Your 3-Step Guide to Managing Emotions

It's a common belief that managing your emotions means stopping them, setting your mind on the “right” path, and pushing through. This is how many adults have learned to cope, and often, how they teach their children to handle emotions.

But here’s the thing: emotions don’t work that way. Ironically, trying to stop your emotions usually makes them stick around longer! To move through emotions and let them resolve, we need to give them space to exist and truly feel and acknowledge them. 

Step 1: Identify the Emotion

Start by naming the emotion you're feeling. While this may sound easy, it can actually be trickier than it seems. We often say things like, “I feel upset” or “I feel bad.” It’s important to get more specific, while still keeping it simple! There are only a handful of basic emotions to choose from—like in the movie Inside Out:

🌱 Anger

🌱 Sadness

🌱 Fear

🌱 Disgust

🌱 Joy

Try following this simple two-part sentence:

"I feel ____ because ____."

For example: "I feel angry because my kid didn’t do what I asked."

That’s it!

Step 2: Validate the Emotion

Validation is about acknowledging that your emotions make sense, given the situation. It's easy to think that some emotions are unreasonable or exaggerated, but the key is to zoom in on why it does make sense to feel what you're feeling.

For instance, if you’re a parent of a young child, you may have experienced moments where your child hit or hurt you. It can be confusing—on one hand, you’re angry and in pain; on the other, you might tell yourself, "They’re just a kid, it was an accident, they didn’t understand what they were doing." All of this is true, but validating the emotion means recognizing why it makes sense to feel what you’re feeling.

It makes sense to feel angry when you get hit in the face 🤕

Step 3: Choose Your Path Forward

Choosing what to do next can be tricky, and it might take some time. But it’s important to remember that your emotions don’t dictate your actions. You have the power to choose how to respond. You can choose to act in a way that is consistent with your emotions or you may choose to act in a way that is inconsistent with your emotions, but instead aligns with your goals and values.

Let’s go back to our example, while it makes sense to feel angry when you were hit in the face, you might decide not to act on that anger because your child is 2-years-old, didn’t hurt you intentionally, and their behavior was developmentally appropriate. Acting in line with your parenting values, you might instead choose to take a deep breath, move to a safe space, and set a calm, verbal limit with your child.

Give it a Try

Next time you're feeling “upset” or “bad,” try out this 3-step process for yourself:

1. Identify the emotion - use the two-part sentence

2. Validate the emotion - recognize why it makes sense to feel that way

3. Choose your path forward - decide what behavior is inline with your values, not necessarily your emotions!

Teach Your Kids

Once you’ve practiced a few times, try it with your kids! When they’re feeling upset or frustrated, guide them through the same steps:

“I can see you’re really upset—can you tell me more about that? Are you feeling scared?”

“What are you feeling scared of?”

Then, put it all together:

“You’re feeling scared to go to your friend’s birthday party because there will be people you don’t know. That makes sense. I can really understand that”

Help them decide on a behavior that’s inline with their goals:

“What do you think we should do? I’d hate for you to miss out on something fun because you’re scared. Do you think you could still go to the party, even though you feel scared? I wonder if you’ll feel better once you’re there for a little while.”

By using this 3-step process, you can help both yourself and your children lay the foundation for emotional health and well-being.