Help Your Child Feel Their Big, Scary Feelings
How to use "Name It To Tame It" to help your child become more emotionally mature and cope with life's ups and downs
Hello! I hope you and your family are doing well!
It’s fairly normal in our culture to avoid big, scary feelings, instead we tend to suppress them as quickly as possible. Few of us learn to process our emotions in adaptive, healthy ways. But unfortunately, emotional suppression often leads to disordered behaviors, and learning to process emotional is key to emotional maturity and recovery.
The good news is that your child can learn to process their big, scary emotions without suppression, and you are the best person to help them do this.
FYI: Negative emotions come from the unconscious threat response system. They are neurological signals like flight, fight, freeze, or fawn. Negative feelings come from our conscious mind. They are words like afraid, angry, or sad that describe our emotional state. The words emotions and feelings can be used interchangeably, but in case you’re interested, I wanted I’d define them😀
One way for your child to learn emotional processing skills is for you to model and practice a technique called “Name It To Tame It.”
We’re built to teach our kids how to process big, scary emotions. But if we aren’t doing it with skill and on purpose we might accidentally teach them to avoid and suppress rather than process their emotional experiences. This can mean they’re emotionally immature and at higher risk of disordered behaviors.
Emotions begin in the body as signals that trigger the threat response system. A child with disordered behaviors usually lacks the skills to intentionally respond rather than automatically react to threat signals.
Learning to process rather than suppress emotions is key to healing disordered behavior.
"Name It To Tame It" is a concept introduced by Dr. Daniel Siegel in his work on emotional regulation and neuroscience. It teaches us to name feelings as they arise, including (especially!) the big, scary ones. Naming feelings engages the conscious mind and interrupts the unconscious/automatic/reactive threat response system, which can drive disordered behavior.
You can use this technique to help your child identify, comprehend, and express their feelings constructively. This will help your child gain emotional maturity and become capable of coping with the stress and disruption of everyday life.
When your child has big, scary feelings you can say something like, “You’re having a lot of feelings right now. I know how hard that is. Let’s try naming the feelings you’re having.”
Next, give them some options. Stay out of the details of why they feel what they feel. Instead, focus on the single-word feeling words to label the experience. You can say, “Are you feeling mad? Angry? Frustrated? Despairing? Irritated? Envious? Betrayed?”
⭐ Check out the Feelings Wheel if you need help coming up with words for this practice.
Pay attention to your child’s preferences: some will need you to give them lots of words to choose from. Others need just a few and lots of space in between to coax their conscious mind online.
Often the same child will need something a little different each time. This exercise is not just about naming as many feelings as you can; it’s about attuning to your child’s emotional needs in the moment.
Keep in mind that feelings are usually single words and are about what’s happening inside of us. Thoughts, on the other hand, contain more words and are about what’s happening outside of us, such as other people and events. As much as possible, focus on your child’s interior experience for this exercise.
Practice “Name It To Tame It” to help your child express their big, negative feelings with you. Don’t try to change how they feel, just be present and engaged while they feel them.
Many of us have accidentally taught our kids that we can’t handle their big negative emotions, so doing this practice is an important step to showing your child that you accept them with all their big emotions, and you can handle them even when it’s hard. The more you respond rather than react to your child’s big, scary emotions, the more capable they will become of doing the same.
It takes effort and practice, but I see tremendous results when parents do this regularly with their kids. Let me know if you’d like some help with this!
Ginny Jones Parent Coach / More-Love.org
Coaching Notes
Here are some stories from the last few weeks of my coaching sessions with parents who have kids with eating and body image issues:
I helped my client open a conversation with her young adult child about the food budget in the context of binge eating. This was a tricky conversation, but now she and her daughter feel more confident and secure.
My clients explored their frustration with how the lack of structure this summer is negatively affecting their son’s eating behavior. We set up a structure to get back on track.
Another client realized that her child needs more autonomy over things like clothes and religious activities to balance the lack of autonomy she has over food right now.
How To Help Your Child Process Big, Scary Feelings
You want to help your child process big, scary feelings but it feels overwhelming, maybe even impossible. Though you have an idea that you could help, you don’t know exactly how to help your child learn to process their feelings in adaptive, non-disordered ways. You may be flooded with your own emotions when your child’s having big feelings, making it hard for you to stay engaged and regulated with them.
I’ve created an 8-page printable guide and workbook based on personal practice and my 1:1 coaching work with more than 120 families to help you help your child learn to process big, negative feelings during eating disorder recovery, including the six-step process to follow when your child is having big, scary feelings.
Paid Subscribers: Click the button below to get your printable and start parenting with more confidence today.