It might have been years since you went through the drive-through window at a fast food restaurant. 

But no matter how long it’s been, you still know how that conversation goes:

1. You order food.
2. You pull up to the window.
3. They repeat your order back to you.
4. Then they take payment, give you your order and complete the transaction. 

The Fast Food Rule is a rule the pediatrician and author Harvey Karp created for how to address a toddler who’s hungry, angry, tired, crying, afraid or otherwise in distress.

I want to share it with you because it also works for dealing with adults who are hungry, angry, tired, crying, afraid or otherwise in distress.

(You know, like much of the human race on any given Tuesday in 2020.)

And it even works if the distressed person you’re dealing with happens to be yourself.

Here’s how it goes: 

1. Whoever is “hungriest for attention” gets to speak first. It’s almost always the toddler who has the most pressing need, but in moments of danger, it might be the parent. This means that the hungriest person gets to yell their yell, cry their cry or otherwise express themselves first and fully. Karp writes: “We calm fastest and feel most loved (children and adults) when our upsets are acknowledged with understanding and respect.”

2. Then and only then, the parent repeats back what the toddler expressed in their language. Even highly verbal toddlers resort to Baby Neanderthal-speak when distressed. So the parents’ job is to repeat back to them exactly what they said, in their words, so they know they’ve been heard. 

    “No wanna?”

    “Londyn very very sad?”

    Like that. 

And part of the repeating back includes making sure your facial expression and tone of voice also mirrors their emotion, without escalating it. Karp says to repeat the message back with your “words, face and heart.”

If you do it right, Step Two soothes the savage toddler. The crying dissipates. The tantrum subsides. And more importantly, they FEEL loved. Reconnected. 

Their attention bucket fills up a bit. Their power bucket, too, as they grok that their emotions and expressions had the power to cause you to stop, listen and understand.

This is what happens when people feel like they’ve been seen, heard and understood, no matter how old they are.

3. After the distress subsides, you complete the transaction. Maybe all you do is console them, then move forward with giving them a bath anyway. Or maybe you offer a new solution to the issue as you now understand it, having listened to them. The specific outcome you offer is much less important than the fact that the upset person feel heard, seen and understood. Until that happens, the tantrum continues. And once that happens, almost any outcome has a chance of working out.

These steps work in any conversation with upset humans of any age, which describes a lot of the people in the world right now.

Fear, anger, sadness, exhaustion and the adrenalized dread of chronic uncertainty are pervasive.

These steps also work in conversations with your own Inner Child. 

It works to let yourself be heard by yourself, fully and without judgment, shushing or bypassing your own emotions. Write out what you’re feeling. Don’t keep the swirl in your head. Don’t try to medicate it away. Overeat it away. Overdrink it away. Overwork it away.

Don’t start with the “love and light” stuff, and don’t start trying to reframe or argue yourself out of feeling how you feel — not before your feelings have completed “their career within you”, as Dave Richo would say.

It is an essential thing, to intentionally decide this will be your approach when dealing with an Upset Other or an Upset Self. 

The reason this is essential, is that it’s not the normal way we deal with upset people in our culture.

Have you ever noticed a child get sad, angry or afraid, or start repeatedly demanding something? 

In our culture, it’s very “normal” for the adults around to say things like: 

• “You’re okay.”
• “There’s nothing to be afraid of.”
• “You’re fine. Everything’s fine.”

X It’s “normal” for parents to try to convince their kids they don’t feel what they really do feel.

X It’s “normal” for parents, in their discomfort or embarrassment at a public outburst, to even chuckle or laugh at their child’s distress.

You might have been discouraged or even punished for crying or expressing your upset as a young child. 

Maybe your parents made you act like everything was okay, when it really wasn’t. 

Maybe your boundaries were violated or abused, and you were sent to your room for crying. Maybe you even heard: “I’ll give you something to cry about!”. 

Or maybe you just watched your Mom or Dad model a stiff upper lip, or watched them withdraw attention or approval from you if you acted sad, angry or upset.

Many people in our culture receive these kinds of messages as children. And kids interpret all of these things as signals that it’s not okay to feel what they feel. 

