Children’s Mental Health Week: “Know Yourself -“

The first part of this year’s motto encourages children and young people to gain a better understanding of themselves.

For hundreds of years scientists have been trying to figure out human emotion. The models and underlying mechanisms that have been proposed are as vast and complicated as our emotions themselves!

Psychologist Robert Plutchik proposed 8 core emotions and named them joy, trust, fear, surprise, sadness, anticipation, anger and disgust.
Paul Ekman named them anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness and surprise and suggested all of our other emotional expressions derive from these 6.
Other models divide our emotions into high energy (e.g.tense, excited, alert, happy) and low energy (e.g. sadness, calm, boredom) emotions.
More recently even pop culture had a go with Disney’s Inside Out featuring Joy, Sadness, Fear, Disgust and Anger, all collectively in control of their human host Riley.

While all these models have their strengths and weaknesses, much like humans themselves, they have one crucial thing in common:

All of our emotions make us who we are. The good, the bad, the loud, the quiet, the ones in between.

Our experiences shape who we are and form the basis for our core beliefs, values, personalities and the way we interact with the world, not just in an emotional sense.

Charles Darwin already suggested that emotions are very important to help us survive and live.
Afterall, our reaction teaches us whether we should repeat or avoid something!

While they can sometimes be overwhelming, especially to children, every emotion has a purpose and shapes us into who we are.

Today we challenged our students to come up with one thing they are good at and one thing they struggle with. A positive and a negative that coexist within them.

Maybe have a go for yourself!