Emotion Coaching

Graeme Blench

Produced for: The FE Catalyst Project funded by the Department for Education

My learning intentions are for you to be able to answer these questions following our work together:

Why offer EC?

• There are links between adolescent emotional dysregulation and increased likelihood of experiencing anxiety and depression in adolescence¹
• Adolescence may be seen as a critical period for adaptive emotional regulation, with long-term implications for non-risky decision making, psychopathologies, and poor mental health²
• Poor emotional regulation can lead to feeling of hopelessness and reduce problem solving abilities³
• Poor emotional regulation correlates with school exclusion⁴

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The news on school exclusion is not good…

• Exclusion rates are increasing.
• Exclusion can trigger long term psychiatric illness⁵

Source: Schoolsweek available at https://schoolsweek.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/suspensions.png

Emotional coaching

• Originally conceived by John Gottman and his colleagues in observing how families communicate⁶
• EC is not a type of therapy, Gottman calls it part of a natural parenting strategy
• Longitudinal studies⁷ demonstrate EC has positive impacts upon adolescent depression, higher levels of education achievement, more positive social relationships and greater levels of resilience, both physically and emotionally

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The Emotion Coaching Parent seeks to understand the emotional source of their child's behaviour.

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They listen with empathy and validate their child’s feelings.

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They help their child learn to label their emotions and set limits when they're helping the child to solve problems or deal with upsetting situations appropriately.

Gottman and his colleagues found three other natural parenting styles

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• Dismissing style

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• Laissez-faire style

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• Disapproving

The emotion iceberg

• What causes emotions?

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• Why do we have them?

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• Learning brain v emotional brain

Hand model of the brain

EC: the process is underpinned by:

• Co-regulation

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• Modelling empathy: 'children see, children do’

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The form of EC we will adopt consists of 4 steps

1. Recognising the child’s feelings and empathizing with them.

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• Labelling the feelings and validating them.

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• Setting limits on behaviour if needed.

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• Problem-solving with the child.

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Step 1: recognize and empathize

• Be a detective rather than a judge
• There is a difference between sympathy and empathy
• Build a power base

Step 1 summary; being a STAR��

• Stop: pause don’t react or speak straight away. Notice any feeling that the child’s emotion are triggering in you
• Think: what feeling may be beneath the behaviour I can see, what is going on for this child right now?
• Attune: attune to the feelings by putting yourself in the child’s shoes
• Reflect: what would be a similar situation for you that would cause you to feel that way?

Step 2: labelling and validating the emotions

• Say what you see

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• Be careful with the language of choice

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• If you’re stuck use the emotion chart

Step 3: setting limits

But…

Distinguish your emotion from the child’s

Put on your oxygen mask before attending to the child’s!

Step 4: problem solving.

• Explore the child’s feelings and needs that gave rise to the problem.

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• Increases awareness of emotions by asking how the emotions made the child feel.

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• Share ideas to identify more constructive ways of expressing feelings through other behaviour.

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• Problem solve ‘with’ not ‘for’ the child

References and additional resources

References

1. Young, K. S., Sandman, C. F., & Craske, M. G. (2019) Positive and Negative Emotion Regulation in Adolescence: Links to Anxiety and Depression. Brain sciences, 9(4), 76. https://doi.org/10.3390/brainsci9040076
2. Saz P. A; Bittencourt-Hewitt, A; Sebastian, C. L, (2015) Neurocognitive bases of emotion regulation development in adolescence. Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience (15) https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcn.2015.07.006
3. Vatan, Sevginar & Lester, David & Gunn III, John. (2014) Emotion Dysregulation, Problem-Solving, and Hopelessness. Psychological Reports. 114. http://dx.doi.org/10.2466/20.02.PR0.114k23w3
4. Ford, T. et al, (2017) The Relationship between Exclusion from School and Mental Health: A Secondary Analysis of The British Child and Adolescent Mental Health Surveys 2004 and 2007 available at https://www.exeter.ac.uk/media/universityofexeter/newsarchive/researchmedical/Psychological_Medicine_preprint1.pdf
5. Hinshaw, SP. (2002) Process, mechanism, and explanation related to externalizing behavior in developmental psychopathology. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology;30(5):431–446. Available at https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1019808712868
6. Gottman, J., Katz, L. and Hooven, C. (1997) Meta-Emotion: How families communicate Emotionally. New York, NY: Psychology Press.
7. Gus, L., Rose, J., & Gilbert, L. (2015). Emotion coaching: A universal strategy for supporting and promoting sustainable emotional and behavioural well-being. Educational & Child Psychology, 32(1), 31-41.

Additional resources

A useful handout from Oxford Clinical Psychology explaining the steps https://www.oxfordclinicalpsych.com/view/10.1093/med-psych/9780190940119.001.0001/med-9780190940119-interactive-pdf-047.pdf

A pretty good information sheet for parents/carers https://www.parentingcounts.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/information-for-parents-emotion-coaching.pdf

I like this! Reviewed by a clinical psychologist, good on the core emotions and quite an interesting online tool too https://www.healthline.com/health/list-of-emotions

The Gottman Institute web page, some good material, sometimes a bit technical https://www.gottman.com/blog/an-introduction-to-emotion-coaching/

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