What If The Shark Music Never Stops?
With Shark Week happening on Discovery Channel, I can’t help but think about a concept in parenting inspired by these very animals. It’s called “shark music.”
The term comes from the Jaws metaphor: the music starts playing before we ever see the shark. Our bodies begin to tense. We start anticipating danger. We know something might be coming, even when we don’t yet know what it is.
Have you ever noticed your whole body tense up when, technically, everything is okay?
Your child is playing. Everyone is healthy. Nothing is happening that requires your immediate attention. And yet your shoulders are tight, your jaw is clenched, and some part of you is waiting for something to go wrong.
Sometimes the shark is not actually in the room. Sometimes, it is just the music.
The Shark Music We Bring to Our Children’s Emotions
The concept of shark music, used in Circle of Security Parenting, describes the way our own experiences can become activated by our children’s emotions. When our child is sad, angry, afraid, overwhelmed, or really just having any feeling at all, their emotions can stir up our own histories with those emotions.
If sadness was uncomfortable in our childhood home, our child’s sadness may be difficult to sit with. If anger was punished or feared, our child’s anger may trigger an urgent need to shut it down. If we learned that keeping everyone happy was our responsibility, our child’s disappointment may feel like evidence that we have somehow failed.
Our child is having an emotion, but our nervous system may be responding to the meaning we learned to attach to that emotion.
Recognizing our own shark music can help us separate our child’s experience from our own. We can sit beside their sadness without needing to make it disappear, acknowledge their anger without treating it as an emergency, and allow their fear without assuming that something terrible must be happening.
Their feelings can remain their feelings. They don’t have to become ours.
But what happens when the shark music becomes so familiar that it no longer needs a trigger?
What happens when we begin anticipating the shark before our children have shown us that there is one?
When the Music Starts Playing All the Time
Sometimes the shark music isn’t playing because our child is sad, angry, scared, or dysregulated. Sometimes it is simply playing in the background of our lives.
We are waiting for the meltdown before it happens. Worrying about the illness before anyone is sick. Anticipating the conflict before anyone has said anything. Listening for the next problem, the next need, the next thing that might go wrong.
Our bodies may reflect this before we are even consciously aware of it. Our shoulders stay tense. Our jaws clench. We find ourselves unable to fully relax. Even during moments when everything appears to be okay, some part of us is waiting for the other shoe to drop.
This is where I think the Jaws metaphor becomes particularly powerful. Imagine watching the movie while the shark music played continuously from beginning to end. Not only when the shark was nearby, but through every ordinary scene in between.
You would spend the entire movie waiting for the shark.
Your nervous system would never receive the message that the threat had passed. Even during the quiet moments, your body would remain prepared for something terrible to happen.
You would probably leave the theater feeling very different than you would if the music had only appeared when there was actually something to be concerned about. Your shoulders might be tight. Your jaw might be clenched. You might feel jumpy and exhausted from spending the entire movie preparing for a shark that may or may not appear.
This is what can happen when we become accustomed to living on alert. We don’t just respond to what is happening. We start anticipating what might happen.
We get stuck waiting for the “approaching shark” that may or may not ever come.
Motherhood and the Art of Scanning for Danger
And motherhood is a particularly funky time of life for this. If there were a nature documentary about the mother human, I imagine the narrator might say something like:
Here we see the mother human carefully scanning her surroundings, taking stock of the environment and making sure her offspring are safe.
Watch as she checks the temperature, notices an unusual sound, and carefully observes her little one for any signs of distress.
But wait. What is that? Is it a lion?
No. We are not on the savanna. It is simply the sound of the neighbors coming home from work.
Wait… the child is crying. Is something wrong?
No. Their banana broke in half.
The mother human is now wondering: Is this reaction normal? Should she Google it? Or will she simply let this moment be?
We’ll find out after the break.
Our brains and bodies are remarkably well adapted to notice potential threats. That vigilance has an important purpose. For some of us, that alarm system was already sensitive before motherhood, but motherhood can amplify it in ways that are hard to ignore.
Suddenly, we're not just scanning for our own safety. We're responsible for the life of another human being. A tiny person we love more than we can fully comprehend. Our brains are understandably motivated to protect them, and our nervous systems can become very, very good at scanning for anything that could possibly go wrong.
The scanning isn't just about safety, either. It can also happen when our child's emotions, temperament, or needs feel different from what we expected or what we see around us. When our child seems to feel things more deeply, react more intensely, or move through the world differently than the children around them, it can be easy for our minds to jump ahead.
Is this normal?
Should I be worried?
Am I missing something?
Sometimes we even start scanning for the possibility of the emotion itself, watching for the first sign that our child might become overwhelmed, angry, anxious, or upset because we are afraid we might miss something important.
The more different something feels, the louder the music can become.
But somewhere along the way, evolution and modern life got mixed together.
Our nervous systems evolved to protect us from real, immediate threats, but modern life gives us an endless supply of hypothetical ones to anticipate. There is always another headline, another health concern, another thing to worry about, another influencer telling us what our child should be doing by now, or another new way to wonder if we're missing something important.
And there is no point where someone says, “Congratulations! Your child is now old enough. You may turn off the threat detection system.” So we keep scanning.
Our children.
Our homes.
Our relationships.
Our health.
Our work.
Our future.
We can end up scanning our entire lives, always waiting for the next thing that might hurt us or our child. And when we live that way long enough, we can lose touch with what it feels like to simply be here.
Practicing the Pause
This is why I think learning to practice the pause is so important.
Yes, I know. It sounds almost too simple.
Just pause.
But really, the pause can be huge.
The pause gives us a moment to separate what is happening right now from what our nervous system thinks could possibly happen, either now or someday. The pause gives us a chance to notice the music without immediately believing there must be a shark.
It is changing our inner monologue from:
Could something go wrong?
Because the answer to that is almost always yes, especially as a mom.
Instead of:
Was there a reason to be worried in the past?
Because, honestly, there may have been.
And instead to:
Is there actually a shark here, right now?
In truth, sometimes the answer will be yes.
Sometimes your child genuinely needs your attention. Sometimes there is a problem that needs to be addressed. Sometimes something really is wrong.
But sometimes the answer is no.
Sometimes your child is simply having a feeling. Sometimes you are simply in a quiet moment. Nothing needs to be fixed, solved, prevented, or anticipated.
And sometimes you have been listening to shark music for so long that you have forgotten what it feels like when the music stops.
When this is your reality, the goal may not be to turn off the shark music completely. Life will always contain uncertainty, and our nervous systems will always have the capacity to alert us when something needs our attention. And in motherhood there really are things we need to be alert to.
What if, instead, the goal is to become confident enough to hear the music without immediately assuming there is a shark.
To pause before reacting.
Notice what is actually happening.
Distinguish between what we know is happening and what we fear might happen.
To allow our children to have their feelings without automatically turning those feelings into an emergency. And perhaps, little by little, to teach our nervous systems that there can be moments when nothing needs to be fixed, solved, prevented, or anticipated.
There can simply be this moment, right now.
And right now, it’s okay to accept that there is no shark at all.
By: Ellie Messinger-Adams LPCC
Owner and Therapist at ēma therapy
