Did you know that most emotions last only 90 seconds? “When a person has a reaction to something in their environment, there’s a 90 second chemical process that happens in the body; after that, any remaining emotional response is just the person choosing to stay in that emotional loop. Something happens in the external world and chemicals are flushed through your body which puts it on full alert. For those chemicals to totally flush out of the body it takes less than 90 seconds. This means that for 90 seconds you can watch the process happening, you can feel it happening, and then you can watch it go away.” – My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist’s Personal Journey, Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor.
The start of a new school year can bring up a host of different emotions for your child. When there is a level of uncertainty, anxious feelings can result in some uncomfortable reactions we prefer to avoid. What if instead of avoiding these feelings you could teach your children how to work through them? RULER is an acronym for 5 skills in developing emotional intelligence and can be used to work through feelings. RULER stands for recognizing, understanding, labelling, expressing and regulating. After dealing with the emotional side of feelings I have found the following steps helpful to address the logical side of fear.
- What is the worst that can happen?
- Could I handle this?
And for older kids – What could I learn from this? - What is the best that could happen?
- What is the most likely?
- Now it is time to move on.