Introducing the How are you Feeling?

Foundation Program

For use in a Classroom or Learn at Home,

Students Ages 8 to 85

Why the Foundation Program

Learn the Basics in 2.5 hrs

The comprehensive How are you Feeling? program (24 episodes) has been hugely successful with students ages 12 to 17. Unfortunately, it takes time to integrate a program like this into school curriculums. The Foundation Program can be delivered easily over 3 to 4 class periods and introduces important, fundamental, concepts to expand SEL programs. Complete the form below to access all the program material.

The Foundation program focuses on why we have feelings, why and how we process feelings, and the grim consequences of suppressing feelings for any length of time. Most schools have self-regulation programs. How Are You Feeling adds an important further understanding of how to work through difficult feelings in order to confidently face tough realities and develop resilience.

Our research with the comprehensive ‘How are you Feeling?’ program shows that the kids really appreciated learning concepts that were new to them about how to make sense of their feelings.

The full 24 episode HAYF program goes into much more depth on how to ‘process feelings’. It includes many more relatable examples and provides more time and opportunity for discussion and reflection in order to assimilate these emotional concepts.

Fundamental Evidence-based Concepts for Young People

Here are four key concepts that should be part of every emotional foundation.

UNDERSTANDING FEELINGS
The Foundation of Emotional Health

A crucial part of understanding feelings is knowing what to do with them.They are important signals that guide us to self-understanding, self-acceptance, and healing. Facing and feeling difficult emotions allows us to move on with our lives. Denying and avoiding these emotions leaves them festering and causing disruption.

- are not good or bad, right or wrong.
- guide us from the very beginning to get what we need to survive.
- can be worked through (processed) to connection, insight, and integration.
- give us the ability to be responsive instead of inappropriately reactive when we know how to process them.
- allows us to deal with loss effectively.
- have a source and are the route to healing.
- are dangerous when suppressed for too long.
- are connected to our behaviours because we act-out feelings that we have not fully felt

EXPRESSING FEELINGS
The Power of Authentic Communication

Expressing our feelings is the first step to making sense of them and to effectively get through them. Since being heard, understood, and known is a basic human need, authentically and appropriately articulating our emotions bolsters our self-worth and enhances our relationships.

- we do not feel safe to express.
- It takes courage to express feelings when we feel vulnerable, threatened, or exposed.
- we have learned some feelings are unacceptable, wrong, and bad.
- there has been a lack of permission to feel certain feelings in our young lives.
- it is common to be afraid of certain feelings that were taboo for us in our families or in our culture — vulnerability and weakness for males, and anger for females.
- we have not learned that expressing our feelings is crucially important to our physical and emotional well-being
- we haven’t realized that we are born with the ability to fully feel, express, and discharge our feelings and we can learn to do so again and heal our repressed trauma.
- we have not learned that there are many ways to express our feelings safely.
- we are afraid of being judged for how we are feeling.
- we are afraid of losing a relationship if we are honest about how we feel.
- it is often not appropriate to express our feelings in the moment and it could cost us dearly.
- we have not learned to return to feelings we have repressed in the moment and work them through.

SUPPRESSING FEELINGS
The Cost of Long-term Emotional Avoidance

Feelings are buried alive not dead. While short-term suppression can be necessary, long-term avoidance of feelings can have profound consequences, from exhaustion, anxiety, depression, and despair to damaged, dysfunctional relationships and addictive behaviours. The feelings pop up and cause us to suffer over and over again until we can experience them and finish with them.

- Distracting
- Numbing
- Denying
- Acting-out
- Blaming and shaming self and others
- Projecting
- Rationalizing
- Splitting off
- Shutting down
- Dissociating
- obsessions and compulsions
- addictions
- insomnia
- nightmares
- body pain
- anxiety
- depression
- self-harm
- inability to see current situations clearly and behave appropriately
- frequent triggering
- big feelings we don’t understand
- acting-out unconscious emotional pain
- eating disorders
- phobias
- mania
- dysfunctional relationships

PROCESSING FEELINGS
The Path to Emotional Resilience

Accessing our ability to work through grief, anger, fear, shame, regret, and all difficult feelings helps us shift from self-doubt toward confidence and from confusion to clarity. The more we process our feelings the more resilient we become and the more we have faith that we can be okay when we face adversity.

- naming feelings. noticing when our unfinished feelings are trying to get our attention (body pain, overreacting etc.)
- taking responsibility for the size of our feelings.
- understanding what is within our control and what is not.
- giving ourselves permission to feel.
- not staying stuck.
- expressing feelings without censure, when alone, or with a therapist, or on paper.
- finding safe places to feel and safe people to express feelings with.
- returning to, and staying with, feelings until they lose their intensity.
- knowing triggers are an opportunity.
- continuing to notice triggers and stay with the feelings until they have been felt thoroughly.
- Becoming aware of how we defend against feeling.
- knowing many different ways to get further into the troublesome feelings.
- recognizing the necessity for grieving emotional pain from losses of all kinds.
- releasing tensions from our bodies where we have held our unexpressed feelings.
- not shutting down emotionally and disconnecting from ourselves over time.
- gaining insight and integrating life experiences instead of keeping them split off from our consciousness causing us trouble

What do you mean ‘Processing Feelings’ ?

We frequently get asked this question when we talk about teaching kids to ‘Process Feelings’

When an uncomfortable, or terrible event, happens in a young person’s life they will hopefully seek out a parent, friend, or teacher to talk about it. During this face-to-face encounter if the young person feels safe enough, their feelings of sadness, fear, and anger can surface, and the processing of the feelings is initiated. The listener is informed by body language and tone which helps them understand, and empathize, and thereby encourage ongoing processing. If the triggering event was big there will need to be more talking and listening sessions before all of the emotional reactions to the event are thoroughly processed.

The digital age of texting and social media is making it even more important to learn about emotional processing

It is too easy to communicate a difficult event while only connecting through a screen without any physical contact. Seeing the printed word is not the same as hearing a human voice or seeing a person face to face. The encouragement to express the feelings in order to work them through is unlikely without the closer human connection. This can become a pattern — a barren form of communication leaving the feelings bottled-up causing more serious problems.

Today’s young people are faced with many more difficult problems than previous generations, and the incidence of anxiety and depression are skyrocketing, making it even more crucial to have skills that foster ongoing resilience.