eight-year-old son came out of school he
handed me his book bag and Matthew I
don’t know to this day how I caught the
hood of his coat quick enough as a car
screeched inches from his feet all eyes
turned on us they knew a tantrum was
looming but nothing prepared me for what
happened next
why did you stop me why didn’t you let
me die I don’t wanna live anymore and he
screamed at me like this the whole way
home I felt sick inside
how do you’ve cut his finger I could
have put a plaster on it have you have
crashed into that car I could have
called a paramedic but he had crashed
emotionally at eight years old he was
suicidal daily and diagnosed with
Asperger’s and months later we received
a letter saying he doesn’t need an
assessment so we needed to make a change
and we started home educating Matthew
changed at least he stopped talking of
dying and then at the age of 13 he
developed a well known condition called
teenage brain his sister just said yeah
whatever
but Matthew shut himself in he shut me
out and he shut the world out he faced
that brick wall of depression and he
said I don’t want any help so no one
helped for five years I was here all
along but this was my dilemma anything I
said could be taped like taking this
sticking-plaster
I’m putting it on a broken leg there we
go and saying no there that will be
better tomorrow that will not heal a
broken leg and that will not promote
emotional healing at 18 Matthew’s
depression hit an all-time low and it
frequently took me three hours to talk
him out of the deepest darkest pits but
I knew I couldn’t be there for him every
day of his life and he needed to learn
to manage his own emotions but how could
I teach him something that I couldn’t
explain all the self-development tools
were there but something was missing I’d
been able to talk him out of that danger
zone even day after day but I just
couldn’t prevent him from going back in
I set about finding a new coping
strategy and I realized that with
Matthews Asperger’s he struggled with
invisible concepts like time and
emotions so I needed to find a way of
making his world of hidden emotions a
visual mentoring tool so I started with
four core emotions and four colors as
the system formed in my mind I added a
fifth color and this represents a change
of emotions because I now realized that
we change between emotions because
something changed either positively or
negatively and using just this I started
to mentor Matthew and over the coming
weeks
he’s three-hour dips in depression
reduced to one hour each time he now
started calling me he now started
seeking Him
Roseman not hiding from it and in one
day he phoned me to say I just talked
myself out of one in ten minutes next
Matthew started helping a friend and he
was asking my advice secretly and just a
few weeks later his friend sat drinking
coffee with us and just randomly said
I’ve realized that hanging around with
Matt makes me a better person
Wow in that moment I realized the
potential power of a simple but mindful
system and the importance of continuing
its development over the last 18 months
it has now evolved to this and it looks
a little bit more sexy it now shows that
our emotions surround us that the change
happens within us and change happens
around us it shows that change knocks us
down and we rise back up we react to
change through fight-or-flight and this
is rock bottom you’ve seen it in all the
best movies where they go and they punch
it out in that gym or they go and they
have a good cry before they make that
breakthrough this is the emotional
diagram of those triumphant moments I’ve
realized that by chunking life into
these five colors we can begin to
understand their emotional starting
point Stephen Covey wrote in the seven
Habits of Highly Effective People about
the concepts of understand before being
understood a magician Brian Miller he’s
already done an amazing TED talk on this
concept alone and as if by magic he
actually looks a bit like my Matthew
but if you skip this trick you become
that sticky plaster person who hasn’t
understood the injury first yet how many
grow up and act your age life isn’t fair
get used to it only you can get yourself
out of it do they sound like someone who
has tried to understand these sentences
tell them what to do not how to do it we
tell them there is light at the end of
the tunnel
but we don’t give them the map of the
tunnel we tell them they can achieve
anything they put their mind to and then
on leaving school they learn they must
start at the bottom we prepare them
emotionally for the destination of
success but not the journey of life now
imagine one person being knocked back
and stuck in one of these colours if
they lack the life experience or the
control to make those changes for the
better are you now going to be their
sticky plaster full of quotes or their
emotional mentor many will still need
professional help but there are many
more who could learn to help themselves
with the right emotional mentoring I’m
just a mum but I am leaving my corporate
job in two weeks to start sharing our
experience at the age of 20
Matthew sat beside me on a bench in the
sunshine and he put his arm around me
and he admitted what a pain in the ass
he had been
and he thanked me for never giving up on
him he said I now know why steel is
forged in the fire the more you go
through it the tougher you get Matthew
had finally understood that he had come
through that tunnel and into the light
and he understood there would be more
challenges but he was ready to embrace
them so let’s teach our younger
generations using more emotional
mentoring let’s teach them why we should
embrace negative change as a challenge
let’s teach them how to make changes for
the better and let’s teach them to take
control of their own lives their whole life