Weekly Message from Head of School 2022/11/27-2022/12/03

Dear Keystone Community,

The Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence is a branch of the Yale University Medical school focused on research around the idea that emotions matter. The Center has advanced a framework for thinking about emotions called Yale RULER. This framework invites us to remember that there are no bad emotions, that all our emotions have value and that a high level of emotional intelligence is not an absence of emotion, but rather mastery of a skillset related to emotions.

This framework is an acronym for five critical skills of emotional intelligence:

Recognizing, Understanding, Labeling, Expressing and Regulating emotions.

Emotional intelligence isn't just about feeling good. There is a strong research base to support the claim that emotional intelligence leads to not just improved sense of well-being and lower levels of anxiety and depression, but also higher academic performance and leadership assessment. Emotional Intelligence is a critical skillset for academic, professional and personal performance.

Recognizing emotions in yourself and others is the first step in this approach. Do you ever check in with yourself? How am I feeling today? Some do this by meditating, others by checking in with family or friends. Once you can recognize emotions in yourself and others, you can move on to understanding the causes and consequences of emotions. For example, as the pandemic context further evolves and complicates, it can make sense for us to feel strong emotions of all sorts. We can have a fabulous lesson online followed by a difficult interaction with a family member as we all work in close quarters. Often, emotions are the consequence of our environment.

Next comes the sometimes difficult work of labeling. If you are a teenager, or live with one, you know that often the response to "how are you feeling?" is usually "Tired". Tired is a physical state, but it can also be experienced as an emotion—it is a low energy not terribly positive feeling—a close cousin to deflated, or exhausted, but not far from words like mellow or sleepy, which are a little more positive. The Center for Emotional Intelligence has created a mood meter, which has lots of feeling words you can use to describe and track your emotions over time. If you, or someone you love, always uses the same word to describe their emotions, you can help them by pushing them to be more specific, or to find another word.

Once you have labeled your emotions, you can express them in a way that is appropriate for the context in which you find yourself. Figuring out how to express your emotions in different ways in different contexts is an important skill that we all practice across our lifetimes.

The last skill that the RULER framework describes is regulating our emotions. This isn’t to be confused with suppressing our emotions, which can be a common practice if we are conditioned to believe that emotions are a sign of weakness or that they can be a risk to high performance. The research through the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence affirms that regulating one’s emotions is about recognizing the emotion, understanding its source, labeling it, expressing it and then deciding if feeling that is productive and good for you right now, or if you need to shift.  

This seems like a small thing, but it is quite important. Regulating the emotions is not about "not feeling" but deciding to feel and then deciding to shift as necessary. For example, in these complex times I have heard lots of feeling words from our students, faculty and staff: some are scared, some are anxious about uncertain futures, some are distraught about exams or college decisions, any number of things. Whenever someone expresses emotions to you, it is always okay to say: "it makes sense that you feel that way." You can even say that to yourself!  

When regulating your own emotions, you need to determine if feeling how you are feeling is serving you well for what you are trying to achieve. You can strengthen your emotional intelligence by coming up with strategies that shift your emotions. I often see our students doing this quite effectively: laughing with friends, heading to the gym or playground to exercise. Stretching and looking out the window at the beautiful blue sky. Even when we feel constrained, we can choose to shift our emotions. We can take action to shift into a more productive or pleasant emotional state. I know that this time in our lives gives you the opportunity to practice recognizing, understanding, labeling, expressing and regulating your emotions and supporting your family and friends to do the same. We are all here for each other.

Warmly,

Emily McCarren