11/09/2022
❤❤
Karen Young - Hey Sigmund
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It doesn’t matter if they do the brave thing well, or whether they do it at all. Provided they are safe (physically and relationally), learning to be brave is about learning they can handle the discomfort of anxiety, because brave things always come with anxiety. That’s what makes them brave.
For this, they will need the experiences that show them they can handle the discomfort. It doesn’t matter how long this takes, and it doesn’t matter how small or messy the steps are to get there. It doesn’t matter at all.
Courage takes time, but we know it’s in all of our young ones. It’s in all of us. Our job as their important adults is to recognise the experiences that will help them to know this too.
Those experiences will look like anxiety. They will look like the scary but safe experiences they might want to avoid because they don’t feel brave enough, strong enough, powerful enough. The doing of these experiences might look messy - so messy - but as long as they are safe, this is okay. This is what the building of brave looks like sometimes. It isn’t the doing of the experience completely or well that makes them brave. It’s the ‘not avoiding’, and that can happen little bit by little bit. One tiny step day after day that build on each other.
Every little moment they spend ‘not avoiding’ is building brave. It doesn’t matter how messy the moments are or how small. What matters is the moments, and that we see those small messy moments that don’t always end as we want them to for what they are. They aren’t the failure to do brave. They’re the building of it.
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