EXPLORING The "HEAL method" for creating more joy in parenting

“Joy does not simply happen to us. We have to choose joy and keep choosing it every day.” – Henri J.M. Nouwen

We’ve been talking about joy in parenting lately, and how it can feel so elusive.  I recall having a well meaning neighbor with no kids at home tell me “to enjoy every moment, it goes so fast,” while I was knee deep in parenting three kids under 5 years old.  I didn’t appreciate the comment then, and now that I have three teens, I often still don’t appreciate it.  It’s hard to find positive moments and joy when you are parenting a human who is taller than you, but still lacks basic life skills.  

As part of my parenting journey, I have had to learn skills for things that I thought would come naturally, such as finding joy in my kids. 

One of the skills I’ve been working with lately is rewiring my brain for more positivity.  

Noticing positive moments, even tiny ones, powerfully rewires your brain for more resilience, happiness, and resourcefulness.  Research tells us that by strengthening positive neural pathways, we can indeed notice, and even create, more joy.   

Dr. Rick Hanson, Senior Psychologist at the Greater Good Science Center, teaches the HEAL method as a way to intentionally see and experience happiness.  The method involves 4 steps:  Have an experience, Enrich it, Absorb it, and Link it.  

H - Have an experience.  Luckily, experiences happen to us all day long!  And even better, the experience does not have to be “positive” - perhaps you can think of it as beneficial.  The trick is to actually be in the moment enough to realize you are having an experience.  It can be a moment of laughter, a quick hug, or seeing a glimmer of growth in your child.  It does NOT need to be a planned, “big” event.  

E - Enrich the experience.  This means REALLY noticing it, and seeing if you can stay with the feelings and sensations of the experience.  Perhaps you can notice the sensory experience you are having - what sights/sounds/smells are present while you are having this experience? Can you label your emotions in the moment?  Can you take a “snapshot” with your mind to try to remember the experience? 

Absorb it -  Soak in the experience for 10+ seconds.   It’s amazing how quickly we move through life without really noticing or reflecting on how we feel about something. In addition, our negativity bias means our brains will recall and relive challenging experiences or threats, but will move on from positive experiences without really noticing.  But, absorbing an experience - staying with it for even a short 10 second period - can help your brain realize something positive happened, and you are on your way to building new neural pathways that help you find and experience joy.  

Link it - This one is tricky, as it often means holding two truths at once.   It means asking your brain to hold on to the positive moment while also acknowledging there may have been uncomfortable moments as well.  While the positive experience is at the forefront, you can gently open up to a background negative experience. The positive feelings can then act as a buffer and help soothe or reduce the negative one, thereby strengthening the new positive neural pathways and rewiring the brain for more joy.  

Really, it’s about gently training our minds to notice that good that is already present in parenting, even on those really messy, chaotic, or just plain hard days.  It is a skill I wish I could have cultivated when my kids were young, because you know what - my neighbor was right.  It does go fast, and my kids and I both deserved more joy.