This is based on a simple belief: because I want something very much, I ought to have it. The basic idea is that the degree of your need justifies the demand that someone else provide it. The feeling is that there are certain things you are entitled to. Many people feel they are entitled to be sexually fulfilled, or feel emotionally or physically safe, or have a certain standard of living. Some people feel they are entitled to rest when they are tired, or never be alone, or have their work appreciated. The list of possible entitlements is endless.
The entitlement fallacy confuses desire with obligation. It says, “When I want something this much, you have no right to say no.” Strong feelings of entitlement deny others the freedom to choose. And this is how entitlement damages relationships. It demands that the other person give up his or her limits and boundaries for you. It says your need and your pain must come first, that the function of the relationship is to serve you.
Now, most of the time you would deny feeling that way and be quite offended if anyone were to accuse you of demanding that your needs come first. But the feeling of entitlement waxes and wanes. Sometimes you have no awareness of it. But when the needs are very strong, when the feeling of longing begins to engulf you, all you care about is getting what you want. For a little while the other person may become only an instrument to provide for you. These painful feelings of need may periodically tempt you to forget the other person’s equally important needs, his or her right to say no and set boundaries.
Exercise: Remember times you had to say no to another person’s strong desire—a time when someone was in love with you, wanted your money, your support, your energy. His or her desire felt as real and vital and legitimate and necessary as yours does to you. Now try to remember why you said no. Remember the ways that your needs were different or conflicted. Remember how important it was for you to set your limits and clarify what you were and were
not willing to do. You knew you had a right to your limits, you knew you had a right to say no because you needed something else.
Coping statements: 1. “I am free to want, but he or she is free to say no.” 2. “I have my limits, and you have your limits.” 3. “I have the right to say no, and so do you.” 4. “My desire doesn’t obligate you to meet it.”
Sometimes your emotions and expressions of emotions can adversely affect your relationships with others. One such emotion is anger. While anger is not a bad emotion, natural and healthy that everyone experiences, anger can become a problem if it becomes a frequent or overwhelming feeling. The exercises in this section can help you assess and address problems with anger.
Here is something very important we have to talk about. You do have control over your anger. What you think, what you say to yourself triggers your anger. You can gain control of your anger by changing your thoughts, beliefs, and assumptions about other people’s behavior.
There is nothing automatic about getting angry. Pain, unfairness, and other people do not make you angry. Thoughts make you angry; beliefs and assumptions make you angry. You have the opportunity to examine the traditional beliefs and assumptions that are the cognitive foundations for anger and the necessary prerequisites for every angry outburst you have ever experienced.
The cognitive triggers for anger fall into one of two categories: Shoulds and Blamers. What I am working through is an explanation of how Shoulds and Blamers create a distorted, anger-inciting picture of reality that leaves one feeling victimized and controlled by others. We should look at trigger thoughts and replace them with new, more forgiving awarenesses.
Isn’t it great when life’s highs can trigger a fantastic feeling of dancing hand-in-hand with euphoria?
But it’s not too brilliant when life’s lows cause a spiral into an emotional meltdown.
Getting to grips with our positive and negative emotions can help us to navigate all kinds of situations in a balanced way.
Understanding how our emotions impact us, those around us, and how we interact with our social world requires the skill of Emotional Regulation (ER).
The problem is, our emotional triggers are a complex web of feelings, perspective, contexts, past experiences, and physiological reactions. Managing reactions to situations that rock our emotional status quo is challenging.
For those who struggle to navigate their way around how they emotionally react to their own emotions and those of other people, it can be devastating.
This article discusses evidence-based theory to clarify definitions, suggest practical strategies, and provide links to useful worksheets and exercises to support the development of emotional regulation skills.
Before you read on, we thought you might like to download our 3 Emotional Intelligence Exercises for free. These science-based exercises will not only enhance your ability to understand and work with your emotions but will also give you the tools to foster the emotional intelligence of your clients, students, children, or employees.
You can download the free PDF here.
This article contains:
5 Ways to Express and Identify Emotions Top 3 Emotional Intelligence Activities Our Favorite Activities for Toddlers 8 Activities For Children and Students Exercises for your Group Sessions A Look at 4 Useful Activities for Autism Spectrum Disorder/Condition Effective Emotion Communication: 5 Activities 3 Fun Artistic and Creative Exercises PositivePsychology.com Emotional Intelligence Resources A Take-Home Message References
5 Ways to Express and Identify Emotions
In positive psychology, emotional health is seen as a ratio of positive and negative (Vacca, Bromley, Leyrer, Sprung & Homer, 2014). Emotional Regulation (ER) is the route to keeping closer to the positive side of emotional health where and when possible.
