What is your Emotional Temperature and Why it Matters

Emotional temperature is a tool you can use to help you understand your feelings and more easily identify the need to implement skills to prevent yourself from reaching an extreme emotion. Your emotional temperature can be assessed using a typical thermometer and can look different from person to person. The colors and numbers can be used to indicate the level or intensity of your emotions. Ideally you would get in the habit of checking your emotional temperature several times a day. Your goal is to stay in the lower half of the thermometer as often as possible to effectively manage and be able to reach your goals.

Action steps, EmotionsVirgdant Breton, LSWApril 17, 2024emotions, emotional control

Are Your Child’s Emotional Needs Being Met?

As a parent, it can be difficult to meet all of the many physical needs of your child, and when it comes to their emotional needs the challenge can be even greater! It is easy to remember that your child needs food, water, shelter, and safety. But what are some of the other emotional needs that a growing individual can benefit from having in order to thrive and reach their full potential? What are some of the most memorable experiences you remember having as a child that made you feel happy, seen, and important?

All About Emotions: Why Are They So Important?

You may sometimes wonder why you feel a certain way at one moment and then experience a completely different feeling just a few minutes later. We experience a range of emotions on a daily basis, and they are all important in their own way. The big question is: why? Emotions are crucial to our lives because they serve a variety of purposes. They guide us through stressful situations and help us connect with others in friendships and relationships, among others. At the same time, emotions are complicated; they can be difficult to understand. Sometimes, it may seem like life would be easier if we didn't have to undergo the ups and downs that emotions play in our lives. So why are they so important?

Fostering Teens' Emotional Resilience

Does your teen have trouble adapting to change or bouncing back from challenges? Teenagers don’t have it easy during a pandemic. Their lives were already full of physical, social, and emotional changes every day. With the added stress of COVID-19, it’s understandable for teens to struggle with changes or setbacks. A mistake as small as spilling their glass of water or a problem as big as doing poorly on a math test could negatively impact their mood for the rest of the day. In today’s world, it’s more important than ever for teens to cultivate emotional resilience. It will help them deal with life’s changes and challenges without all of the emotional suffering. Share these helpful tips with your teen so that they can cope with adversity effectively…

Acting Opposite to your Emotions

Ever feel like you’re stuck in a cycle of difficult emotions? You might experience intense emotions and respond to them in ways that aren’t helpful in the long run. All feelings come with action urges that tell us to act in certain ways. For example, when we feel fearful, we try to avoid or escape a situation. When feeling sad, our urge might be to withdraw. However, some emotional urges do more harm than good. They cause us to act in ways we later regret. In those cases, try acting opposite to your emotion! Deliberately responding with the opposite to your emotion urge can change your response to a healthier option that’s more fitting. Let’s explore how it works with different emotions…

Improving the Moment

Ever wish there was a way to turn negative experiences around? Of course—nobody enjoys feeling upset, angry, or stressed. When we experience powerful feelings like these, our emotions can feel out of control. Generally, we act impulsively—meaning that we put our emotions before our logic—when we face unexpected and overwhelming situations. But sometimes, this is not the best option. We can deal with daily challenges more effectively by replacing negative emotions with positive ones. The DBT skill IMPROVE the Moment gives us a variety of options to help us do so. It's a skill that's designed to help us manage difficult emotions during stressful situations. Let’s learn more about it…

Using Opposite Action for Overwhelming Emotions

Are you ever overwhelmed by your emotions? Do you feel helpless when it comes to acting on them? All feelings come with action urges that tell us to act in certain ways. Sometimes, we use negative coping skills to escape painful emotions, because it feels like it’s the easiest way or the only way to cope. Have you ever considered doing the opposite of your usual response to your emotions? In DBT, the opposite action skill is a deliberate attempt to act OPPOSITE of your emotion urge. If your emotions are doing more harm than good, try acting opposite. Find the opposite action to our common emotion urges here…

How to Make Healthy Decisions This Year

Often times, we may make impulsive decisions. We feel good about the positive choices we make, while we may regret other responses when looking back on them later. Did you know that we all have built-in tools for identifying, understanding, and using our emotions to improve our lives? You can stop repeating negative patterns and start making healthy decisions. Here are some tips to guide you this year…

Using PLEASE Master Skills to Maintain Emotional Control

When people neglect their self care, they may become more emotionally vulnerable—meaning that more often, they get overwhelmed by negative emotions, engage in negative coping skills, and lash out at others impulsively. PLEASE Mastery is a practical skill that helps reduce emotional vulnerability. It enables people to better regulate their emotions and make positive choices. If you work on leading a balanced lifestyle, you are more likely to maintain emotional control during times of stress! This is how PLEASE Mastery Skills work:

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