How to Feel Better When You are Feeling Down

1) Accept the negative feelings.

The key to this is not to deny what we are feeling, but rather to lean into our feelings, even if they are painful. Take a moment to be mindful and narrate: "I'm feeling anxious right now," or, "This situation is making me tense." Hang in there with unpleasant feelings at least long enough to acknowledge them.

This is the gist of emotion coaching kids: We help them label what they are feeling, and we validate that their feelings are okay. With younger kids, the challenge is helping them understand that while bad feelings are always all right, bad behavior never is. Be crystal clear about this. For example, it is totally okay that your child is feeling jealous and hateful toward her sister. At the same time, it is never okay to hit her.

2) Problem solve.

What did you learn from that embarrassing situation? What can you do to improve a difficult situation tomorrow? Who else can help? Who do you need to forgive before you'll feel better? Put a plan into place.

3) Let go. Move on. Try to feel better.

This means that we make a genuine effort to cultivate happiness, gratitude, hope or any other positive emotion; researchers call this "deep acting."

Faking a smile or other pleasantries to cover our negative emotions (what researchers call "surface acting") without actually trying to change our underlying negative emotions will often make us feel worse rather than better. But when we genuinely try to feel more positive -- when we do try to change our underlying feelings -- we usually end up feeling fewer negative emotions and more positive emotions.

Most often, moving on means of distracting ourselves or our children from the situation. We need to leave the scene of the crime, so to speak. In my next post, I'm going to give you a nice long list of techniques that my kids and I use to keep ourselves from overthinking difficult situations and to move on when we want to feel better.

What negative situations do you find yourself overthinking? Do you notice your children ruminating about certain situations?

© 2011 Christine Carter, Ph.D.