Using coping skills to self-regulate anger and anxiety

General

Feelings are part of being human. Unfortunately, our feelings or emotions aren't always positive. Sometimes we may feel angry, nervous, anxious or lonely. When we feel these unpleasant emotions, it can be helpful to take a step back and try to actively manage how we are feeling.

Learning Objective

Students will learn to calm themselves and manage their emotions.

Introduction

There's a difference between being annoyed (a small feeling) and being afraid or angry (big feelings). Differentiating between these emotions can help us recognize when we need to take a step back and care for ourselves.

Instruction

Stay Calm Skills help us manage big and unpleasant emotions. Importantly, we want to develop skills to stay calm that we can use in any environment and by ourselves. Talking to others is a great option for managing our emotions, but we don't always have this choice in moments when we are stressed.

Here are skills we can use to stay calm that we can use anywhere:

- Belly breathing rather than shallow chest breathing (watch the video!)
- Counting to 10 to force us to slow down and stop focusing on external stressors
- Positive self-talk so that we don't make ourselves feel worse by indulging negative feelings

Closing

Students should reflect:

- Why is it helpful to calm ourselves when we have big feelings?
- What Stay Calm Skills can we use to calm ourselves?

About Gynzy

Gynzy is an online teaching platform for interactive whiteboards and displays in schools.

With a focus on elementary education, Gynzy’s Whiteboard, digital tools, and activities make it easy for teachers to save time building lessons, increase student engagement, and make classroom management more efficient.