Emotion regulation -learning its meaning and intensity
Before you teach about the purpose of emotions, scale/ intensity and body sensations, I would recommend teaching about emotional awareness first. Below link will cover emotion regulation through awareness.
Emotion Awareness – Ideas For Counseling
Emotion is an evolutionary survival mechanism that helps us make decisions in life (Flight, fight, or freeze response). As we get older, our brain goes into a quick reaction rather than thinking logically “what am I feeling, what is my feeling telling me to do?”. and “how much am I feeling”? You can teach them these skills with worksheet below to answer these questions to improve emotion regulation.
Emotion regulation by learning the intensity
I remember working with kids who tell me “it’s not okay to be mad”. So, it is very important to teach the children that emotions actually gives the signal for motivation and protection. They are there to protect us. But it becomes a problem when we let our emotions control us rather than guide us.
- We all have emotions.
- it’s okay to have emotions.
- Emotions come and go. They also change from time to time. We might feel several feelings at the same time.
- Emotions have different intensities. Sometimes we feel a lot of emotions and other times we feel a little.
- Emotions can be felt in our bodies. It is a sign to take care of our emotions, mind, and body.
- Everyone is capable of teaching our mind and body to be more aware of our different range of emotions and their meaning before acting on them.
Body Sensations awareness for emotion regulation
I ask questions about how do we know that we have flu/virus in our body. If they cannot answer the question, I usually answer them by saying how symptoms like “cough, fever, warm body, and weak body” tell us to take rest. The body tells us when something is harmful to us. Similarly, if our body recognizes that stress/ strong emotions are not healthy, our physical sensations are signs to use our emotion awareness rather than acting on it. Stress can help push us and motivate us. And body sensations are ways of telling us if it went above the “just right stress”, and might need to relax a little bit. So, the more they can learn to be aware of body sensations, the more they are able to regulate or even decrease the intensity of emotions.
Website where you can find 5 step guide on emotion regulation
Lastly, I wanted to add this 5- step guide on how to feel your feelings by www.milk and honeytherapy.com (identify feelings, face your feelings without any judgment, identify body sensations, express emotions, and cope with it). This just sums up everything. Good resource!!!
