At the core of strong mental health is one's ability to manage and tolerate emotions in a healthy manner. Emotional literacy, or emotional intelligence, is having self-awareness to recognize feelings and know how to manage them. The ability to stay calm when you feel angry or to reassure yourself when in doubt are both examples of emotional literacy.
People of all ages can experience strong feelings, and self-regulation tools, such as mindfulness, breathing exercises, and yoga can help them feel in control. For children and teens particularly, those skills are still being built, and parents and caregivers play a critical role in helping our kids and teens develop awareness of their emotions.
Some tips for parents and caregivers in teaching emotional regulation:
Actively listen without judgment. You don’t always have to “fix” the issue; sitting alongside and listening to the person’s perspective and thoughts is meaningful.
Be available when your child or teen wants to talk. This can often happen at inconvenient times, though it’s important we put things aside and be available to listen.
Model healthy ways to cope with emotions and stressors. Expressing emotions with words is one example. An example of describing their feelings might be: “I’m feeling really frustrated right now. I’m going to take a break and calm myself with some music. We will finish homework once I am calm.”
Resist the urge to project your own experience or overshare. As parents or caregivers, we often share our own experience in hopes our kids avoid our mistakes. However, this is often received as unrelated or invalidating, and they can be left feeling further misunderstood.
Normalize feelings. Emotions are not bad nor good, but rather, a normal human experience. Helping our kids and teens be okay with the feeling they are having and build their capacity to manage it is important.
Be aware of and respond to another person's emotions. For example saying, “It seems you may be feeling a little down or sad, do you want to talk about it?” This level of being attuned to another person’s feelings is how we form strong relationships.
It can be helpful to label feelings by reflecting and describing their behaviors, so that you can talk about them or reflect back for future moments.
Addressing one’s feelings can be uncomfortable, but building capacity to feel emotions in a manageable way is invaluable to weathering the stressors that life presents.
Managing our feelings is incredibly important for long term mental health, and it also takes practice. Much of emotional management relies on our ability to process our feelings, and the availability of others to support us.
As Maya Angelo once said, “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
May is Mental Health Awareness Month. Carolyn Eddy, LCSW provides care for patients of all ages at Barton Psychiatry & Mental Health in South Lake Tahoe. For a list of area resources and crisis lines, or to learn more, visit BartonHealth.org/MentalHealth.
