Name It, Tame ItAn introduction to emotion coaching

Will Calver,

Each local authority in England must make arrangements to promote co-operation between— .

(a) the authority;

(b) each of the authority’s relevant partners; and .

(c) such other persons or bodies as the authority consider appropriate, being persons or bodies of any nature who exercise functions or are engaged in activities in relation to children in the authority’s area.

The arrangements are to be made with a view to improving the well-being of children in the authority’s area so far as relating to— .

(a) physical and mental health and emotional well-being;

(b) protection from harm and neglect;

(c) education, training and recreation;

(d) the contribution made by them to society;

(e) social and economic well-being;

Why are we talking about enhancing the emotional well-being of LAC and care leavers today?Children Act 2004

Please complete the questionnaire sheet using column A only.

Select how you would respond in each of the scenarios.

• That every young person looked after by their institution/Local Authority feels supported with their emotions

• That every young person looked after by their Institution/Local Authority is asked if they feel supported with their emotions (impact)

• That all services within an institution/Local Authority that support LAC/Care Leavers, consider training their staff to adopt emotion coaching as a new skill

What do we want to achieve from emotion coaching?

I feel unsupported

with my emotions

I feel supported with my emotions

and am able to name them

and know that they are normal

I am working on strategies

to manage my emotion

I use strategies to manage my

emotions and feel in control

of my emotions

What could be put in place to enable Local Authorities to know if young people are feeling supported with their emotions?

One way could be a PEP question: Do you feel supported with your emotions? Which could be accompanied by a scale…

What is emotion coaching?• A practice for supporting young people to identify and manage their emotions

through enhanced communication

Who can learn it?• Anyone can learn to support the emotions of others, many adults do it.

Why are we targeting staff that support Looked After Children and Care Leavers with Emotion Coaching?• Because 63% of young people are taken into care because of abuse, and will

be experiencing strong emotions

• The majority of young people taken from their parents will be feeling separation anxiety

Why should colleagues in Local Authorities be supporting the emotions of learners?• Because a learner experiencing strong emotions may not be able to focus upon

their education. By helping them to manage their emotions you will be enhancing their achievement

• Emotion coaching is based on the assumption that emotions drive behaviour.

• Casey and Schlosser (1994) found that 7-14 yr olds with an externalizing disorder displayed poorer emotional awareness than control groups

• Saarni (1999) without the ability to identify the specific emotion that one is experiencing, choosing an appropriate and effective strategy to alleviate this state will largely be inadequate

Why focus on emotions?

What are the objectives for emotion coaching training?

• To support staff to feel confident to help young people to identify, validate and manage their emotions

• For staff to know how they can enable young people to identify their emotions and create strategies to manage them

• For staff to become aware how they respond to the behaviours of young people and to be willing to understand the emotions the drive them

• For staff to know the importance of empathy in emotion coaching and how to use it effectively

• For staff to know how they can co-regulate with young people

For young people to self-regulate their emotions

Where did Emotion Coaching come from?

• Developed in the US by psychologist John Gottman (1997)

• Based on research into what parents of happy, resilient and well-adjusted young people actually do

• Recognises the scientific evidence that what adults do shapes and strengthens brain development in children

• Found that the brain is shaped by social experience and strengthened by repetition

© Kate Cairns Associates

Emotion coaching is helping young people to: identify their emotions; know that they are normal and create strategies to manage them

Emotion coaching is not: discussing the circumstances where emotions may have come from or addressing the underlying causes of emotions

It is about dealing with the here and now, not the past…..

Open questions on emotion coaching

Please write down 5 open questions on the subject of emotion coaching:

Can I be an emotion coach?

What happens to a person’s body when they experience a strong emotion?

• Heart rate increase• Blood pressures raises• Sweating increases• Adrenaline is released into the body• Breathing speeds up• Blood is moved away from the stomach to major

muscles• Legs and hands may shake in preparation for fight

or flight• May feel like vomiting or going to the toilet• Sympathetic Nervous System is engagedCould you focus on your education in fight or flight?

If a child experiences regular abuse and trauma before being taken into care, what types of emotions could be triggered on a daily basis?

• Shame

• Fear

• Anger

• Mistrust

• Rage

• Afraid

• Panic

• Hate

Now that you know some of the emotions that LAC may experience, predict what behaviours they may cause (from the list you have created).

Shame: could cause avoidant behaviour

Empathy-How can it help us with emotion coaching?

Working in small groups, using the flip chart pad and pens on your table write down a definition of empathy.

Empathy-The ability to share someone else’s feelings or experience by imagining what it would be like to be in their situation.http://dictionary.cambridge

Understanding empathy

For Carl Rogers empathy is

‘To sense the clients personal world as if it were your own, but without ever losing the “as if” quality – this is empathy…(1957:99)

Counsellors practising Empathy need to ‘get into the shoes of their client’ or ‘under their skin’ (Nelson Jones 1995: 38) in order to try and understand the clients subjective world.

Hough 2008

Which word sums up the meaning of empathy?

Understanding

What is it we are trying to understand in emotion coaching?

Why is empathy important in emotion coaching?

In your groups, write down a scenario of a conversation that could happen between a professional and young person to highlight how empathy can be used in emotion coaching.

‘Understanding alone is 70% of the solution and sometimes the only solution needed’Michael Quinn Family Caring Trust 2003

Once you have understood and established the link between the behaviour and the emotions, try to decide how you can bring about a positive change.

