Why embracing all emotions is important to raise happy, emotionally healthy individuals

The following is an extract from my book ‘How to Raise a Teen’. Although this is from a book specifically about teenagers, the concept ?of emodiversity applies at any age:

What is emodiversity?

Raising young people in a home that fosters the importance of embracing all emotions –a concept known as emodiversity – has a protective effect on mental health and can help them to feel more confident. Research has found that those who experience more emotions are significantly healthier, not just mentally but physically, too, while a study looking specifically at adolescents found that emodiversity is protective against developing an eating disorder.

Emodiversity involves the capacity to feel different emotions and an acceptance of them. No emotion is viewed as ‘bad’ or ‘wrong’, and an individual is not judged or labelled for feeling a certain way. Instead, all emotions are considered important,and experiencing the full spectrum of them is valued. In a world where there seems to be constant pressure on all of us to ‘be happy’, the idea of emodiversity is a welcome one.

In short, it means it’s OK to be sad, angry, frustrated or jealous, as well as happy. And considering that young people’s brain development leads them to feel emotions more strongly than adults, with less ability to regulate them, understanding that having all the big feelings is a positive thing is a great confidence boost.

Whenever I explain the concept of emodiversity to parents and carers, I always talk about the Disney Pixar movie Inside Out. It is a perfect example of valuing all feelings and their expression, and is a brilliant way to understand young people. If you haven’t watched it, I strongly recommend that you do. It may be billed as a children’s film, but I feel it provides more valuable parenting advice than a lot of courses!

How can you increase emodiversity in your home?

The easiest starting point is simply to accept all emotions. Lose any preconceived ideas you may have that certain feelings are negative, disrespectful, unbecoming or undesirable. Let your young person know that they are safe to express all their emotions with you, and don’t take them personally.

Of course, to do this you also need to become more comfortable with your own emotions – both experiencing them and expressing them around your loved ones. This can be tricky for many of us who were brought up in households where emodiversity was shunned in favour of quiet obedience. Try to see embracing emodiversity as a challenge for the whole family, not just your young person, and something that can really improve the mental health of all family members, including you.

Watch the video below concerning the idea of ‘the good girl complex’ – about women who were raised to mask their true feelings as a teen and who have grown to become people-pleasing mothers who struggle with emodiversity:

To be more accepting of all emotions, we also need to suppress our instincts to quieten them in a misguided attempt at discipline. We are too quick to jump in and correct behaviour, especially if we perceive it as disrespectful. Instead, we would be better placed to focus on the emotions behind the behaviour and let the words that accompany it slide – to see the feelings, not the jumble of impulsive language surrounding them.

The next time your young person swears at you, tells you that they hate you orsimilar, try to suppress your instinct to yell, ‘Don’t you speak to me like that! Who do you think you’re talking to?’ and instead say, ‘It sounds like you’re really struggling at the moment. What can I do to help?’ This doesn’t make you permissive, especially not when your response is followed up with a conversation about using respectful, non-violent language in the future; you can still use discipline, you just make the focus deeper.

There is always a reason why young people are rude, and we can either spend our time superficially battling the words they use and their tone of voice, or we can look for the underlying emotions and support them. Only one of these approaches works to increase confidence and self-esteem in young people. I’ll let you guess which one it is!

For much more on emodiversity, how to tackle your young person’s big emotions as well as managing your own in a healthy way, check out my book ‘How to Raise a Teen’. It’s great for parents of older tweens through to those in their early twenties. Click HERE to learn more.