Over the month of August, we’ve been taking a deep dive into the topic of emotional resiliency and increasing our capacity to feel difficult emotions. Today, we’re going to discuss other people’s emotions and how to handle them to the best of our ability as school leaders.

When people around us express intense emotions, it can be really tricky to navigate and figure out how to respond. We tend to get triggered by other people’s emotional experiences, and I’m sharing the two reasons why this happens. While these responses are completely normal, my goal today is to show you how to respond in an intentional way and decide how you want to address the situation.

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As the new school year looms, I know many of my clients are feeling anxious. There’s a lot of uncertainty about whether schools are going to open or what changes are going to be implemented, and so it’s no surprise if your brain is spinning right now. We all want to have plans and feel prepared ahead of time, and our brains are constantly having to reassess and shift priorities as new information comes in.

Last week, we talked about what emotional resiliency is and why it’s important for us school leaders to expand our capacity to feel emotion. Today, I’m diving into the process of what this actually looks like and how to start allowing your emotions. We’ve been taught to sidestep negative emotions because they undoubtedly feel awful, but my goal today is to show you why we need to unlearn what we’ve been taught about emotion and start a practice of processing them all the way through.

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