Help Teens Use Curiosity To Navigate Difficult Feelings

Curiosity is a supportive tool for teens (and adults!) in navigating difficult feelings like anger, frustration, anxiety, and sadness. Getting curious about our emotional experiences as opposed to avoiding our feelings, judging them or pushing them away helps us develop tolerance for difficult emotional experiences. 

As adults, we can support children in using their inherent sense of curiosity as a means of developing self-awareness and learning how to approach their feelings with acceptance and compassion as opposed to judgement or resistance. Staying in a place of curiosity when difficult feelings arise also helps us avoid over-identification, or believing that feelings are permanent, truth-telling states that have more control than they really do. In reality, feelings are transitory and will always come and go. 

When explaining the benefit of curiosity when dealing with tough feelings to teens, I’ll encourage them to become “emotion explorers”. What can we learn from our feelings and our response to them when they arise? 

When you find yourself stuck in a feeling, try asking yourself the following questions:

• What specific emotions are coming up right now?

• What thoughts am I experiencing?

• Are any painful beliefs at play?

• How is my body responding? Where in my body do I feel these emotions?

• What do I notice about my facial expression or body posture? 

• What is the most painful or vulnerable part of this experience? 

You can support your teen in exploring these questions by inviting them to describe a feeling through art-making, or tell a story about a specific feeling that they are struggling with using great detail (i.e. “if that feeling had a voice, what would it say and what would it sound like?”) 

Pema Chodrin says, “Let your curiosity be greater than your fear.” By leaning into curiosity, we allow there to be space for meaningful reflection, learning and growth.