We’re starting off January 2024 with new series: Let’s Talk About: Moods for middle schoolers and Elevate: Raising the Bar for Conversations about Emotional Intelligence! While we’re using our curriculum partner’s format, these are both original creations based on my experience as a counseling intern this fall and what I’ve learned from sitting with real people (including myself!) about the impact that having a healthy relationship with our feelings has on every aspect of our lives. Here’s the short version: emotional intelligence (having a deep understanding of one’s emotions) isn’t just the basis for good mental health, it’s a vital part of healthy relationships with God and with others as well. We’ll explore what this looks like in distinct and developmentally appropriate ways for middle schoolers and high schoolers on January 7th and January 14th in Youth Group (Sundays 5:30 – 7 pm).

Parent Resources

If you’re thinking this is an important conversation and want to double the impact it can have, we would love to help you have the resources you need to talk about EQ at home! Here are some great resources to get you started on the topic:

• Great starting point: “How to Foster Emotional Intelligence in Kids & Teens” (article by Dr. Chinwé Williams)
• Fantastic tool (that we’ll be teaching too): “Using a Feelings Wheel: Why it’s Helpful and How it Works” (article by Kayla Lin)

The Psalms: An Emotional Atlas to the World of Prayer

One of the ways that we’ll be engaging the intersection of feelings and faith is through the Book of Psalms, the prayerbook we find at the center of our Bibles that has been used by Jews and Christians for thousands of years to put words to our joy, fear, desire, anger, delight, and grief. In other words, the whole range of human emotion finds expression in the poetry and prayer of the Psalms. Here’s a quick way to engage the Psalms:

• Open up to Psalms and flip through the book, letting your attention be caught by words or phrases that appear on the pages. What do you notice about what catches your attention? What feelings seem to be behind the words that draw you in?
• If one psalm in particular seems noteworthy, spend some time with it and read through it a few times slowly. What do you think the writer was feeling while writing? Does the mood of the psalm shift from the start to the end? What causes the shift?
• Don’t forget your experience: what are you feeling as you read? What memories, relationships, and thoughts surface for you as you engage the psalm? What do you learn about God and about humans as you read and pray?
• Finish your time by considering whether there has been an invitation in what you read. Did God show you something new or surprising? Is there a relationship that needs tending? Could something you’re feeling need processing with a good listener?

Essential Parenting Skill for Big Feelings: Meet Right Brain with Right Brain

Adapted from the book: Seen: Healing Despair and Anxiety in Kids and Teens Through the Power of Connection by Will Hutcherson & Dr. Chinwé Williams

To help kids, you have to meet emotion with emotion and logic with logic. In other words, meet right brain [the part of our brain that deals with emotions] with right brain and left brain [our logical, rational half of the brain] with left brain. If a kid comes to you with emotion, that’s where you meet them. If you don’t, you’re going to miss them completely.

If you feel the feeling with them, then you’ll have the opportunity to lead them to a place of logical processing. And as you make efforts to see beyond the behavior, they feel seen. As they learn how to move from emotional processing to logical processing, feelings of despair will diminish.

Think about it this way . . . It’s like an emotional exhale. Sometimes kids and teens can feel so incredibly overwhelmed it feels like the only option is to keep it all in. Stuff it down. Not tell anyone. There’s no outlet to talk about feelings or acknowledge emotions.

Imagine taking a BIG breath of air and not being able to exhale. What would happen? Your face turns red, your body tenses up, and you begin to shake. But then there comes a moment when you can’t keep it all in anymore, and you EXHALE. Emotional processing is like an emotional exhale. Talking to someone about your feelings is how you emotionally exhale. Simply expressing out loud what’s going on in your heart helps to relieve the pressure. It lets out all that energy built up on the right side of the brain and in the body, allowing it to process out, shifting the energy to the left, where logical processing can occur.