of missing one single bus: It can mean I’m running late for work so that I won’t be able to get everything ready for the class that I care a lot about, because I got up late because I’m so exhausted, because I’ve been low on staff members all week, because the government cut our funding, because it’s the lying government who cares more about kicking immigrants (my friends) out the country and giving billionaires (their friends) even more money, all while burning down the planet, all while making it even more illegal for me to piss in peace, all instead of funding schools like ours! instead of funding educational psychologists and therapists and giving us some help! Hell! We couldn’t even afford pencils and books, let alone teachers and teaching assistants! Those pricks! Those utter pricks! Those bastard politician pricks! Ruining everything— Ruining—
Ah yes, I feel a bit better now