Let’s take a look at how emotions are expressed and identified, and some ideas to increase those skills and help our emotions to become more positive. Basically, that means taking control of the balance between positive and negative (Dvir, Ford, Hill, & Frazier, 2014).
Before we get started, you might want to try this exercise on Expressing emotions wisely.
Dvir et al. explain that ER is shaped within our cultures and anchored in our past experiences. So, what we see as positive emotions can vary within cultures. And, just to add to the complexities, emotional expression is mostly based on brain mapping, with junctures and signs that link to experiences or feelings, memories, other people’s reactions to us. (Immordino-Yang, Yang & Damasio, 2016)
In addition, we need to add gender to the mix. Girls externalized more positive emotions to others but internalized negative emotions such as sadness and anxiety. This research also found that boys showed more emotions to others until they reached adolescence (Chaplin & Aldao, 2013).
So, how we express our emotions isn’t just down to us. Let’s think about using situational, institutional, and dispositional factors to help figure out how to identify our role in how we express emotions, with these questions:
What is the situation we find ourselves in, and what is our previous emotional experience of that situation? What role might work/school play in the emotional reaction? And, is there anything within our temperament that influences our emotional reactions?
An excellent skill to develop is to look more closely at an incident, ask yourself these questions, and write down your responses in the second line: Situation Symptom Solution What happened, where, and when? How did you physically feel during your anger and afterward? What did you do afterward? What could you have done to have a healthier outcome for everyone? | | |
If writing your responses down isn’t too enticing, have a look at this idea of using coloring-in for gaining emotional recognition, definition, and clarity.
Also, here is another tool to help you identify the positive emotions that you feel each day.
Top 3 Emotional Intelligence Activities
Emotional Intelligence (EI) consists of emotion perception, emotion expression, emotion attention regulation, emotion understanding, emotion regulation of self, and emotion regulation of others (Elfenbein & MacCann, 2017). Let’s look at how we can build this skill through an exercise.
Have a go at these great tools from our Toolkit, such as The Emotion Meter, that will help with self-reflecting on Emotional Intelligence.
You can also test your level of EI with this 2-minute quiz.
Did you identify any Emotional Intelligence skills that you may need to tweak and others of which you are rightfully proud?
If you enjoyed these exercises, head on over to our article with additional Emotional Intelligence Tests and Assessments.
Our Favorite Activities for Toddlers
Oh, those toddler tantrums…
Keltner and Ekman (2015), psychologists who advised on the film Inside Out, about a young girl trying to find her way through a difficult time in her life, explain:
“… the truth is that emotions guide our perceptions of the world, our memories of the past and even our moral judgments of right and wrong, most typically in ways that enable effective responses to the current situation.”
However, that type of guidance is not much help for a 2-year-old. So, visual tools can be quite helpful here. You can make your own emotion flashcards, for example. Or, there are many on the market to buy.
You can also make or buy a chart to help support emotional regulation. This chart can be a rainbow or ladder with pictures of faces that include unhappy, angry, frustrated, confused, and happy. Show the emotion ladder to the toddler as an intervention tool between you, the toddler, and the meltdown, by focusing on what could help the pointer move to the happy face.
But toddlers will also watch and learn how they are expected to react emotionally from us, their adults. If their adults keep calm in an emotional situation, such as bad news, this can help a child learn not to panic too easily (Crespo, Trentacosta, Aikins, Wargo-Aikins, 2017). The converse is also true; a parent shouting, screaming, and thumping walls, teaches a child how to respond to stress or not getting their way.
Face-to-face chats with toddlers aren’t too successful for obvious reasons. So, flip it in favor of sitting together and drawing pictures, painting, coloring, reading stories, writing stories, watching children’s TV and films, and talking about the characters’ emotions.
These visual and interactive strategies help children to develop and regulate their emotions.
8 Activities For Children and Students
Children learn names for emotions from other people’s use of words. By reinforcing appropriate pairings of emotion-adjective, the higher the level of emotional communication and our recognition of the emotions of others too.
