How do we educate students to recognise, manage, and express their own emotions?

A recent topic I've been wrestling mentally with over the last few months has been the idea of emotional education, more specifically, how we can help equip young minds with the skills to recognise, manage, and express their own emotions.

One of the reasons I've been pondering this, is how this may show up in later life (specifically mine!), and if we can support and engage young mind around this, quite frankly utterly fundamental part of life, the better prepared they will be to use these essential life tools to manage their own thoughts, feelings, ideas and emotions as they move into adulthood and later life. 

The importance of this being that ones thoughts and ideas are directly manifested in your physical reality, and we all want to live an optimal life right?

So that leads me to the question - how on earth do we help students develop these skills, and get them thinking about the importance of their own, well, thinking?

I don't have any magic bullets, but what I am keen to highlight in this piece at least, are some of the tools that I've found useful over the last few years in managing my own emotions. I'm also very keen to engage educators and experts in this space, as to what best practices are out there to help young (and older!) people recognise and deal with their own emotions, as well as schools that are making a concerted effort to equip their students with some sort of tool kit they can take with them going forwards. 

Often it's just my subconscious bringing something up that may have not been resolved, reminding me 'hey, Max, we need to figure this out at some point...'.

So, what I have I learnt in my own journey around recognising and managing my own emotions? 

These won't be new to you, but they are certainly things that have worked for me, and I'm sure will include elements that we might be able to think about implementing in different educational settings... 

Tip 1 - journaling

I started journalling about 3 years ago, and it really was a game changer. If I've had a stressful day or am overthinking and feel like my head is awash with thoughts that I'm struggling to control, getting it out of my head and on paper, I found to be extremely therapeutic. This doesn't necessarily mean writing reams of eloquent text - it could just be a few words. Fundamentally it's about getting it out of my head and onto paper. Allowing one to self reflect and look inwards is, I feel, really at the core of understanding ones emotions. The younger we can start to help students think about this process the better. It's a real skill, and a skill needs to be nurtured and worked on, to be improved. 

Tip 2 - labelling my emotions 

Trying to accurately label my emotions has also been something that I've really tried to work on. For me, this means trying to associate a feeling with the real-life trigger that is actually causing this feeling. When I feel a particular emotion seemingly arise from nowhere, I try to associate this with the trigger that I feel might be causing it. Often it's just my subconscious bringing something up that may have not been resolved, reminding me 'hey, Max, we need to figure this out at some point...'.

Again, I think the earlier we can get young people thinking about and identifying their own emotions, and then trying to help them understand and label why they might be feeling a certain way, the better.

Tip 3 - communicating my feelings

Thirdly, I've found that by being able to recognise and label my emotions internally, this has made me feel comfortable to be able to outwardly communicate these thoughts to others that I trust around me. This feedback has been absolutely invaluable in allowing me to deal with whatever stressors I may be facing at the time. 

This raises a larger issue I think we have in society; that expressing how we feel and the struggles one might be going through at any one point in time, can be seen as a weakness. Personally, I think nothing could be further from the truth. I think it's probably one the hardest, but most powerful things we can do as social animals - to be vulnerable and ask for other people's thoughts, insights, and opinions on a particular problem, anxiety state, or mental quandary we may find ourselves in. It also personally feels really good to be able to accurately identify and describe why I may be feeling a certain way, and to communicate to others on what support I might be looking for in return. 

As a passionate musician myself, I can safely say that playing an instrument is like entering a meditative state, and really does wonders for my own mental health...

This ultimately leads to the fundamental question; how we can educate young minds to be able to openly and honestly communicate respectfully, or hold space for one another, and also equip them with the skills to be able to actively listen in return? 

As a slight aside, this is why I think The Arts are SUCH a valuable part of any curriculum as it gives students the freedom to be able to go in search of their own creativity and inner voice. It's a fantastic way of giving people the space, of any age, to express themselves, especially those that may find it harder to verbally express how are they are feeling. As a passionate musician myself, I can safely say that playing an instrument is like entering a meditative state at times, and certainly does wonders for my own mental stillness / health. For me, it gets me out of my head and into my body.

This short article from the Harvard Graduate School of Education gives a nice outline of the benefits and challenges of instilling active listening skills in students, and also rounds off with three useful key takeaways. Good listening skills, often go hand in hand with a higher capacity for showing empathy, which is another absolutely essential skill that I think we need to focus more on in school. Another topic that I'm keen to dive into in future articles... 

A very interesting study I recently came across outlined here in ScienceDaily, highlights the link between empathy and creativity. The piece outlines findings from a year-long University of Cambridge study with Design and Technology (D&T) year 9 pupils (ages 13 to 14) at two inner London schools; pupils at one school spent the year following curriculum-prescribed lessons, while the other group's D&T lessons used a set of engineering design thinking tools which aim to foster students' ability to think creatively and to engender empathy, while solving real-world problems. Both sets of pupils were assessed for creativity at both the start and end of the school year, and the results showed a statistically significant increase in creativity among pupils at the intervention school, where the thinking tools were used.

Ultimately I believe that if we can effectively impart students with these absolutely fundamental human skills, it will make this world a better, more empathetic and understanding place for us all to coexist.