Emotion coaching helps explore what’s under the surface

https://player.vimeo.com/video/1044554183

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Professor Sophie Havinghurst: Emotion coaching allows us to explore what lies under the surface, what’s underneath challenging behaviours and reactions.

And often there are all sorts of more vulnerable emotions like maybe worry or feeling left out or feeling like things are unfair. But instead, what comes out is yelling and angry frustrated behaviours.

So, what we wanna be able to do is try and work out what is lying underneath the surface.

With adolescents, a big part of this is first of all to look at what do you notice as typical things coming up for the adolescent? Notice their behaviours or emotions that might be on the surface like that they’re more quiet when there’s something going on underneath or they’re more irritable when there’s something that you know lies beneath the surface.

These are an important part of what you can recognize and respond to and they really help your adolescent to understand and work through their own emotions and figure out what they need.

Often behind an angry reaction is a feeling of being very sad, disappointed, left out. And when you see this because you’re using the emotion coaching steps, it’s much easier for you to recognize that your adolescent needs help and comfort rather than being told off or being irritable.

And when you do this, when you instead connect with them, it actually also helps you to feel calmer. So emotion coaching the underlying emotions can really help the young person to feel better, to feel understood, and to help them to be a little calmer in what’s going on inside.

So you can do this by listening, by being close by them, by not being judgemental, or by naming the emotions like, ah, that’s so disappointing. No wonder your so angry about this.

In this way you can guide your adolescent to understand that vulnerable feelings can be shared and worked through rather than held in and bottled up and resulting in a big explosion.

You might also be able to separate angry emotions from angry behaviours and guide healthy expression of anger or help the young person repair later when they are calmer and can come back and let you know that they were actually really sorry about the outbursts before, they really were feeling very worried about going to the school transition session tomorrow.

So when you connect with your adolescent and accept their feelings, they will often be more open to your help.

However, if you or your adolescent are still too angry or really upset to use the emotion coaching, try moving to a different room or building in a pause.

Dr Christiane Kehoe: Emotion caching to work through underlying emotions often occurs in a number of interactions over time. Emotion coaching is not a magic fix for problems, it’s a way of communicating that will build skills over time and it will build relationships between parents and adolescents.

Adolescents often take time to work through feelings and they may need their parents’ support in stages.

Sometimes adolescents are open to connecting and talking and at other times they’re not. So provide space for them to talk when they are ready. And your understanding and support at these times can help them through their emotional experience.

At other times, allow them to work things out for themselves. And this can depend on what works for your adolescent. Some adolescents move through emotions really fast and others will take a while.

And it also depends on you. Are you someone who gets very reactive with anger and you need space and time to think through what to say?

So you might want to take that time before you approach a young person to talk things through. And this is especially the case when there are problems that come up repeatedly.

For example, if they’re refusing to go to school every day or if you’re trying to get them off their devices which is often something that we’re dealing with every day. So for these really often occurring problems, it’s really important to have emotion coaching conversations ahead of time when you and your adolescent are calm.

Start with allowing the adolescent to express their feelings first and their opinions and then explore what might help in those challenging moments.

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Updated 4 July 2025

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Emotion coaching helps explore what’s under the surface

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