Have a look at this clip:
Where children and their parents/carers are struggling with behavior issues, it is vital to be aware of patterns of emotional reactions of the adults around them to different situations (e.g., stress, confusion, and fear).
This helps us understand and increase ER:
Recognize the unhealthy response of both child and parent.
Understand when these incidents happen and think about the consequences of anger and frustration on various occasions.
Don’t suppress the emotion – develop the skill of early recognition and change to a more positive emotional reaction.
So think – how can I solve this in a positive way? (This can turn anger into a positive emotion and breaks and change the pattern of reactive behavior in parent-child battles.)
Teaches the child that there is another way to respond. (practice, practice, practice)
To be able to manage anger, it’s important to grab it before it runs away. You can use this Red Light – Anger! exercise to help.
The good news is, unlike adults, children haven’t had too much time to become stuck in emotional memory banks. Their adults can help them to navigate emotions and develop a knowledge of feelings, words, and skills to help them when they have negative emotions.
This helps increase emotional self-awareness. Have a look at this worksheet on Self-Awareness.
Once we can use self-awareness, we can reflect. Reflecting on what happened and what could have made the outcome more positive is useful too.
“Cognitive reappraisal is a promising type of emotion regulation because it is a particularly effective strategy for down-regulating negative emotion.” (Troy, Wilhelm, Shallcross, & Mauss, 2010)
The following activity works well in supporting the development of ER. For the best results, only allow the child to answer, rather than shaping their responses.
List healthy foods that you can eat. How does healthy food make you feel, and what does it do to your body? List unhealthy foods that you can eat. How does unhealthy food make you feel, and what does it do to your body? What is a healthy eating strategy? Allow the child to define healthy and unhealthy actions clearly. List an unhealthy way to deal with someone being nasty to you. How will that make you feel? List a healthy way to deal with someone being nasty to you. How will that make you feel? Now talk about making healthy choices (any ER topic can be used.)
Recognizing healthy and unhealthy emotional coping strategies is an incredibly useful skill for children, both with ER and other social, psychological, and health-related issues.
The film ‘Inside Out’ is now being used as a resource in many US and UK schools to help with emotional literacy and ER.
And looking at emotions from the inside and the outside is a great way to help children put words, feelings, and emotions together more effectively. Try this Inside and Outside Worksheet.
During adolescence, a mixture of physiological changes to the developing brain and a need for social independence make ER a difficult skill to develop for some adolescents.
Research into ER in adolescents has identified a set of strategies that are commonly agreed upon as negatively impacting on emotional regulation.
“…distraction; suppression; venting; cognitive reappraisal; downward social comparison; problem-directed action; self-reward; physical manipulations and withdrawal” (Strauss et al, 2016).
Strauss and colleagues found that measuring levels of gratitude, helping others, and expressing positive and negative emotions, was a useful base for building ER skills. A recent online survey of students showed that they struggled to share feelings of sadness, shame, fear, love, and anger (Karibayeva & Lowley, 2019). Identifying and addressing these negative emotions is a wonderful ER skill to take into adulthood.
This Skills for Regulating Emotions worksheet offers clear strategies for learning to regulate emotions.
Exercises for your Group Sessions
While working on an individual basis, or in a one-to-one with a therapist is a great method to increase ER, developing ER as part of a group can also be useful. Here is a group work exercise for groups of 4 – Decoding Emotions by Analyzing Speech, Body, and Face.
Research has found that group skills training can encourage discussion about negative emotions (Holmqvist Larsson, Andersson, Stern & Zetterqvist, 2019). Also, group discussions can help to increase emotional clarity and can reduce stress (Butler et al., 2018).
Here is a group exercise from our Toolkit – Window of Tolerance – for increasing healthy coping strategies and reducing stress and anxiety.
Group strategies are incredibly handy too, when emotions are used to reinforce unhealthy behaviors negatively—for example, using food to control those emotions (Micanti et al., 2016), being overweight/overeating (Houben, Dassen & Jansen, 2016).
And more good news, Rosen et al. (2019) found that children with ADHD were more likely to recall negative emotions and feelings of frustration when they talked through a real-life-event than children without ADHD. A 12-week group treatment session on managing frustration was successful for a group of 9-11-year-old children with ADHD.
A Look at 4 Useful Activities for Autism Spectrum Disorder/Condition
Emotion Regulation for AutismUsing self-reflective methods for increasing ER is not always possible, and tapping into a level of self-awareness is not available to everyone.
