Each week we will be sharing a tip from our school psychologist, Mrs. Rollins. This week we are talking about – Sitting in Uncomfortable Emotions When faced with uncomfortable or strong emotions, most of us try to avoid them or distract ourselves from them. We also tend to do that with our children. When they experience a strong emotion, we try to redirect or distract them away from it. This can be necessary at times because there are too many things going on right then to deal with it, but it can’t always be the solution. Working through uncomfortable emotion is a major coping skill that all of us need. If we never do this, it leads to disconnection with ourselves, feeling shameful about emotions, bottling emotions and explosive behavior when we just can’t do that anymore. This affects our relationships and our ability to be functional in everyday life. As we learn to do this for ourselves, we can model and assist our children in doing it as well. So how do we do it? There are a few steps in the process:

1. Acknowledge your feeling and label it – sounds simple, but it can be challenging if emotions are usually denied or ignored. Using an emotion wheel, emojis, emotion plushies or other representations can help.
2. Notice where – our bodies give us clues in how we are feeling. Anxiety can be felt in your stomach or with sleeplessness. Anger can feel hot. Stress can be tension in your head, neck or shoulders. Understanding this strengthens the connection between mind/body and identify triggering situations.
3. Analyze kindly – our first thought is usually to ask why. Why do we feel this way? What did I do? Why do I care? We do this to minimize the emotion and its power over us. Instead try to ask inviting questions: How long have I felt this way? How do I make sense of this emotion? What is it telling me?
4. What to do about it – there are two choices: to act or to let it go. If you are angry because a boundary is crossed, then doing something about it can help resolve that anger in productive change. The previous step in making sense of your emotions can make it easy to let them go. Research shows that as you become aware and willing to work through emotions, the experience may last as little as 90 seconds. Rather than suffering for months or years with unresolved emotions we can work through them as quickly as we redirected away from them before.

More information on this topic can be found from Psychology Today, Becky Belinsky, and Abby VanMuijen

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