How to regulate emotions in a playful way
An important developmental task in childhood and adolescence is the appropriate handling of emotions and feelings. While growing up, children learn to cope with intense feelings constructively. Emotions and their expression are unique to each individual and depend on the surrounding culture as well. Each child develops its own methods of regulating feelings and emotions through its personality and individual experiences. Parents and other caregivers can give children important tools and support them in creating a diversified repertoire of actions. The method presented here, is one of these multicolored mosaic tiles that can teach children how to use their fantasy to regulate emotions and feelings in a resource-oriented way. The following exercises and craft ideas are a playful way to sharpen children’s self-awareness and teach them how to use their imagination to regulate emotions and achieve their goals.
In order to use mental images constructively for emotional self-regulation, children first need a good level of self-observation. They must be able to perceive what is happening within their body. They have to recognize and interpret body signals and assign them to emotions or feelings. If children succeed in this, they have already created a solid foundation for installing a change. Later, sensations or emotions can be consciously activated through those patterns of perception. For this purpose, one can, for example, anchor the desired sensation in symbols that can specifically trigger the resource feeling¹.
The exercises “Body Outline” and “Wheel of feelings” intend to teach children to deliberately activate positive feelings such as joy, enthusiasm or courage through controlled imagination. To do this, children must first explore the body sensations of these positive feelings with a body scan for example². Then translate them as specifically and realistically as possible into sensory perceptions such as colors, sound, kinesthetic sensations, etc. All sensory channels can be used for this process. If emotions or feelings can be translated into clear sensory perceptions, they can be easily reactivated by remembering one of these perceptions. For example, a child who feels a strong tingling in the tummy when he or she is joyful, can reactivate the joyful state by imagining the tingling again. If the child visualizes joy like a swarm of bright butterflies, it can also imagine a butterfly to feel joyful again (or perhaps joy sounds like a multitude of Japanese bells, or it is fresh like bubbling spring water, etc.). The paired sensory perceptions are like a bridge that leads us to the desired feeling or emotion.
Here you can download for free the workbook Emotional Selfregulation
1 Signer-Fischer, S., Gysin, T., & Stein, U. (2011). Der kleine Lederbeutel mit allem drin: Hypnose mit Kindern und Jugendlichen. Heidelberg: Carl-Auer.
2 Kabat-Zinn, J. (2005). Coming to our Senses: Healing Ourselves and the World Through Mindfulness. New York: Hyperion.