ER in Autism can prove a difficult concept for many of those affected. Social impairment can be a huge barrier to being able to communicate emotions. This is called alexithymia.
Many behavior difficulties in children with autism spectrum disorder/condition happen when there is a conflict between understanding emotional thoughts and feelings and their impact on how others react (Berkovits, Eisenhower & Blacher, 2016).
Research suggests that finding ways to recognize emotions and effective ways to communicate them increases ER (Morie, Jackson, Zhai, Potenza, & Dritschel, 2019).
Recognizing emotions can happen in lots of different ways:
You can use other senses and methods to identify and become more aware of them. You can make them into shapes using play clay. You can draw them. You can use social stories to give examples of them. You can give them names. You may turn them into sounds, smells, or types of
.
An Emotional levels chart for autistic children can be extremely useful.
ER is difficult for many children and adults with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND). In part, this is linked to understanding the emotions of others. Here are a few ideas on how to understand what empathy is; you don’t have to feel it, sometimes just knowing it can help.
Also, games have been designed to help strengthen and increase emotional health. For further reading, this PDF explains the benefit and methods of Designing Games for Emotional Health.
Effective Emotion Communication: 5 Activities
Establishing that an individual approach to ER is essential makes sense. How do you feel when your partner walks away from the relationship? Or, when someone tells a lie about you? Is it the same as me? Very likely not.
We communicate and experience emotions differently. We feel them differently. How well an intervention works, or doesn’t, depends on those individual differences being explored (Antoine, Dauvier, Andreotti & Congard, 2018).
Some of us can effectively communicate our emotions, while others might avoid letting anyone know what they are feeling. Working through emotional avoidance is essential for a healthy ER. Here’s a tool to help identify some of the avoidance strategies that are used.
How we communicate our emotions to others is a massive factor in how well they receive us. And understanding what others are attempting to convey to us is vital to reduce emotional communication breakdowns.
Here’s a useful approach:
For more ideas, chat with people who have tried ER, for themself or their child, find out what worked for them, and how effective they found the intervention (Antoine et al., 2018). This ‘chat and learn’ can also help you decide what to put in your ER toolbox and what you can throw out. Here are a few to put in there:
Self-reflection Prompts An activity for children or adults, where they have to read facial expressions. Try this visualizing activity for children and adults – linking physiology with emotions.
3 Fun Artistic and Creative Exercises
The more fun you can have while increasing ER skills, the better. Developing ER can be lots of fun. Music, games, creative arts.
Here are a few ideas:
My Favorite Animals Using Music to Express Feelings Self-regulation
You can find even more in our article Emotional Intelligence Activities & Exercises.
Choosing Healthy over Unhealthy Emotional Regulation Skills
Here are some ideas to get started and help with deciding what are the healthy skills to pop into that toolbox:
Chatting with friends Exercising Therapy Writing in a journal! Charting symptoms, situations, healthy solutions Getting adequate sleep Visual Aids Meditation Mindfulness Noticing when you need a break – and taking it Taking care of yourself when physically ill Paying attention to negative thoughts that occur before or after strong emotions Not beating yourself up but moving forward in an emotionally healthy way
And what can you throw out? Well, for starters, abusing alcohol/substances, using food to regulate emotions, other self-injury practices, avoiding or withdrawing from difficult situations, physical or verbal aggression, and excessive social media use, to the exclusion of other responsibilities (Rolston & Lloyd-Richardson, 2015).
Not only will you become a master of the six pillars of emotional intelligence, but you will also be proficient in teaching and implementing it, whether it is in your class or your workplace. This is a highly acclaimed course. If you are specifically working with challenging teens or Autism, this is the perfect course to teach you how to implement Emotional Regulation Skills
intervention – Distinguishing Physical from Emotional Hunger as well as a Relationships Exercise – Creating a Hugging Habit.
Also, be sure to download our 3 Emotional Intelligence Exercises for free.
A Take-Home Message
Emotional Intelligence is made up, in part, of the level of Emotional Regulation that an individual can exercise. But many factors and barriers can limit how effectively an individual can regulate emotions and emotional reactions.
Raising awareness of the many influences of what ER is considered to be is complex, with factors such as gender, culture, and past experience all playing a role, alongside learning difficulties and mental illness.
