Beyond "Fixing" Things: Fostering Emotional Acceptance in School Counseling

The Power of Accepting Negative Emotions

Hello , my school counseling friend , welcome to a special episode of the School for School Counselors podcast . We're going to be playing with this a little bit to see how we can best serve you , and so I wanted to pop an extra episode in here , between our regularly scheduled episodes that are released on Mondays , just to give you a quick thought about something related to your school counseling work . This won't be an extensive episode by any means , but then again , before warned , because once I get started sometimes it's hard for me to stop In this little mini episode I want to talk about a mantra that we've had around our School for School Counselors world for a long time , and that is reminding ourselves that I am a helper , not a fixer . So so important to remember in our day to day work and I could have subtitled this when positive school counseling becomes negative . I think this is a phenomenon in our culture at large as well as within our universe of school counselors , where we sometimes don't know how to help students in really difficult situations , or maybe we're uncomfortable sitting with them in those moments , and we start to really lean toward the side of fixing things , and often that's either through to-do lists or through positive thinking and we chalk solutions up to those two things and kind of give the impression , whether we intend to or not , that oh , just do these things and everything will be great . We sometimes neglect to acknowledge that sometimes we're in situations where nobody can really fix it for us . Nobody can really be of a lot of help other than providing empathy , support and compassion . We also tend to not really talk with students a lot about experiencing things like anger and sadness and all of these other so-called negative emotions in our lives , which are actually very necessary for our human experience .

Experiencing and accepting these negative emotions are vital to our mental health . If we continue pushing them down and not acknowledging them , eventually they're going to come back up and it's not going to be in a great way . These emotions also help aid in our survival and we've got to help students recognize that there will always be setbacks and conflicts in their life . Life is rarely smooth sailing . When everything happens just the way you want it to and everyone around you is completely happy to be compliant to your wants , needs and beliefs , that's just not the right way to do it , and while we do a good job of teaching students about identifying and recognizing their emotions and about utilizing coping skills . Sometimes we don't do a great job with the rest . We fall into this easy trap of wanting to fix things for students , of wanting to help them with their issues , and so we start to drift toward these hedonic approaches where we're seeking to help students find pleasure and enjoyment in most aspects of their existence . We are seeking to give them the tools to be able to enjoy their experiences , to cope and adapt and feel like everything is great , instead of perhaps some eutomonic approaches which focus on experiencing meaning and purpose in these setbacks , in these negative emotions , to garner better professional growth , to really understand ourselves and I know I'm getting way down in the weeds with this , but this is an important concept A study by Brett Ford and team in 2017 , one we will link to in our show notes had a really powerful quote in there that says the ways in which individuals approach their mental experiences , accepting them or judging them has power to shape individuals day to day lives , with possible cumulative effects for longer term psychological outcomes .

Basically , what we're talking about is if we can really understand these experiences , if we can use them for personal growth , if we can acknowledge that we often have these so-called negative emotions and that they're necessary in life , that it's part of our existence . We're going to see better long term psychological outcomes when we can practice habitual acceptance . This is sort of a component of mindfulness , but it has since started to pull away into kind of its own unique category . When we can , though , habitually accept these negative experiences or help our students to accept them , it doesn't mean they have to condone them or agree with them . Let me be very clear on that . But if we can just accept that they happen , we are going to see better mental health , fewer mood disorders , fewer anxiety symptoms , less likelihood of rumination , which often leads to this spiral of negative emotions .

Right , we have students that just cannot come off . The thought of this is so unfair I'm so angry , I hate this that they just kind of spiral into this uncontrollable wave of negative emotion . And students who can practice habitual acceptance are less likely to experience negative meta-emotional reactions . You ever heard of a meta-emotional reaction ? It's not something we hear people talking about a lot , but that's when , for instance , you feel really guilty for being angry about something . Those are dangerous places to be right , and so if we can really kind of focus on habitual acceptance instead of trying to fix things all the time . We're going to see better outcomes , not only for our students but also for ourselves .

When we can't do that , we start to see things like those rumination cycles , those spirals of negative emotions . We also see dream rebounds . Have you ever experienced this , where you just kind of stuff something down , you don't acknowledge it , you don't work through it and it rebounds itself into your dreams and kind of takes you by surprise , throws you off center a little bit . That's what happens when you deny or you suppress negative emotions . So what can we do with students ? What can we do to help them without trying to fix them ? What can we do without providing them with these to-do lists of things Practice your coping skills , use your I statements , do this and do that which , just as an aside , is where most of your small group of curriculums you're seeing my air quotes right now , if you're watching me tend to gravitate toward right , a laundry list of things to be accomplished .

