The Fear of "Bad" Emotions

The Fear of "Bad" Emotions

As adults, we often categorize emotions as either bad or good, because that is how we were raised to view them.

But what if we taught our children something different?

Removing morality around emotions

By labeling emotions just as they are (i.e. sad, frustrated, happy) instead of good or bad, we are removing the morality around emotions. 

When we categorize an emotion as good (i.e. happy) and bad (i.e. angry), we inadvertently teach kids to run from the negative emotion and to avoid it.

But in reality, emotions are just communication.

Avoidance leads to fear

In avoiding an emotion, we are communicating to our brain that there is something wrong or scary about that emotion, which in turn makes the feeling feel much bigger.

For example, if your child is scared to talk in front of their class. They are feeling fear. If we communicate to them that fear and anxiety is bad, they will want to avoid the feeling of fear.

We know that we can not avoid emotions; they are outside of our control.

So in trying to avoid fear, we end up become fearful of feeling fear. Making the fear we do feel much scarier and harder to navigate.

So the next time your child is asked to speak in class, their fear response is much more heightened and they begin to associate this heightened fear response with public speaking and will grow up avoiding it at all costs.

The Pebble Path Method

With the Pebble Path Journal, we are teaching kids the foundations of emotional awareness and mindfulness.

We are teaching them that feelings are just feelings. They are temporary, and they come and go.

You feel fear, you sit with it even though it is uncomfortable, and then it goes away and you feel a new emotion.

This reprograms the brain to recognize our capacity to handle big feelings in the future because we just handled them in the present. 

It grows a child's self-confidence in their ability to navigate any feeling they face.

More than a journal - shop the Pebble Path Journal here