Emotional regulation

Name it to tame it: the science of labelling emotions

4 min read · Spotless Mind editorial

The finding

When people put a feeling into words, activity in the brain's alarm centre, the amygdala, tends to reduce, and activity in the parts that manage and reason tends to increase. Putting a feeling into a word is not just describing it. It changes how the brain is handling it. Psychiatrist Dan Siegel gave the technique its name: name it to tame it.

Why it matters for children

A child in a big feeling is running on the alarm system. Reasoning, consequences and explanations cannot reach them there. A word can. "You're furious" or "that was frightening" does two things at once: it tells the child they have been understood, and it hands them the lever that starts to bring the alarm down.

The word is the tool. Teach feeling-words the way you would teach colours.

How to do it

Name what you see, without judging it or fixing it. "You're so disappointed." Not "you're overreacting", not "it's fine", not "calm down". Keep it short. Get low, soften your voice, and let the word land. Then wait. If you got the word wrong, they will correct you, and the correcting is itself the naming.

Build the vocabulary

Most children have four feeling-words: happy, sad, angry, scared. The Emotion Check-In Wheel in the toolkit has eight, with body sensations attached, because a child who can find "frustrated" or "left out" has a much more precise lever than one who only has "angry". Read feelings out loud in stories, on faces, in yourself. The vocabulary grows by being used.

Try this: for one week, in every hard moment, say one feeling-word and nothing else for ten seconds. Count how often the temperature drops before you have said anything else.

Educational content, not medical advice. Concerned about your child? Speak to your GP.

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