What if , instead , we helped provide students with a mindful orientation , with the understanding that thoughts and feelings come and go just like a wave in the ocean , just like a boat floating down a stream thoughts and feelings come , thoughts and feelings go and teaching them to be really mindfully aware of those without having to sit and wallow in them . Teaching students what to do if those feelings become overwhelming . If these negative emotions anger , sadness , guilt , whatever they are when they become too much , what kinds of coping skills can they meaningfully apply ? What counseling specific skills can we utilize ? So often we are quick to print out a worksheet or something like that , or a plan of some sort , and dump it in the laps of these students and we haven't taken the time to really think through whether or not this approach is appropriate for this particular student . We got to be aware of that and we can also teach students to appreciate all feelings , all of them , to not immediately start to push these negative feelings away , but really teach them how to handle them , deal with them and , even though they don't feel great in the moment , understand that there are still some positive consequences to them . That's super , super powerful .

Prescriptive Approaches in School Counseling

I think it's why I have a really hard time with a lot of these super prescriptive approaches that we're seeing in our world right now , and I'll give you my own personal rule of thumb If you could print it off and hand it to a reasonably seasoned teacher and they could implement it in the classroom without your help . That's not school counseling . I'm just going to be upfront and say it . That's why we see a lot of social emotional specialists and SEL teachers and those kinds of folks infiltrating our campuses . Because we have this underlying assumption that all school counseling is is printing off these dang worksheets and facilitating these small groups . That's not true . But the more we do this kind of stuff , the more we're undermining our own careers . That's personal opinion . You may or may not agree with me , but that's definitely how I feel .

I will say that when we're looking at small group interventions , we're looking at these printable curriculums , and you hear the tone of my voice when I say that , because to me a curriculum has been empirically validated somehow . It's been written by a team of folks who have extreme authority within their field . It's crowdsourced for best practice . A lot of the stuff that's being called curriculum doesn't meet those guidelines . That's a whole other conversation . But as we're looking at these things , the small curriculum are a little bit better about facilitating some conversation , about providing experiences that make students really reflect on their experiences , not so great about embracing some of these negative feelings . We tend to gloss over those and really focus on how to get rid of them fast .

But then , when you get into the realm of individual counseling , it gets even more concerning . I'm talking mostly with regard to teachers , pay teachers resources . I've been harping on them a lot and I'm not a hater . There are some resources there that I use . There are some counselor authors there that I greatly respect . There is also a subset in the internet world led by one person that comes to mind in particular , who is convincing educators that they're going to be able to hop on teachers , pay teachers and get rich quick . Here are these 10 easy steps to doing it . Y'all . I'm telling you right now not only is that highly improbable in this day and age , but they're also not turning out quality resources . They're just turning things out as quickly as they can in order to turn a profit . I'm just going to call it like I see it Not all , not all authors , but a lot of them . That's their goal .

When we look at individual session materials on a platform like that , we're seeing a lot of surface level solutions . We're seeing a lot of flow charts of approaches . Here's these five easy sessions . Here are the questions you should ask in all of these sessions , y'all . That's not good counseling . You know that . You know if you showed up with the note card of the questions you needed to ask in a counseling session nine times out of 10 , it's not going to be helpful to that person , because we have to be able to listen to their experiences , we have to be able to empathize with where they are in their reality . We have to be able to adjust to that . So five easy questions for five sessions is not going to be helpful . There's no room to dive in there .

In the individual counseling realm you also see a whole lot of assessment , a whole lot of data aids and notes aids . I even saw one that said intake notes for school counselors , and if you've been following me for any amount of time , you know what a terrible idea that is . But other than that , there's not a lot of resources for individual counseling . Why is that ? Because it's a lot easier to turn out a worksheet than it is to talk about the nuance of negative emotions , identifying them , how to sit with the student when they're in a situation they have no control over and they're so damn angry about it they can't see straight . That's the hard part of our work . That's the part of our work that we couldn't call in the social studies teacher to do . That's the real counseling , and as part of our real counseling , we have to be able to help students understand that sometimes situations necessitate negative emotions and that's okay .

Or , as one of my students recently put it , just because I'm in the red zone doesn't mean I'm a bad kid . Isn't it sad that we've even led students to believe that ? So be careful of how you're approaching negative emotions . Be careful with how you are identifying those for students and what you're teaching them to do about them . Don't give them these flip responses for just do this thing and it should fix it , because if it doesn't , they're going to feel like they have failed and that's not a good place to put these students who we love so much .

Importance of Presenting Positive Emotions

This is something near and dear to my heart . Please just be mindful of this as you're working with students . Don't get paranoid about it , don't worry about it , but just try to be aware of how you're presenting negative emotions . It could make all the difference in your school counseling efforts . All right , I hope you have the best weekend ahead . I hope it's a wonderful , rejuvenating , restful , productive weekend for you , and I look forward to visiting with you again on the next episode of the School for School Counselors podcast . So until then , I hope you have the best weekend . Take care .