Name Your Emotion and Tame It
Dealing with emotions as a foster parent is one of the most difficult challenges we face. This article from Medium provides a few tips on dealing with Emotion regulation:
“Emotion regulation means practicing something known as impulse control,” says Kris Lee, Ed.D., a professor at Northeastern University, behavioural science expert and author of Mentalligence: A New Psychology of Thinking: Learn What it Takes to be More Agile, Mindful and Connected in Today’s World.
“When something happens, our brain’s automatic response is to be reactive. When our amygdala, the small part of our brain that regulates fight or flight is set off, we have to avoid taking the bait of our raw emotional reactions that make us want to overreact,” Kris says.
“When we buy time, we then have access to the frontal lobes of our brains, where we have access to reasoning, better problem solving and perspective. We never have to take the bait of primitive emotions,” she explains.
If you find yourself raising your voice or saying something snappish when you’re under stress, you’ve come face-to-face with the challenges of emotion regulation…
