The Power of Normalising Everyday Emotions

 

“It’s good to talk” or “a problem shared is a problem halved” will be familiar phrases to many of us and have been used as throw away lines, well-meant clichés or indeed as part of mental health campaigns.

There has been much debate in the media recently over whether or not mental health is over diagnosed and we may well know people who talk about struggling from anxiety when in actual fact they are simply feeling anxious – a perfectly normal and reasonable feeling which is not a problem if named and managed well. We will also know people at the other end of the scale who suffer from crippling anxiety which stop them leaving the house or working or engaging with others in a meaningful way and require professional help to tackle it. Both are real, both are valid and both need support of different kinds and levels.

A better understanding of what emotional health is and why it is important might be the answer to this polarised debate. In the Demos report Strong Foundations Why Everyone Needs Good Emotional Health And How to Achieve It, we identified how a strong foundation of good emotional health can be a preventative factor against poor mental health. We went further and made seven recommendations to Government about how supporting people to develop their emotional health could help tackle the mental health crisis the UK is currently facing using a preventative approach which is achievable and cost effective.

In February our friends at Anna Freud published the results of their trial into five universal school-based interventions aimed at boosting mental health awareness and promoting mental health and wellbeing. Led by the Evidence Based Practice Unit, a collaboration between Anna Freud and University College London (UCL) and funded by the Department for Education (DfE), Education for Wellbeing ran from 2018 to 2024 and involved 32,655 students in 513 schools across England.

Anna Freud are clear about taking a whole school approach to mental health and wellbeing to achieve maximum effectiveness and in that context one of the interventions, the one which helps students to normalise everyday emotions, led to the most promising outcomes.

This was Strategies for Safety and Wellbeing, a curriculum-based approach involving training teachers to deliver eight lessons on how to look after your mental health, knowing when help from others is needed and being aware of support networks. It helps students normalise everyday emotions, like stress and sadness, better understand how to differentiate them from mental ill health and know where to access support if needed.

We have a range of training programmes which are all based on The Nurturing Programme. Delivered in a school community this programme for parents and carers enables the adults in the life of a child to achieve the same goals as the Strategies for Safety and Wellbeing intervention by acknowledging, normalising and helping to manage the whole range of emotions we feel and thus also role modelling to the children as well. This is the missing piece in the whole school approach discussed and ensures that all the adults around the children are using consistent language, behaviour strategies, messaging and actions. Additionally we provide training for school staff to support them to build emotionally healthy cultures and relationships.

At The Centre for Emotional Health, we know that everyone has a set of skills and beliefs which shape our thoughts, feelings and behaviours and that these are affected throughout our lives by our relationships and our experience of relationships around us. We call this our emotional heath and we believe that having good emotional health is a crucial element in helping people successfully navigate life’s ups and downs as well as developing and maintaining supportive relationships.  Good emotional health is being aware of, understanding and managing our whole range of emotions.

We developed a model for emotional health made up of seven assets (see our diagram below), and while each is important within its own right, it is how they work together that forms our emotional health. These skills and beliefs impact our quality of life as well as providing us with protective factors if we’re experiencing physical or mental health problems.


 


You can find out more about emotional health in this short video: https://youtu.be/T5teZJCgw04

 

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