Why We Shouldn’t Be Rushing to Regulate Emotions

When our kids are upset, it's natural to want to stop the outburst as quickly as possible.

When we're triggered, it's natural to react angrily without thinking.

We're built to handle stressful situations quickly. But negative emotions aren't meant to be threatening in themselves.

Our ancestors knew very well what emotions are there for: To express our underlying state (laughter, tears), communicate with caregivers (smiles, crying) and provide us with the information we need to act in self-protection (fear, anger).

When we try to push feelings away we're losing out on really valuable information.

A child's cries might be part of a much-needed emotional release. Our own anger in the face of our child's behaviour tells us we have an underlying belief that this doesn't feel safe. That's all information we can work with to make positive changes for next time.

By seeing emotions as signposts to the root issue, it becomes easier to sit in the presence of a feeling before rushing to regulate.

Emotional resilience grows the more we're able to lessen the threat that goes along with certain feelings. We want to get to the point where we can sit in any feeling (ours or our kids') with curiosity about what it's trying to tell us.

Difficult situations aren't fun but they always give us something to learn and grow from. By building our own emotional logic, we're building our child's too.