Student Wellbeing

 Hello Parents and Caregivers,

This newsletter is dedicated to emotions and feelings 😃🤣😟😔😢🥺🤗

Humans experience a wide range of emotions and feelings. There are definitely more than just happy, sad and angry. Some others include pride, fear, jealousy, guilt, curiosity, excitement, anger, nervousness, calm, gratefulness, loneliness, anxiety, grief, embarrassment, tiredness and joy.  

It is an important skill to be able to name emotions and feelings so that we learn ways of responding to them and communicating our needs. For example: “I feel sad and I don’t want to talk right now. I would like some time to myself.” 

All emotions and feelings are OK. They often have an important job to do. They can move you to ask for help or comfort, change things that need changing, help you care about things, love people and keep us safe. 

Some emotions feel comfortable, and some are uncomfortable. It is important to consider and reflect on how your body feels and what you do when you feel different emotions.  Happiness is usually experienced as a comfortable feeling and smiling is a behaviour that people might display. Anger is usually experienced as an uncomfortable feeling but is not a bad emotion that you should feel guilty about. It can lead to positive and constructive change. However, acting in a violent way when you feel angry is never OK. 

When humans experience uncomfortable emotions intensely, it often alerts the amygdala in our brain to trigger the fight, flight, freeze or fear response.  It assumes we need to be kept safe from danger. The thinking part of the brain that can solve problems does not work very well at this time because your safety is the priority. The brain finds it hard to tell the difference between perceived danger and real danger. When we aren’t in danger we need to use strategies to calm down our amygdala so that we can think more clearly and respond appropriately. For example: If a child breaks their favourite toy they do not need the amygdala to start pumping their body with chemicals in order to prime their body to keep them safe. To calm down the Amygdala you can use strategies such as taking calm breaths, drinking water, going for a walk, squeezing a ball or doing exercises.

Reflection sheets and journaling are great ways to help children process tricky emotions and express their feelings on paper. But, sometimes kids need to step out of their emotional cloud when they experience conflicts in their friendships to see things clearly. Dr Susan David, author of Emotional Agility, describes the importance of widening the lens to see things from a broader perspective. She suggests supporting children to working towards gaining a more objective perspective of situations, looking beyond their heightened emotions to simply focusing on the facts.

You might like to have a look at the Emotional Agility Quiz on Susan’s website.  

http://quiz.susandavid.com/s3/eai

Below are some picture story books you might like to read and discuss with your child/children. 

Please be kind and patient with yourself and others, as you never know what they might be going through.  Remember that all feelings and emotions are  - it is how we react to them. You might like to try supporting someone by saying something like, “You seem really worried. Can I do anything to support you?”  The other thing to remember is that emotions and feelings do not last forever and you can work through the uncomfortable feelings or get support when they are too challenging. 

Practise makes progress! The best time to discuss and practise strategies is when you are calm. If you notice your child trying some strategies to calm themselves when they are experiencing uncomfortable emotions acknowledge their efforts and praise and encourage them. 

Take care,

Jocelyn Hollyman  🌸🌻