How to Help Your Child Manage Their Anger

Are you finding it difficult to help your kid whose struggling with managing their anger or their acting out behavior? This is very common and this is tough for both the parent and the kid who struggles with anger management. If your kid is experiencing anger outbursts and it’s impacting their daily functioning, it’s important to help them build the emotional tolerance that they need to manage these big feelings. The following are ways that you can help your kid whose struggling with managing their own anger.

Behavioral issues, EmotionsNicole Silverman, LSWMay 17, 2023anger, managing emotions

4 Ways to Help Your Child Cope with Anger

Does your child tend to become frustrated easily? Do they struggle to cope with anger in healthy ways? Anger is a basic emotion that everyone deals with from time to time. We may get angry with situations, with other people, or with ourselves. While it’s natural to feel angry or frustrated, sometimes anger can get overwhelming for kids and teens. It can make them feel like their emotions are out of control. They may not know how to manage such intense feelings. It can cause them to lash out, act up, or respond to anger in other unhealthy ways. Here are some strategies to help you support your child with feelings of anger…

Distraction: An Impactful Parenting Tool

Parents are faced with a variety of different challenging situations from day to day. From managing the kids’ online activities to breaking up arguments to preparing meals that everyone will enjoy, the stress can add up. In these situations, it might feel difficult to deal with intense or painful emotions as they arise. Ineffective ways of managing a crisis may help in the short term, but they can end up making things worse. Use crisis management skills like Wise Mind ACCEPTS when you feel yourself reaching your threshold to Emotion Mind or if you feel your emotional temperature rising…

Managing Emotional Ups and Downs

Has your child been emotional lately? Do certain things make your teen feel angry, upset, or on-edge? Maybe the tone of your voice sets them off, or a passing thunderstorm dampens their mood for the day. It’s understandable that some things will make people feel one way or another. Sometimes (especially with added stress of a pandemic), experiences can be very emotionally triggering—so much so, that they cause teens to get stuck in negative emotions for longer than necessary. Do you wish there was a way to help your teen not feel as frustrated by a friend who canceled Facetime plans or as anxious about ? Try using DBT skills, specifically emotion regulation skills! It’s simpler than you’d think…

Using Dialectical Thinking to Manage Emotions

Dialectics are two opposing forces, feelings, or situations that happen simultaneously. For example, quarantine is hard AND we will get through it. By thinking and acting dialectically, you can keep your emotions calm AND you can look through a new lens to see two truths in a situation. Dialectics is the foundation of DBT. It teaches us that there is an opposite of everything and we tend to be most effective when we find balance between opposites. In DBT, it is particularly important to balance the idea of acceptance and change. However, it’s very difficult to stay in a neutral or calm emotional state lately if you use the word “but” often or if you tend to discount positives with negatives. Manage your emotions more effectively and keep your cool by practicing dialectics! Here are some tips on how to think and act dialectically right now…

Understanding Emotions: Why are They Important?

Emotions play a crucial role in our lives, as they serve a wide variety of purposes. They guide us through stressful situations and help us connect with others in friendships and relationships. Emotions can be fleeting, powerful, complex, persistent, and even life-changing. They motivate us to act in particular ways and give us the tools and resources we need to interact meaningfully in our social worlds. At the same time, emotions can be difficult to understand. Some people struggle with the complexity of their feelings, and many people may prefer not to have to experience them at all. 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?

How to Manage Anxiety

We face stressful situations on a daily basis. Starting a new school year, flying on an airplane, taking a test, maneuvering through rush hour traffic, and meeting tight office deadlines are all anxiety-provoking. Anxiety is a typical emotion that we all feel—in fact, it’s healthy in doses. However, if you regularly feel anxious and anxiety starts to prevent you from your daily activities, it may be a sign of something more serious like an anxiety disorder. How can you recognize symptoms of anxiety and better manage it? Here are some helpful tips…

Managing Fear

Think back to a time when you were afraid. What was happening at the time? What made you feel fearful? When you felt fear, how did you respond? Did you take control of your fear, or did you let it hold you back? Fear works like any other emotion. Everyone deals with fear—it’s a natural part of being human. While we can’t avoid fear, we can learn to cope with it. Fear has a tendency to paralyze us, and to make us feel like we’re incapable of doing something simply because we are afraid of what might happen. The problem with fear is that it can prevent us from trying new things, growing as individuals, and reaching our goals. So what can you do to manage your fears? Here are some helpful tips…

Manage Your Emotions in a Crisis with TIPP

Have you ever felt an emotion so intensely that you thought you would never feel better, and that you were almost “out of control”? It can be helpful to use the DBT skill of TIPP when we are so emotionally dysregulated that we cannot think clearly and physically cannot access any other skills in that moment. TIPP alters our body chemistry to quickly reduce emotional suffering—from a 10 out of 10 to a 7 or 8. Then we are able to think more clearly and rationally; we can apply other skills to reduce our emotions even further. Here’s how TIPP works…

Emotions: Why Do We Need Them?

Everyone deals with an assortment of emotions on a daily basis. Emotions can be difficult to understand, but they play a very important role in our lives. Many individuals struggle with the complexity of their feelings—and they may prefer not to have to experience them at all. Life would be easier if we didn't have to undergo the ups and downs that that emotions cause in our lives. So why do we need them? Here's why...

Riding the Wave of Emotions

Every day, we encounter a variety of emotions; we can respond to these feelings in many different ways. When most people experience a negative emotion like sadness or anger, we tend to either push the feeling away or react to it quickly. However, there is a different way of handling difficult emotions— a DBT or Dialectical Behavior Therapy technique that can make our negative emotions more manageable. It’s called “Riding the Wave.” “Riding the Wave” encourages us to experience our emotions like waves in the ocean. Here are a few tips to help you practice “Riding the Wave...”

IMPROVE the Moment

Life can be unpredictable. Things may be going well, and then out of nowhere, life throws you a curve ball. Or a series of curve balls. How do you keep your cool during these surprises? Everyone tends to act more impulsively, putting our emotions before our logic, when we are met with overwhelming circumstances. A dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) strategy called IMPROVE the Moment can help you manage difficult emotions during stressful situations and regulate your emotions in the present moment. Here's how it works...

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