welcome to emotion coaching uk's webinar on emotion coaching my name is louise gilbert and along with my colleagues lissette gus and janet rose we're the co-founders of emotion coaching uk in this webinar i hope to introduce you to emotion coaching emotion coaching is a naturally observed approach to help manage reactions responses and reasonings to emotions both in ourselves and in others it's all about emotional regulation i'm going to explain a little bit about why we need emotion coaching what it is and what it's not and how to do emotion coaching i'll then go on to include information about the website itself where you can read more about emotion coaching you can find out about training opportunities and access free downloadable resources and newsletters you can also contact us directly so let's start our emotion coaching journey so who needs emotion coaching we all do that's the short answer we are social beings and we need each other we need to feel seen appreciated and cared for from the cradle to the grave emotion coaching helps adults to support children to feel seen safe soothed and secure it's about helping children to understand the different emotions they feel why they occur and how to handle them in behavior is all about emotional regulation so let's have a quick look at behavior and what guides our behavior behaviors are a communication of our emotions we often look at our behaviors but are maybe less aware of the emotions that are informing our behaviors it's through our relationships with others that we learn to understand express and regulate our own emotions it's also about the experiences and environments that we find ourselves in that shape how we learn to engage with others what kind of behaviors are acceptable and not and how we communicate our needs so emotions matter but what are emotions there's much discussion amongst the scientists about emotions and feelings and whether they are learnt or are they actually part of of something that makes us human and i think this discussion will go on and on however most scientists now believe there are six primary motions that are hardwired by that i mean they are we all have them however how we express them in our behavior that may vary and that might be the effect of culture and it might be effective context these emotions help to inform our decision making and responses and reactions are behaviors to what is going on around they are there to support our survival and if you look at that list you can notice that five of them actually can be difficult motions to manage to deal with to respond to and there's a reason for that these emotions are there to help make quick decisions if we are being threatened and our life is at risk whether it's real or perceived fear helps to suggest to the brain the type of action that needs to be taken the emotion also when registered sets off bodily changes to help us to adapt our behavior to respond and our response usually is through either running away or turning round to face the fear and fight so they're most important for survival so how do we learn how to behave and how do we learn the behaviors that we show we learn how to behave from significant others by those i mean our parents and carers our family and other adults that are important in our lives we also learn through trial and error we learn through repetition and we learn from our experiences and our environments but we have a priority of feeling safe and secure over learning this means only when you feel safe and secure in your environment in your relationships in your experiences are you able to focus on things other than survival so to optimize learning and build our brains we all need access to secure nurturing and stimulating relationships experiences and environments and it's this that emotion coaching helps to support why use emotion coaching we know we need others to help us regulate our emotions this is particularly true of children who are reliant on the adults around them to help them feel safe and secure we learn as we grow older and more independent to manage our own emotions but initially we have co-regulation with those around us those caring nurturing adults which help us to develop skills what i like to call tools for our toolkit of life to be able to manage our own emotion and those around us our physical and mental health and well-being is believed to be an ongoing balance between two bodily systems and we all need to learn how to balance these our social engagement system supports connection with others it drives those relationships and helps us to learn to use our thinking and creative skills to engage in problem solving it supports play and it helps us to create and maintain reciprocal relationships our stress response system is more primitive its primary role is to keep us safe from predators and dangers it focuses on our survival through taking protective actions i'm going to spend a little time just explaining this natural response it is necessary for responses to real threats in us to our survival however we can this system can also be triggered by imagined threats if we cannot resolve the threat through the use of our social engagement system or as a result of continuous stimulation it becomes extremely sensitive and easily triggered this system is there to keep us alive through quickly adapting our behavior it is automatically activated when we feel unsafe and threatened so what happens to our bodies how do we prepare to respond hormones are released to increase our pulse our breathing energy is released into the bloodstream to help the body respond quickly our focus narrows away from social engagement and interest in the environment and people to trying to identify the source of the threat indeed it is suggested that in this state our hearing changes our ears physically retune to be more sensitive to loud and lower noise frequencies making it more difficult to listen to the softer higher frequencies of speech the system is there to protect and it uses much energy and effort to support our response so once the threat is over the stress response system steps down from control and our pulse and breathing return to normal we can then re-engage in our environment and with others and return to behaviors driven by the social engagement system just a short word about stress we do need some stress in our lives to motivate and rise to the challenge and learn new skills but this has to be when we feel safe and secure we can tolerate moderate stresses if they're temporary or we have access to relationships in the environments that help us feel safe and secure but toxic stress is when the stress is continuous ongoing extreme and there is nowhere to go and no one to help us this type of stress is detrimental to our physical and mental health and well-being from birth children are learning to recognize and regulate their emotions particularly difficult ones and behaviors to interact with others they need to practice vagal tone is a term used to describe how well our social engagement system and stress response systems work together to regulate emotional responses to inform our behaviors bagel tone is partly genetic but it's also a result of our ongoing relationships experiencing environments in our lives and those with good vagal tone research has identified that they have better emotional balance clear thinking improved attention more efficient immune systems and greater resilience as a result of their vehicle tone these are all qualities i think we would want everyone to have emotion coaching helps to develop vehicle tone it works with and not against our social engagement and stress response system supporting the development of emotional regulation it's because emotion coaching helps children to understand the different emotions they experience why they occur and how to handle them so how to manage how to balance social engagement and handle their stress response in order to respond appropriately and then calm down john gottman carried out research into parenting he identified a group of parents called emotion which he labeled emotion coaching parents the children of emotion coaching parents were better able to control their impulses delay gratification and self-soothe when they were upset and pay attention as a result emotion coaching children achieved more academically in school they had more friendships were more popular they seem to have fewer behavioral problems and less infections they also seem to be more emotionally stable and more resilient when faced with a threat