Feelings are like Geysers

This is written with kids in mind to help with Acceptance:

Yellowstone National Park is world-famous for its spectacular geysers, like “Old Faithful”. Geysers are interesting natural wonders. They are hot springs of water which when they get hot enough to boil they send all the water into a tall plume or jet of water into the air. But, they only work like geysers if they have all of the following: heat, water and a plumbing system that clogs up. If they don’t clog up they are just a hot spring of water in the ground. One hot spring in Yellowstone is the Heart Spring, which is a beautiful deep green pool of water shaped like a heart. If they do clog up, pressure builds up and it “blows its top”.

Yellowstone has so many different geysers. Old Faithful erupts every 35 to 120 minutes all day every day for 1 ½ to 5 minutes at a time and the water reaches a height of between 90 and 184 feet in the air. Even though you can count on it erupting, even it is not on a set schedule.

The Giantess Geyser can erupt violently with bursts up to 100 to 200 feet high and the area surrounding may shake from the underground steam explosions. Its eruptions can occur two times an hour for between 4 and 48 hours but only two to six times a year.

Sawmill Geyser erupts and spins water around its crater so it looks like a circular blade of a lumber mill. However its eruptions can last all kinds of different times. It can be between 9 minutes and 4 hours.

They all have something in common: they erupt! Human beings erupt, too… but not exactly like a geyser. We erupt with words or actions “blowing out tops”, too. If we remember what is necessary for geysers to be geysers, it is they “clog up” and build up a lot of pressure. If we try to push a feeling down and try not to think about upsetting things we “clog up” too. If we only think about upsetting things, we can be like the Giantess Geyser with the ground shaking and huge bursts of hot boiling water. We can get out of control.

So, what’s a person to do? Well, noticing our feelings and letting them bubble up like a hot spring doesn’t usually hurt anyone. However, they may be very hot and we have to respect the feelings, just like you can’t do a cannonball dive into a hot springs. You may need to find out a little about the feeling and ease into it and learn all about it.

By the way, Yellowstone National Park has a live webcam of Old Faithful geyser: Old Faithful Geyser Live. Check it out!