I have experienced fairly long term illness and I can attest to the inability to prolong stable emotional behavior in rigid or formal settings. Or any setting, actually. I am an emotional character in most respects to start. It is losing the wherewithal to understand and temper the emotions that is the problem. It returns you to being a child, and for that I am lucky in having wonderful kith and kin. I find that my position as a parent is strengthened by this direct empathy for that thin-skinned world. Learn from whatever you got, I guess. I am thinking of my mother as I listen to my daughter stamp and stomp and scream above me. Time out. 

 

Time outs are great responses to any social emotional failure. I give them to myself regularly as part of honest self-assessment. Everyone needs a vacation from themselves as much as they need one from everyone else. I probably deserve more of them, and I use that in all sense of the term deserve.

 

Time outs are predicated on rewards at the successful completion of some defined period of quietness.