Chatting about things that made him angry, sad or mad, I encouraged Adam to feel those feelings before he drew them. This is what he came up with.
Then we discussed his orange thoughts, which he decided were his "little helpers" - explorers of smart ideas and possibilities. He told me these little guys even made sounds like working on a computer keyboard!
Unprompted, he decided that red represented his angry brain, green was the colour of his happy brain and orange was the colour of his helper brain that could un-stick his feelings.
Next, I swiftly moved him out of his bad feelings by playing with our dogs. I even persuaded him to get rid of his negative "red brain" feelings by handing them over to our dog, Oscar, which caused him to laugh a lot. That's a much more useful emotional state! Now I prompted Adam to remember having fun and feeling proud of his behaviour. He drew these expressions:
Cut out and laminated, these images became useful resources during our work together. We used them in many ways, for example:
1. Flash Cards – we acted out a sequence of feelings to train Adam into awareness of his moods, and to encourage more control.
2. Splat – we acted out the feelings as we took the green card and SPLATTED it on top of the red, to squash it, with a big "splat" noise. This metaphor uses sound, sight and action to generate a sense of control in Adam.
3. Squish – we talked about a difficult and unresolved red issue and then took the orange card and SQUISHED it (ie. gave it a side-to-side movement) on top of red. Next, we took take 3 deep calming breaths and blew each out onto the orange card. On the last out-breath, we gently placed the green card on top.
4. Visualisation – by closing his eyes and imagining each of these activities, we firmly imprinted the processes onto his mind’s eye.
It seems so very simple - and that's how it works. Behavioural change really does happen in an instant. Adam’s mum wrote to me some months later delighted to report he'd had no further tantrums. Some people say it’s just like magic – it can certainly be fun, too!