Emotion Coaching

Helping students make sense of their big feelings and navigate them with safety, control, and skill.

All emotions are valid, not all behaviours are acceptable

The emotion coaching approach helps us teach needed emotion regulation skills. This includes: (1) the identification of emotions, (2) the ability to control the intensity of emotions, and (3) the ability to express our emotions skillfully in a way that gets us what we need and want. Emotion coaching has been used in schools and shown to have a significantly positive impact on school success and attachment to school (for a review, please see the references below). When teachers use this approach, they can quickly and effectively disarm big emotions and coach skillful responses to everyday stresses and challenges.

Emotion Coaching

We need emotions! They are important signals from within and they “urge” us to do something. They indicate what matters to us, and help to keep us safe and close to important people in our lives. Sometimes, what they tell us to do is helpful and effective in getting what we want. Now and again what they tell us to do is less effective, or gets us the opposite of what we want.

For a general sample script of what emotion coaching could sound like: please click here.

Emotion Coaching: References

Gottman, J. M., Katz, L. F., & Hooven, C. (1997). Meta-emotion: How families communicate emotionally. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Gottman, J. M., Declaire, J., & Goleman, D. (2015). Raising an emotionally intelligent child. Simon & Schuster Paperbacks.

Rose, J., Gilbert, L., & McGuire-Snieckus, R. (2015). Emotion coaching – A strategy for promoting behavioural self-regulation in children and young people in schools: A pilot study. European Journal of Social and Behavioural Sciences, 13, 1766–1790. http://dx.doi.org/10.15405/ejsbs.159

Rose, J., McGuire-Snieckus, R., Gilbert, L., & McInnes, K. (2019). Attachment Aware Schools: The impact of a targeted and collaborative intervention. Pastoral Care in Education, 37(2), 162-184. DOI: 10.1080/02643944.2019.1625429