How to handle our emotions in these difficult and challenging times: Flourishing Education podcast #2

Flourishing Education podcast

It was such a pleasure to join Fabienne Vailes again for a conversation for her Flourishing Education podcast. Just like the first time I was a guest, we had an awesome conversation. This time, we focused on handling emotions during these difficult times. For me, equipping people with understanding and strategies to successfully process challenging emotions is a key foundation element of resilience and wellbeing.

How you handle your emotions makes a difference

There is a big misconception that talking about, or focusing on, challenging feelings only makes them worse. It’s something I frequently hear when I’m working with parents and educators. What’s interesting is that the opposite is actually true. In her work on emotional agility, Susan David emphasises that trying to ignore difficult feelings only serves to amplify them.

As people, we’re also quick to attach value labels to our feelings, saying they’re ‘positive’ or ‘negative’. Of course, the issue this causes is that people feel they should experience ‘positive’ feelings and they don’t want to experience ‘negative’ feelings. However, if we just regard emotions as data (another recommendation from the fantastic Susan David), then we start to understand the information behind those feelings rather than trying to feel a different way.

There are so many opportunities to share strategies to develop emotional agility and emotional literacy. However, many parents and educators aren't quite sure how to do that. That's why my work focuses on practical strategies, something Fabienne and I discuss during this podcast episode.

You can listen to my guest appearance on the Flourishing Education podcast episode here.

Keen to learn how you can best handle challenging emotions for yourself and/or your children or students?

I’d love to hear from you. Send me a message and I’ll be happy to let know how I can help.