‘You do you’ is a common slang phrase among young people. Translation (for those of us a generation removed): ‘Do whatever you believe/feel is right for you’. Our culture places a much greater emphasis on feelings and emotions for making decisions than we did in the past. Pro and Con lists seem to be a thing of the past. Now it’s do whatever you feel like doing.
The Problem With ‘You Do You’
Anxiety keeps us at home. Elation wants us to spend money we don’t have because we ‘deserve’ it. Hurt helps us think of ways to get back at people. Anger fuels obscenities or worse. Indignation wants the world to know via social media how we’ve been wronged.
No one will call anyone on it because, hey, ‘you do you.’
The problem is that most young people today (and many adults) see nothing wrong with making decisions with their ‘feeling brain’ and not their ‘thinking brain.’
Emotions are neutral. They are neither good nor bad. They just are. However, actions that we take can be good or bad. But when emotions run high and we act on impulse, we often regret what we did in the moment. Why? Because we allowed our ‘feeling brain’ to make a decision that our ‘thinking brain’ should have made. This is never a good idea.
So, how do we help children deal with their emotions in a healthy way and teach them how to make decisions out of their ‘thinking brain’?
It is a skill anyone can learn.
If You Blinked, You Might Have Missed a Powerful Moment
Admittedly, I am not a soccer fan. However, as I passed through my living room this weekend, I overheard an interview with Arsene Wenger, manager of Arsenal Football Club. Something he said stopped me in my tracks.
Believing it is the right decision at the right time, he recently announced his resignation after 22 years of managing the Arsenal team. Certainly his decision is not without strong mixed emotions of both pride at his accomplishments and some disappointment at the way his career with Arsenal is ending.
On the heels of an Arsenal win, the interviewer asked Wenger how he was feeling. When Wenger said he was ‘happy’ [about Arsenal’s win], the interviewer said, “You know what I mean,” referencing his departure from Arsenal.
What impressed me the most was Wenger’s response.
“I’ll continue to separate my feelings from the results of the team.”
If you weren’t paying attention, it would be easy to miss such a profound display of self-discipline. Wenger was displaying the skill of separating fact and feeling.
Wenger used self-discipline to identify and acknowledge his feelings, yet still make the decision (with his ‘thinking brain’) to celebrate the win with his team rather than let his feelings about his personal career dictate his actions. In this moment, he not only showed himself to be a man of integrity, but also put others before himself by placing the need of the Football Club to celebrate a win, ahead of his own feelings.
What a great model of self-discipline!
Skill Development Does Not Happen Overnight
This kind of self-discipline takes a lot of practice. It doesn’t just happen overnight. Emotions are powerful. They can be incredibly motivating, but they are not for decision-making. My guess is that Wenger developed his skill of separating facts from feelings over the course of his life.
Self-discipline in the area of feelings and emotions is an important skill that both children and adults need to learn and practice in order to be successful in life.
The ‘Feeling Brain’ vs. ‘Thinking Brain’
The ‘feeling brain’ is not rational, reasonable, or logical. The ‘thinking brain’ is. When we act out of our ‘feeling brain’, it is safe to say we are not being rational, reasonable, or logical and it is a recipe for disaster.
Think of negative emotions as similar to the warning lights on a car’s dashboard. They are an indicator that something is going on ‘under the hood.’ If we were to put tape across the warning lights on the dashboard of our car and ignore them, it would not be long before we had a much bigger problem with our car.
In the same way, if we ignore our emotions they can build up inside of us and we can end up with a much bigger problem down the road.
On the flip side, if we give too much weight to our emotions without using our ‘thinking brain,’ we begin to treat emotions as what needs attention rather than the situations that are triggering the emotions within us. Emotions then are no longer indicators, but the central driving force behind our decisions.
This is not a healthy way to deal with emotions or our capacity for decision-making.
So, how do we help children deal with their emotions in in a healthy way so they can use their ‘thinking brain’ for making decisions? For starters, we give them a lot of opportunities to practice the skill of separating fact and feeling.
Separating Fact and Feeling
When situations trigger emotions (especially negative emotions), we can help children begin to separate fact and feeling by following the steps listed below.
1) Identify, acknowledge, and validate feelings.
Remember feelings are neutral. Feelings are neither good nor bad. They just are. Help children identify and name their feelings. A feelings chart can help with this. Help them acknowledge and validate their feelings. Mirror to them how they are feeling. For example, I heard you say you feel sad. Is there anything else you are feeling? Or Help me understand why you are feeling angry. Or after they explain the situation, you can say I can understand why you might feel that way.
Keep in mind it is never helpful to say, “You shouldn’t feel that way.” It is perfectly okay for children to feel what they are feeling. It is not always okay for children to act on what they are feeling, especially when their actions can harm themselves or another.
2) Wait before responding by calming emotions.
When children are upset about a situation, help them to practice waiting before responding. A great way to do this is to teach them how to take slow deep breathes. For how long? They should breathe deeply and slowly until their breathing is back to normal, their heart rate is down, and the muscles in their body are relaxed again.
Breathing will help children shift from their ‘feeling brain’ back to their ‘thinking brain’ because it helps to calm the biological stress response they are experiencing.
3) Identify the facts of the situation.
This is really a simple exercise in fact and opinion. The more children practice, the better they will get at identifying facts versus how they feel about the facts.
Once children are in their ‘thinking brains,’ it is a good time to ask them to begin identifying the facts of the situation versus how they feel about the facts.
One strategy that can help with this is to ask a child how someone standing nearby would describe the situation. Shifting to a third person perspective can be helpful for children in identifying facts because they are thinking about what happened based on what someone might have observed rather than how the observer might have felt.
4) Choose how to respond.
When children are calm, in their ‘thinking brain,’ and have separated their feelings from the facts of the situation, now is the time for the child to choose how they want to respond.
It is important that we let children practice choosing appropriate responses. We may need to remind them that they cannot create a new problem for someone else, nor can they choose an action that would harm themselves, others, or things.
If children have difficulty thinking of a way to respond, we can give them a couple of options that would be appropriate to the situation, and ask them if either of those sound like good options to them.
Once they have chosen a way to respond, it’s always a good idea to help a child role play what their choice is. Another option is to ask older students to describe the ‘who, what, where, when’ of their response to ensure they have a good plan to follow through on their decision.
Separating fact and feeling is a challenging skill to practice even for adults. Children need a lot of support as they learn about this skill and a lot of opportunities to practice doing it well. What a gift we will be giving them for life if we can teach them this skill early in life.
In what situations do you see students struggle with this skill? Leave a comment below.