And because this behavior is “normal” in our culture, a huge portion of the adult population hasn’t learned how to mindfully, soulfully and effectively address an upset person, even when you are that person.

Over a lifetime of these messages, we develop an inner repressive parent to shut our own distress cries down, before we even make a peep.

This does two things. First, it creates this ever-growing, seething, oozing corner of unexpressed emotion that rattles around within us. And that creates a template of repression that feels just like home, so we re-create it over and over again by choosing mates and jobs where we can never quite fully be who we are, speak up for ourselves, say what we mean or ask for what we need. 

Jung said “until you make the unconscious conscious, it will rule your life and you will call it fate. And that’s what he meant. Whatever elements of your inner world are disowned will be the most active in creating your life, without you even knowing that’s what’s happening, until you reclaim them.

The other thing this inner repressive parent does is continue to pack down your emotional gunpowder until it does explode one day. It deprives you of all the information and illumination those emotions are trying to bring you, and it sets you up for breakdowns, break-ups, burnout and heart disease. 

Fortunately, your inner repressive parent also puts you on the journey to radical liberation, wholeness and success on your own terms, if you decide your own happiness is worth the work it takes to reverse your own repression. 

Now, I’m not saying you should complain and vent your irritations, annoyances, struggles and disappointments all the time. That tends to keep you entangled with that unwanted energy, and you might find your relationships built on a platform of angst that you’ll want to get away from someday. 

But I am asking you to see when you have a tendency to repress your own emotions, and start letting yourself feel them instead. 

I am asking you to give your emotions the time and space to run their course and to do their job. That’s one reason why free-writing and journaling work. It’s one reason why therapy works. It’s one reason why I teach the Spiritual Strategy I call “three time’s a wrap”: Tell your tale of woe thrice if you need to, but rewrite the story or just stop telling it before the fourth time.

See, about half the time when I use the Fast Food Rule with Londyn, during Step One I realize that there is legitimately something that is causing her upset. Something I can fix or change, like there’s a tag in her dress that’s poking her. Or she’s hungry. Or needs a nap, not another outing. 

And it’s the same with you. All of your “distress” emotions contain information and energy you can use to make changes that will benefit you, if you are willing and able to listen to yourself and to get out of your own way.

So use the Fast Food Rule with your kids, your colleagues, your mate and your own Inner Child. 

Listen to the upset FIRST. Let those emotions do their work, without trying to shush or reframe them. 

See what needs seeing. Hear what needs hearing. 

Try it right now. 

As I send this, it’s 6:00 pm on the West Coast of North America.

Stop doing stuff for 30 seconds. Tune in. How are you feeling? 

Really? 

Are you hungry? Angry? Disconnected? 

Stressed? Tired? 

What do you need? 

Do you need to go to bed early? 

Do you need to sign off social media? Do you need to watch something beautiful tonight?

Do you need to free-write all the fears and thoughts and grievances and ruminations of the day so they can be out of your head before bed? 

Do you need a super-delicious, super-nourishing meal… or conversation? 

Is there any unmet need that you can fill for yourself this evening? 

When you listen to your own emotions, what do you hear? 

Do you need to clean up your side of a relationship? 

Do you need a change of scene? 

Do you need to stop looking for approval in all the wrong places and start giving it to yourself?

Do you need to stop saying “someday” to your unlived life and start taking a little tiny step toward it?

Do you just need a bath? 

And one more thing: Can you resist the urge to tell yourself how impossible it is to give yourself what you want or need right now? 

Can you resist the temptation to criticize yourself for needing what you need and wanting what you want?

Part of awakening and self-actualization is radically embracing every part of your inner experience, including the feelings you don’t want to feel. 

You don’t have to dwell in them.

But open your arms wide to them. Listen to the inner intelligence that speaks to you, within you, in the form of your own emotions. 

And allow yourself to be informed and energized by whatever it is you hear.

Head up + heart out,

Tara-Nicholle Nelson, MA, Esq.
Founder + CEO of SoulTour

@taranicholle on FB | TW | IG | LI

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