Self-reflection is key to tapping into the skill of ER, with the ability to identify, express, and navigate emotions. Developing an awareness of when and how we use our feelings, being able to name them and define them to yourself and others is an excellent place to begin to increase ER levels.
The ER worksheets and skills-based activities included in this article will help to form a toolbox of strategies that can be used on an individual basis or within group work.
Self-care is more than just a trendy buzzword. Setting aside time for yourself can make a huge difference in your physical, emotional and mental health. But sometimes, your self-care routine may not be so caring after all.
A recent study found that the way some people schedule time for leisure can take the fun out of it. Doing things like setting rigid time limits on activities and worrying too much about what you’re going to do afterward can put a damper on your time to unwind, according to research.
In other words, your habits may be turning your relaxing routine into anything but. We consulted experts on how to make time for yourself without turning it into a chore. Take a look at their suggestions below: Do things you actually want to do
“Plenty of people have an idea of what self-care looks like ― yoga and quinoa might be involved ― but if those aren’t your things, you won’t stick with it,” said Laura Vanderkam, author of Off the Clock: Feel Less Busy While Getting More Done.
While there’s nothing wrong with getting your daily dose of downward dog, doing something you have no real interest in defeats the purpose of self-care.
One of the first things you should do when creating your routine is to ask yourself what makes you feel like the best version of you, according to Vanderkam. “What makes you feel whole and energized? And then, what are some little ways you can build these routines into your life?” she added.
Vanderkam emphasized the importance of being reasonable when choosing what to include in your practice. She also suggested that including short activities that take 10 to 15 minutes can make you more likely to keep up your practice than if you do something that takes hours. Get back to the basics
“Self-care can involve basic rituals that ensure health and optimal performance,” said Leah Lagos, a clinical and sports psychologist based in New York. One of the biggest, most essential ones? Sleep.
While the American Sleep Association states that there is no universal number of hours you need to sleep, not getting enough will result in sleep deprivation, which could also affect your diet. Lagos personally tells her clients to map out their sleep schedule ahead of time and plan the rest of their day around it.
A proper eating schedule is also important to maintain. Lagos recommended eating three meals and two small snacks at the same time every day. A regular eating routine can stabilize your body and make it feel secure, she added. Focus on the present
Amalea K. Seelig, a clinical psychologist based in New York, said that when you are doing something you enjoy, you should try to stay as connected to the experience as possible.
“One of the best ways to remain in your experience is to notice when you are having thoughts that are unrelated to it,” Seelig said.
Being mindful simply means paying close attention to what’s happening in the moment and learning how to take pleasure in activities related to your self-care without worrying about all of the things you have to do when they’re over. So instead of stressing over your to-do list while you’re hanging out with a friend, try putting that energy into having a good time. Make the most of the free time you do have
The early bird catches the worm ― and also has a great opportunity to recharge before beginning the day.
“Mornings tend to be a great time to get things done because the day’s work and personal emergencies have yet to come up,” Vanderkam said. “Before you turn on your phone, spend 15 to 20 minutes doing something fun for you.”
If your schedule permits you to have some free time on the weekends, Vanderkam said, you should be intentional about that time too.
“A few days ahead of time, think about three things you could do over the weekend that would add to your energy levels,” she said. “Think about where these can go [in your plans] and the logistics that need to happen.”
By carving out time in advance for some self-care hobbies, you’ll be saving yourself from feeling overwhelmed when you have multiple events happening during the weekend. Hold yourself accountable
The best thing you can do to show your loved ones that you care for them is to care for yourself first, said Naomi Ben-Ami, psychologist and assistant director at Williamsburg Therapy Group in New York. To illustrate the significance of prioritizing your own well-being, Ben-Ami said, she likes to use the metaphor of the airline safety message, “If you’re traveling with a child, please put on your own oxygen mask first.”
“We have to make sure that our own selves are nourished and whole in order to show up for our other responsibilities,” she stressed.
But If you feel as though you really don’t have any space in your schedule for some personal TLC, Vanderkam suggested finding an accountability partner.
“You can check in with each other [to make sure] that you’ve done your self-care routine,” Vanderkam said. “Sometimes knowing that someone else expects something from you can nudge you to do it.” US Presidential Election 2020
Using your own rewards, so that you dont give up when faced with challenges or opposition. If you nurture your inner motivation and stop dearching for outside praise and recognition, you will gain confidence in your own strengths and stop measuring your success on the basis of what others say about you.
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