Does your deeply feeling kid have daily tummy aches?
Butterflies in their stomach before going to school?
Do they get nauseous or dizzy for no reason?
Then, they might struggle with somatization (assuming you ruled out any physical illness with your medical advisor).
What is somatization?
Somatization means expressing emotions through physical symptoms. For instance, we can feel nausea, headaches, dizziness, weakness after trauma, around a big event, or as a result of prolonged stress.
Babies and young children often experience somatization. The reason is that little ones can’t yet speak or understand how they feel (upset toddlers throw tantrums, right?). When that happens, frustration and anger get trapped in our bodies and resurface through tummy aches, sleep issues and so on.
Let’s see an example.
Fear causes your shoulders to tense up. Long lasting fear or worries can alter your body posture, making you always keep your shoulders contracted and neck retracted.
Likewise, kids can experience intense and lasting feelings around big transitions. Examples encompass beginning school, shifting to a new house and parental break-up. As a result, tummy aches, small rashes, and unexplained headaches are common during such periods. Those symptoms are real and your child does not imagine them.
Signs of somatization include:
- Shortness of breath or trouble breathing.
- Rapid heartbeat.
- Tummy aches.
- Tiredness.
- Dizziness.
- Back pain.
- Feeling sick (nauseated).
What causes somatization?
Stress that your deeply feeling kid cannot communicate using words
In the first two years, children rely on their senses to express needs and emotions. For example, a baby who feels uncomfortable or stressed often has sleeping or eating issues.
Somatization happens less often past toddlerhood. However, it can still affect some kids. For instance, drop-off anxiety or lagging social skills can cause daily tummy aches and sudden rashes. Also, asthma can worsen, there’s a proven link between asthma, anxiety and depression.
Heightened sensitivity
A deeply feeling kid who is prone to anxiety can show emotions through physical discomfort. That happens even if they are old enough to speak. Also, a deeply feeling child can be more sensitive to pain or nausea, which can worsen symptoms.
Other factors include sleep patterns, nutritional intake, and hydration. In addition, studies show that kids with chronically ill parents also experience somatization.
Is somatization a sign of anxiety?
According to studies, about 30% to 60% of people (children and adults) with somatic symptom disorder (somatization that results in problems with daily functioning) have depression, anxiety or both.
How to help your deeply feeling kid with somatization?
1. Normalize negative emotions
In our culture, we learn from a young age that unpleasant feelings and emotions are not good. So, what do we do with negative feelings? We avoid and suppress them.
Here’s the thing though: your deeply feeling child can start having physical symptoms, like tummy aches and headaches, because they try hard to avoid or suppress negative emotions.
Emotions have a way to resurface so an avoidance strategy does not work in the long run. So, any time your child avoids a negative feeling, even if they do so through a calming activity, they will associate that activity with the negative emotion. For example, if your child turns on their tablet any time that they feel worried, they will associate screen time with anxiety. Consequently, when you tell them that screen time is over, they might go into meltdown because their suppressed emotions have been waiting to bubble up.
So, it’s better to teach your child not to suppress their worries, sadness and anger. Instead, teach them that emotions are not right or wrong. In fact, they are normal and make us human. Regardless of whether they are uncomfortable or positive, we must acknowledge and talk about our emotions. That’s because we have a lot to learn from our fears, worries, sadness and grief, as well as from happiness and pride.
2. Help your deeply feeling kid identify emotions
Label and define emotions. For example, say “It looks like you are sad that you won’t get a turn on the slide today. Let’s see what we can do to help you with that problem.”
Ask your child how they feel throughout the day. When your child is worried, you can ask, “How are you feeling?” or say, “It looks like you feel sad about something.”
Talk about emotions when reading. When reading books, label the characters’ emotions and point out the facial expression, gestures and body language of the characters.
Say out loud how you are feeling. For example, “I am feeling happy today because today we are going to get ice cream!” or “I am feeling sad today because we couldn’t go to the zoo as we had planned.”
Talk about your calm down tools and problem solving. “I need to take a deep breath to calm down. I’m feeling frustrated right now because I can’t find the audio story we wanted to listen to tonight. I’ll have to think about where I put it. Before I went to the kitchen, I had it. If I walk over there, maybe I’ll find it.”
Discuss how people might feel in different situations. For example, when reading books or talking with children about their own lives, ask “Why do you think the girl felt that way? How could you tell she was feeling angry?”
Praise efforts to share feelings and problem solving. Praise your child when they share their feelings with you and when they try to solve their problems independently. For example, say “You calmed down and told Mia how you were feeling. Then, you talked about how you could both play with the blocks!” Offer specific praise about efforts not results.
3. Body scan
Trace the outline of a child’s body or print an image of a child, and ask your child to draw an “X” or a red circle on the body part or parts that feel funny when they are angry, worried, frustrated or sad. Also, discuss coping strategies: you can ask them what they would need to feel better, or make suggestions.
4. Play emotion games with your deeply feeling kid
Here are some simple games to teach emotions to your child:
- Charades. You can mimic an emotion using your eyes, hands or body language and ask your child to guess it. Alternatively, your child can do that and you have to guess what emotion they thought about.
- Complete the picture. Draw a kid expressing an emotion and then ask your child to draw the rest of the picture.
- Play with puppets or stuffed animals. Talking through puppets, stuffed animals or figurines helps kids communicate about feelings while also keeping some distance from what upsets them. You can discuss how your child feels and also offer another perspective. Reversing the characters so that your child plays a different role can help your little one how their actions affect others.
- Emotions jenga. Write emotions (“Sad. Describe a time when you felt this way”) or prompts (“What do you like about school?”) on strips of paper and glue them on the planks of your jenga set.
