When big emotions happen, how do you respond?
Dear Applied EQ-ers,
Hi! How is your new year? How are you feeling?
However you are today, that’s okay. All of your feelings are okay. Even the unpopular ones. :)
My first instinct when beginning this letter was to wish you a happy new year, but then I realized I’d be doing the exact opposite of what today’s resource teaches.
Happy is such a popular emotion. Of all the emotions, Happy really gets put on a pedestal. It’s those other emotions (annoyed, sad, angry, frustrated, envious, pessimistic, etc.) that aren’t so popular.
So what are our options when responding to emotion, especially when responding to the not-so-happy emotions?
We teach five ways to respond to emotion as part of our EQ-uipped Classroom training, and they all start with “i”. Yay alliteration!
This is one of my favorite frameworks that we teach. It gives a structure to these conversations around emotions that can be really scary and messy. Especially when occurring in a classroom full of kids with lots of emotions!
I also find them useful in my own life with both my son and with myself.
Now that I’ve done the work to stop inhibiting and invalidating emotion for myself and my family (no small feat), I’m moving towards inviting emotions. I think I’m doing an okay job of this. We have our Emotions Chart up in our house. We talk about emotions. We say things like “It’s okay to be scared. I get scared when I’m trying something new too.” My partner and I are learning to invite emotion for everyone in our home. It’s nice. It feels good to not be so afraid of feeling or afraid of each others’ feelings. We’ve been through challenging emotions before, we can do it again.
I think what I’m trying to learn now is the final step of “instructing emotion.” During trainings, we walk teachers through a step-by-step scenario of how to instruct emotion with a child who is dysregulated. We use the example of anger, and I’m so grateful I get to teach this training because I need to be reminded how to instruct emotion in my own life over and over again.
I can now say and actually mean, “It’s okay to feel ________” with pretty much any emotion, but then helping a child learn to accept and regulate that emotion takes work and a lot of practice. And really, it means I have to keep doing the work of accepting and regulating my own emotions, or I won’t have a clue how to help those who depend on me. Whenever I find myself trying to “fix” the emotions of someone else, I know it’s time to go inward and take stock of what feelings I’ve got going on. The only emotions I can regulate are my own. Hopefully, as I get better at it, I can model it effectively for my son.
“The best intervention for a child is a healthy adult.” -EQ Intervention
I hope you have a healthy new year where all emotions are welcome.
Where does this land for you today?
When you were growing up, how was emotion handled by adults?
Of the five ways to respond to emotion, what do you do most with yourself, with your loved ones, with your students, with your colleagues?
If you want support instructing emotion with your students, we would love to connect with you. :)
Applying EQ with you, Elizabeth Eason Martin
