Emotion Regulation
Students have an emotional temperature. Students tend to like comfortable emotions: joy, surprised, excited, happy, and prefer to stay in our comfort zone. When students begin to feel sad, afraid, frustrated, or angry our emotional temperature goes up, activating our sympathetic nervous system, and we feel less comfortable. Therefore, we want to do something to return to our comfort zone, aka self-regulate by activating our parasympathetic nervous system. The things we do to regulate our emotions can be healthy or unhealthy, determined by the long-term impact they have on our health and well-being.
Wellness rooms teach healthy coping skills to regulate our emotions, calm our nervous system (bring our emotional temperature down) and allow us to choose how to respond rather than react.
What we experience creates new neural pathways in our brain. This process is called neuroplasticity and simply said, it is the brain’s tendency to continue to restructure (rewire) itself based on experience.
When students experience the calming physiological effects of engaging in sensory soothing activities, they learn these activities calm them down (soothe their nervous system) and they will choose to do these activities instead of engage in maladaptive behavior when they become upset or dysregulated. By selecting the resources we did our goal is to provide a calming atmosphere and sensory tools to be used by the students for rewiring; we want them to practice by engaing with resources purchased by this grant i.e the plants, rugs, calming lights help the atmosphere and the sensory tools which include a massage chair, weighted blanket, puzzles and magnetic balls. We also thought Zen garden tools, sand and a bean bag cover that could be washed would make great items to support the process of rewiring.
About my class
Emotion Regulation
Students have an emotional temperature. Students tend to like comfortable emotions: joy, surprised, excited, happy, and prefer to stay in our comfort zone. When students begin to feel sad, afraid, frustrated, or angry our emotional temperature goes up, activating our sympathetic nervous system, and we feel less comfortable. Therefore, we want to do something to return to our comfort zone, aka self-regulate by activating our parasympathetic nervous system. The things we do to regulate our emotions can be healthy or unhealthy, determined by the long-term impact they have on our health and well-being.
Wellness rooms teach healthy coping skills to regulate our emotions, calm our nervous system (bring our emotional temperature down) and allow us to choose how to respond rather than react.
What we experience creates new neural pathways in our brain. This process is called neuroplasticity and simply said, it is the brain’s tendency to continue to restructure (rewire) itself based on experience.
When students experience the calming physiological effects of engaging in sensory soothing activities, they learn these activities calm them down (soothe their nervous system) and they will choose to do these activities instead of engage in maladaptive behavior when they become upset or dysregulated. By selecting the resources we did our goal is to provide a calming atmosphere and sensory tools to be used by the students for rewiring; we want them to practice by engaing with resources purchased by this grant i.e the plants, rugs, calming lights help the atmosphere and the sensory tools which include a massage chair, weighted blanket, puzzles and magnetic balls. We also thought Zen garden tools, sand and a bean bag cover that could be washed would make great items to support the process of rewiring.
Read more