or adversity john gottman's research findings were exciting and we wondered if there were other places where children had relationships with significant adults that emotion coaching could be used to help support children's emotional regulation and develop their emotional resiliency we carried out a small project in 2010 and identified that training practitioners to use emotion coaching within schools community settings and early year settings there was evidence from our research that actually children were able to regulate and prove and take ownership of their behavior they were able to calm down and better understand emotions this supported academic attainment and practitioners felt they were more sensitive to the children's needs that they had better relationships with the children they also felt as practitioners able to give a more consistent response to children's behaviors and felt more in control but less controlling during emotionally charged incidents as a result of using emotion coaching it was felt that the relationships between the adults and the children improved so there was an improvement in the social relationships the advantage for adults and children is clear from the research so i'm now going to go on and explain just what is emotion coaching john gottman identified four ways of dealing with emotions that is our reactions responses and reasonings to emotions in ourselves and others and it was the emotion coaching response that seemed to give the advantage to children however the others are very common ways of responding to emotions emotion dismissing is where we try to ignore the emotion cover it up try to we're uncomfortable with that emotion so for example if you've hurt yourself um or upset we might say oh don't worry it's nothing to worry about here have a biscuit so we're trying to dismiss and move the child on emotion disapproving actually thinks emotions are a sign of weakness they shouldn't be given attention they need to be ignored and really shouldn't be felt so a very much a disciplinarian approach to dealing with uh emotions and emotional regulation the lazy fair or permissive approach to emotions is these adults are very aware emotions can be difficult uncomfortable they can really empathize with their with the child however they don't really know what to do with the emotions so although they can understand when a child's experience the child isn't able to get any guidance there are certain effects of dismissing disapproving and lazy fair ways of dealing with emotions they may seem to work in the short term but longer term the child is not helped to recognize the different emotions and how they feel to label them they aren't given an opportunity to understand why they occur or have an opportunity to learn how to self-regulate and to problem solve so how is an emotion coaching approach different emotion coaching supports the child to manage the emotions they are experiencing in that moment it recognizes that all emotions are acceptable however not all behaviors are emotion coaching helps the child to understand the different emotions they experience why they occur and how to handle them john gottman identified five elements to motion coaching and we've translated these into four steps as you can see from the slide step one is all about you recognizing the emotions the child is feeling and empathizing with them showing them that you understand and you may show this in your response through your gestures through your look through perhaps appropriate touch seeing and what you're saying to the child there is you're seeing them and not just focusing on their behaviors step two is about validating these emotions showing them that you know because we communicate with others through verbal and non-verbal language and as we get older we use language more and more if you're experiencing unpleasant intense emotions and feelings and you don't know what they are or you cannot share them it can make the experience far more scary in labeling the emotions you you are helping the child to learn how to verbally express their feelings and needs so by saying i can see you seem angry i understand you seem upset it helps the child to link a word to what it is they are feeling steps one and step two help the child they support the child to calm in being empathetic and showing you care through your approach and through your language your and through your response this helps to trigger the child's vegas this helps to calm the stress response and to help reconnect with their social engagement system step three is all about helping the child to learn what it is what is and what is not acceptable behavior it isn't always needed but as i said before all emotions are acceptable but not all behaviors are in this step you're trying to show positively what is the acceptable behavior to show there are alternatives and in step four it's all about problem solving with the child it's about helping them to build their toolkits for life it's about helping the child to understand just what happened to them and exploring the why and what could be done differently next time in this stage it's about developing alternative behaviors to give them more tools perhaps more appropriate tools for their toolkit for life so that when they experience the they have that experience again they have alternatives different ways it's about empowering that child to problem solve and handle the emotions themselves so emotion coaching is a relational approach it helps to co-regulate the child in order that they learn to self-regulate and it involves as an adult being aware of the child's emotions and your own recognizing emotional times as opportunities for teaching not for scolding not for power games but for opportunities for that child to understand what's going on and help them to respond more effectively it's about listening empathetically walking in those shoes of the child and understanding what that child might be feeling at that moment it's labeling the emotions so the child can act not give a word to what they are feeling and understand that you see them and what they're experiencing rather than just seeing the behavior it's about helping a child to verbally label their emotions and these steps help a child feel more in control less afraid and more able to actually control the stress response so they can start to re-engage in their social engagement once a child is calm once a child is able to hear to listen to engage with you it's about explaining acceptable behaviors what is acceptable what is appropriate and it's about helping that child problem solve what could they do if this happened again how could they approach other options which will lead to more effective responses so in summary emotion coaching it is not a quick fix it is not a substitute for specific interventions so not a therapy not instead of and it isn't a remedy for all of life's difficulties however emotion coaching is a universal relational approach that supports emotional regulation through empathetic co-regulation it's about helping children to recognize label manage and understand emotions in themselves and others and it is not dismissing or disapproving of emotions here are some comments from people who have been trained in emotion coaching how they feel it has affected themselves and their practice so what are the next steps for you you may be interested in reading more about emotion coaching or looking at training opportunities perhaps downloading some free resources or contacting us directly you can do all of this from our website we now offer emotion coaching training online the online training courses vary in length and content and complexity however they all include critical current neuroscientific evidence on how best to support children and young people's self-regulation they all offer insight into the stress response and social engagement systems and how relationships and emotional regulation affect mental health and well-being they include the research for the evidence base for emotion coaching practice and include practical exercises and skill development in emotion coaching on the website you can access free resources which are downloadable you can read more about emotion coaching you can look at the newsletters and you can contact us directly and so some final thoughts emotions inform our behaviors emotions are the glue and the gunpowder of human social relations i would suggest emotion coaching makes the glue stronger and the gunpowder less explosive thank you so much for listening