Can I self-regulate like a 7th grader?

Dear EQuipped Leaders,

How are you today?

What’s a high?

What’s a low?

How are you making space for all your feelings? And when you figure that out, email me back and tell me how.

I’m feeling uncomfortable today. Grumpy and feeling my anger coming out sideways. I’ve had a lot of leaps in my growth lately. I feel a lot has shifted within me in a powerful way. And when I go through seasons like this, I also have days where I backslide. I reach for coping strategies that I know aren’t helpful and I get real prickly. I think what’s different about this day of backsliding is I’m not freaking out. I’m noticing that I’m not acting how I want to act because I’m feeling feelings I don’t want to feel. And I have faith in myself to be able to move through this and come out the other side. I trust the process. I will move through this discomfort. I will come out better on the other side. But, ugh, this middle is uncomfortable.

So where better for me to go today than 7th grade? I can’t think of a messier middle of life than middle school. What was your 7th grade year of school like? What emotions rise up in you when you think of that year?

Because I’m in my own messy middle today, I’m drawn to this lesson on “Self-Regulation: How did I do this week?”

Here is the 7th grade student page for this lesson:

Will you think back to 7th grade you for a moment? What was that kid like? What were you into?

I picture myself carrying around a giant backpack, binder, and saxophone case. I was super into the Harry Potter books at that stage. I had long, skinny feet, knobby knees, and lots of big feelings and zero healthy tools for regulating them.

When I think back to 7th grade me, I wonder how this exercise would have landed for her.I wonder if having this little bit of space and permission to feel through and reflect on my choices would have helped me. I can’t imagine a teacher telling me it’s okay to feel my feelings and giving me tools to make choices that align with who I want to be. Maybe it happened and just didn’t stick, but I’m pretty sure that the vast majority of my education was focused on the head, not the heart. Even just a tiny bit more space for my heart would have made a big difference for me. I’m really grateful for my 7th grade teachers. I actually had a great year of school that year and really kind and passionate teachers. I think they would have run with curriculum like this, and I think it would have helped round out my education in an important way.

At the top of each teacher guide that accompanies the student lesson, is a short excerpt from The EQ Intervention. A guiding principle in The Applied EQ Group is “The best intervention for a child is a healthy adult.” So this section of the curriculum builds space for teachers to reflect on their own self-regulation:

I read this when I was a teacher, and it was activating for me. “Thank my emotions?” That seemed bananas to me. I tightly controlled (suppressed) and judged my emotions. I didn’t realize it, but I was expelling so much of my energy just avoiding feeling my feelings because I was so afraid of them. The idea that my emotions might not be bad, and might actually be worthy of appreciation was a foreign concept to me. I thought emotions were a problem to be solved, a pitfall to be avoided, a weakness to overcome. I didn’t realize how much of life I was missing because of this perspective.

I wish I’d been given permission as a 7th grader to feel my feelings and taught tools to regulate them, so I could be human and also make decisions I was proud of.

I wish I’d been given permission earlier as a teacher to feel and thank my emotions and model that for my students.

Where does this land for you?

What is a self-regulation moment this week that makes you proud of yourself?
What was a moment this week when you were having a hard time?
What emotion are you feeling right now? Would you be willing to thank that emotion for being here
Want more than my blurry cell phone pics of these lessons? We have Curriculum in English and Spanish, PreK-12th grade. Please reach out via email at info@appliedEQgroup.com.

EQuipped Together, Elizabeth