What is emotion coaching?
Emotion coaching is a relational technique that draws from attachment theory, highlighting the importance of secure emotional bonds between caregivers and children for healthy development. It aligns with the idea that a child's emotional experiences and how those emotions are handled by caregivers significantly impact their long-term well-being.
Emotion coaching involves validating and guiding emotions, helping children to understand and manage their feelings. Its main benefits include building emotional intelligence, developing interpersonal skills, nurturing a stronger parent-child connection, and facilitating positive behaviour regulation through lifelong coping tools.
Mina's 4 step approach to emotion coaching
Curiosity
We all have felt overlooked at one point in our lives. In childhood it would be the feeling of being left out. In adulthood it presents itself as feeling ignored. The aim of this approach is to have a sense of what it is like when a genuine interest is taken in what we care about. To experience feeling seen.
Rapport
The activities and questions used to build rapport are personalised. A space is created where it is comfortable to share memories about past experiences. To reflect on feelings that were felt and what is felt now. The aim of this second approach is to build trust. To experience feeling heard.
Insight
Through reflecting on memories, the narratives developed are discovered. Some are helpful and will support us in achieving our goals. However, others can make us feel stuck and no longer serve us. Those are the narratives we seek to identify, to then try to understand their underlying beliefs.
Growth
We take the insight and reframe the beliefs that no longer serve us. This is done by rewriting them into more purposeful and positive narratives. Rehearsing and repeating this new narrative. Finally, learning new cognitive skills and practices that solidify the new beliefs and if need be, adjust them in the future.