The great variety of emotions that people experience influence us in what we think, do and decide. Emotions have a very important adaptive function that helps us to prepare and respond to the situations that life throws at us. All of them, both pleasant and unpleasant, are of vital importance in our daily lives.
Therefore, it is essential to learn to listen to them and pay attention to them in order to benefit from the information they give us about ourselves and our environment. Also to learn how to manage them correctly, without being dragged down by their intensity.
Listening to and identifying emotions, a progressive learning process from childhood onwards
This is a progressive and complex learning process, and must be adapted to age, as it goes hand in hand with the development of cognitive abilities. It is important to educate children to recognize their emotions from infancy so that they learn that there is a word for every emotion. In this way they will expand their emotional vocabulary and will be able to detect how and where they notice it in their body.
With this learning, children will know how to identify and express the emotion they feel at that moment. Little by little it will be important for them to understand what has made them feel that way and what they have done when feeling that emotion. In this way, they will be able to learn the causes and consequences of these emotions.
Giving value to children’s emotions is essential
It is very important to give value to all the emotions that children feel, even the most unpleasant ones, since it is important that they learn that everything is natural, valuable and provides us with information. It is necessary to let them experience anger, frustration, sadness, envy, jealousy… so that they can get to know these feelings and emotions, accept them and help them to manage them properly.
At the same time, it is also important to work on understanding the emotions of others: to detect how other people feel, when they feel that way, to learn to decipher non-verbal communication, to understand gestures, tone or facial expression. In this way children will learn to relate better with others. All this learning should be developed with the guidance of adults who accompany children’s growth: parents, grandparents, teachers and other adults of reference.
Once children acquire this basic emotional awareness, they will be able to continue building the rest of the social-emotional competencies during childhood and adolescence: improving emotion regulation; increasing their ability to learn the relationship between thoughts, emotions and behaviors; developing greater empathy; mastering basic social skills, as well as the ability to communicate assertively. They will also learn to resolve conflicts with others, enhance their social autonomy, increase their ability to take care of themselves and build their self-esteem. These skills will give them the tools to manage and face challenges in their daily lives.
Emotional education consists of teaching and accompanying in the progressive acquisition of emotional competencies, which can be encompassed in these areas:
- Emotional awareness. It is the ability to perceive one’s own emotions, to name them correctly and also to understand those of others, being skilled in verbal and non-verbal language.
- Emotional regulation. Ability to learn that there is a relationship between emotion, cognition and behavior. To have the ability to express emotions in a socially appropriate manner, to manage and regulate the intensity of emotions, as well as to acquire skills to generate positive emotions and well-being.
- Personal autonomy. This is the capacity for self-motivation, developing self-esteem, responsibility, resilience and the ability to seek help and resources.
- Interpersonal intelligence and social skills. Ability to master basic social skills, showing respect for oneself and others, communicating assertively, developing prosocial and cooperative behavior.
- Conflict resolution. It consists of knowing how to identify problems, set realistic goals, solve problems and have negotiation skills.
How does emotional education help people?
Developing the aforementioned skills helps us to have better health and well-being, both personally and socially. In addition, emotions are closely related to cognitive processes such as attention, memory, concentration or decision making, which are very important in teaching-learning processes. Therefore, if we provide children and young people with good socioemotional competencies, we will also be providing them with tools to improve their academic performance and learning.
At a therapeutic level, specialists in Psychology help in the correct development of each of the emotional competencies, with the aim of maximizing the adaptation of the child or young person in their environment, and to develop their well-being. To achieve this, they use different techniques and tools:
- Emotional literacy.
- Development of attention.
- Emotional management guidelines: relaxation, breathing or mindfulness.
- Behavioral guidelines with children and adolescents, parents and teachers.
- Development of social skills and assertive communication strategies.
- Detection and restructuring of thoughts.
- Development of autonomy and personal safety.
- Generation of pleasant activities.
In general, the therapy sessions allow the creation of a space for reflection and learning. In this way, the patient will be helped in those emotional aspects in which greater difficulty has been detected.
Bibliography:
- Bisquerra, R. (2002). Emotional education: a proposal for the development of life skills. Revista Catalana de Pedagogia, pp. 95-122.
- Ortega, M.C. (2010). Emotional education and its implications in health. Revista Española de Orientación y Psicopedagogia, Vol. 21, Nº2, pp. 462-470.