Response Styles

Thanks to Kate Cairns for allowing us to use their material

Responses to Behaviour

Four main styles of adult response to a young person’s behaviour:

• Disapproving

• Dismissing

• Laissez faire

• Emotion coaching

Adapted from Kate Cairns Associates 2013

Disapproving Style:

• Disapproves of negative and positive emotions

• Lacks empathy

• Discipline, reprimand or punish the behaviour

• Focuses on solutions to improve the behaviour rather than the emotions

driving the behaviour

• May regard negative emotions as manipulation

• Often motivated by need to control and regain power, or to ‘toughen up

the young person’

- Adapted from Kate Cairns Associates 2013

Dismissive Style:

• Wants to make the young person feel better but is uncomfortable with

negative emotions

• Views negative emotions as toxic – to be ‘got over’ quickly

• Thinks paying attention to such emotions makes them worse

• Tries to stop emotions by reducing or minimising them – making light of

their significance (that’s life, you’ll be fine’)

• Focuses on getting rid of the emotion with logic or distraction rather than

understanding the feelings

- Adapted from Kate Cairns Associates 2013

Disapproving and dismissive styles

The actual message the young person is hearing is……….

‘I can’t trust my own feelings’

Leading to the young person lacking capacity to make decisions

Leading to the young person suppressing natural emotions

Can generate more negative feelings in the young person – resentment,

shame, anger

The young person is not given the opportunities to experience emotions

and deal with them effectively , so could grow up unprepared for life's

challenges

Adapted from Kate Cairns Associates 2013

Laissez Faire style

• The young person receives no guidance from the adult on how to manage

their feelings

• Once the adult is in laissez faire, the behaviour will escalate

• Can occur when the adult is overwhelmed by the power of emotions

driving the young person (adult may feel afraid, distressed or helpless)

• Despite the empathy of the adult, the young person experiences no safe

containment of their emotions

- Adapted from Kate Cairns Associates 2013

Emotion Coaching style

• Identify and name the emotion

• Acknowledge the emotion as normal

• Empathise with the emotion

• Name it, tame it!

• Setting limits on behaviour

• Builds relationships

• Problem solving with the young person to create strategies to

manage their emotions

ACTIVITY - Response to behaviour

Adapted from Kate Cairns Associates 2013

High Empathy

Low Guidance

Low Empathy

High Guidance

ACTIVITY - Response to behaviour

Adapted from Kate Cairns Associates 2013

High Empathy

Low Guidance

Low Empathy

High Guidance

Emotion coaching styleDisapproving style

Dismissive style Laissez-faire style

ACTIVITY - Response to behaviour Task- place the statements in the relevant quadrant in response to the following statement:

A young person is anxious, scared of attending an apprenticeship interview

Adapted from Kate Cairns Associates 2013

High Empathy

Low Guidance

Low Empathy

High Guidance

Identify the feelings, validate them and discuss coping strategies

Discuss how they are feeling

Tell the young person that being anxious is being silly and they are wasting people’s time and offer them a way to encourage attendance

Tell the young person it will be fine, you’ve done loads of interviews, everyone gets nervous

Response Styles

ACTIVITY 1Reflecting on the information covered so far, please reconsider the answers you gave in column A. Identify anything you would change in column B.

Please complete the questionnaire sheet individually

Emotion coaching involves…

… a practical three-step approach to dealing with behaviour in the moment

Step 1– Recognising, empathising, validating the feelings and labelling them

Step 2– Setting limits on behaviour

Step 3– Problem-solving with the young person

Adapted from Kate Cairns Associates 2013

Step 1

Empathise, validate, label

• Recognise all emotions as being natural and normal and not a matter of choice

• Look for physical and verbal signs of the emotion being felt

• Take on the young person’s perspective (attunement, mentalising/mindedness

• Use words to reflect back the young person’s emotion and help them to label the emotion

• Affirm and empathise, allowing the young person to calm through co-regulation

• Provide a narrative for the emotional experience, creating cognitive links through teaching/education

Adapted from Kate Cairns Associates 2013

Step 2

Set Limits

Establish Rapport• Build on attunement with young person• Mirror neurons then create engagement the social and

emotional brain• It is important that adults set the social and emotional tone –

not the adult reflecting back the anger or distress of the young person, but the young person being able to respond and reflect back the calm and empathic face of the adult

Then teaching • State the boundary limits of behaviour• Make clear that some behaviours will not be accepted

Adapted from Kate Cairns Associates 2013

Step 3

Problem solve with the young person

When the young person is calm and in a relaxed state –• Explore the feelings that give rise to the behaviour, problem or incident

• Remember that all feelings are acceptable• We manage our feelings by making choices about how we respond

• Scaffold – alternative ideas and actions that could lead to more appropriate and productive outcomes

• Empower – the young person to believe they can overcome difficulties and manage their own feelings and behaviour

Adapted from Kate Cairns Associates 2013

Things to consider when delivering emotion coaching

In your groups write down the things that you need to do to make your emotion coaching effective

Activity in silence

Working on your own, think about an instance in your life where you will commit to trying the emotion coaching approach

‘Understanding alone is 70% of the solution and sometimes the only solution needed’Michael Quinn Family Caring Trust 2003

Once you have understood and established the link between the behaviour and the emotions, try to decide how you can bring about a positive change.

Saarni, C (1999). The development of emotional competence, New York: Guildford

Casey,R.J., & Schlosser,S. (1994) Emotional responses to peer praise in children with and without diagnosed externalizing disorder. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, 40, 60-81.

http://dictionary.cambridge.org retrieved 27/1/2014 9.30am

Hough M 2010 Counselling Skills and Theory Hodder Education UK

Kate Cairns Associates 2013 www.kca.org

References