Understanding big feelings, with Jessica Sinarski
Jan 22, 2024I've been noticing a lot of articles and posts lately about emotional regulation. I've even seen it mentioned that difficulty with regulating emotions is the ONE symptom of ADHD that everyone who is diagnosed experiences.
Because of this, terms like 'overreactive', 'maladaptive', and 'dysfunctional' may be used to describe our kids and their choices. We probably also know adults who could be described this way as well.
In this week's podcast/YouTube episode with Jessica Sinarski, we are talking all about emotions, thoughts, feelings, memories, and experiences. You'll hear why we both believe in accepting and allowing ALL emotions, why we dislike the terms I mentioned above, and why I absolutely love the resources Jessica has created to support kids with emotional regulation.
Here's a clip from the episode:
And what I saw my field do a lot, at least in my training early on, is lean way more toward thoughts. Like, you know, you can fix your behavior if you fix your thoughts. And what I saw in practice was that, just, that just didn't work for most of the... most of the folks I worked with. And I'm not knocking cognitive behavioral therapy if, you know, if that works well for your brain, great. But I found, particularly related to trauma, I think it's also very true in the world of ADHD and certainly with autism and, and other ways that we can be wired, that that's just one tiny part of how we function and who we are and what makes us, us. And so we want to, we do want to pay attention to sensations, all eight of our senses, we do want to pay attention to, maybe what some of those deeper memories are.
Listen to the podcast episode.
On a personal note: Struggling with emotional regulation is embarrassing, frustrating, and overwhelming. It comes with its own consequences. Here's an old video of me sharing a time when I was disregulated, and talking about why I am not a fan of artificial consequences for our kids in those moments.
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