The Emotional Skills Most of Us Were Never Taught
Sensitive.
Dramatic.
Moody.
Difficult.
Calm.
These are just some of the labels many of us grew up hearing — or quietly believing about ourselves.
But often what we are witnessing isn’t personality.
It’s a nervous system under stress.
Skills that have not yet been learned.
Regulation that has not yet been modelled.
Emotional regulation and literacy are not personality traits.
They are skills.
And like any skill, they can be taught, practised and strengthened over time.
It was never just personality
When we look back on our younger selves — or observe the behaviour of young people around us — it’s easy to default to personality explanations.
"They’re just sensitive."
"They’re dramatic."
"It’s just hormones."
But many of the behaviours we label in this way are actually signals from the nervous system.
A slammed door might be overwhelm without language.
A withdrawn teenager might be experiencing shutdown — the nervous system's way of coping with stress.
A disruptive pupil might not be seeking attention, but struggling to regulate a body that feels unsafe or overstimulated.
When we begin to see behaviour through this lens, something important shifts.
We stop asking “What’s wrong with them?”
And start asking “What skills haven’t they been supported to learn yet?”
My way into this work
I’m not a parent.
I came to this work through lived experience.
As a teenager I was often labelled dramatic, moody or overly sensitive. But that’s not how it felt from the inside.
I felt isolated, insecure and scared, and those feelings created constant stress in my body. I was on high alert — hyper-vigilant, overstimulated, unsure where I was safe. Things felt big inside me, like I couldn’t contain them, but I had no language or way to express or release what I was feeling.
Looking back now, I can see how dysregulated I was. Yet I remember teachers, friends and caregivers calling me manipulative, moody or difficult.
I had been physically bullied in primary school and emotionally bullied from the moment I arrived at secondary school. When my dad died when I was thirteen, the ground beneath everything shifted again. Like many teenagers, I was navigating grief, identity, friendships and fear all at once — without the tools to understand what was happening in my nervous system.
From the outside it may have looked like mood swings or difficult behaviour.
From the inside it felt like overwhelm.
I learned regulation much later in life — through training, practice and a lot of personal repair.
And that’s exactly why I believe we should be teaching these skills earlier.
I am advocating for the child I was.
This is prevention work.
This is education.
What regulation skills actually look like
When we talk about emotional regulation, it can sound abstract.
But the skills themselves are very practical.
Co-regulation
Children and teenagers learn to regulate their nervous systems through relationships. Borrowing calm from a steady adult is often the first step.
Language
Being able to name sensations and emotions before behaviour escalates.
Body awareness
Recognising early signs of activation in the body — tightness, heat, restlessness, shutdown.
Repair
Understanding that conflict doesn’t mean the end of connection. Relationships can stretch and repair.
These are not just childhood skills.
They are lifelong skills.
Many of us are learning them for the first time in adulthood.
The teenage brain
Adolescence is one of the most intense developmental periods of our lives.
During adolescence the emotional parts of the brain are highly active, while the areas responsible for judgement and impulse control are still developing.
In other words, teenagers often feel deeply before they have the tools to make sense of those feelings.
This is one reason the teenage years can feel so turbulent — both for young people and the adults supporting them.
External pressures also increase dramatically during this time.
New social dynamics
Changing bodies
Academic expectations
Peer pressure
Bullying
Identity formation
Without emotional skills or supportive environments, these experiences can easily overwhelm a young nervous system.
Which is why practical tools can make such a difference.
Something as simple as learning how to work with the breath can help a young person regulate their body during moments of stress or anxiety.
Small body-based practices like breathing, movement or grounding are often the first tools that help young people realise they have some influence over how their body responds to stress.
Behaviour is often a signal
When young people struggle, behaviour is usually the part we see first.
Anger.
Withdrawal.
Disruption.
Defiance.
But behaviour is rarely the full story.
A bullied teenager may feel ashamed, isolated or powerless.
Interestingly, the young person doing the bullying may be experiencing many of the same underlying emotions — disconnection, insecurity, or a search for control.
None of this excuses harmful behaviour.
But it does remind us that emotional skills are not just for the children who appear vulnerable.
They are needed by everyone.
Regulation is relational
Another important truth about emotional regulation is that it rarely develops in isolation.
Children learn regulation through relationships.
Through adults who listen.
Who stay curious.
Who create space for difficult feelings.
As child and adolescent psychotherapist Rachel Bloggs writes,
“Openness, empathy and patience from caregivers help create the emotional safety children need to process their experiences. When young people feel understood rather than judged, they are far more able to regulate difficult emotions.”
Regulation, in other words, is relational before it is individual.
Education we all deserved
For many years my work through Big Love Movement has focused on helping adults and parents understand their nervous systems and learn practical tools for regulation.
In many ways, I’ve been teaching adults what I wish we had all been taught in school.
And recently, the work has come full circle.
Over the past eighteen months I’ve begun delivering this work directly in primary and secondary school settings — supporting pupils, teachers and families with the same emotional literacy and regulation skills.
Because increasingly I’ve found myself returning to the same question.
What if we taught these skills earlier?
What if emotional regulation was treated as education, not personality?
What if children learned how to recognise stress in their bodies, name their feelings, and repair relationships before those patterns became deeply embedded?
Youth empowerment, for me, is not a pivot in my work.
It’s a continuation.
An earlier intervention.
So that young people don’t have to spend decades unlearning patterns that were never their fault to begin with.
A final thought
Many of us grew up believing our emotional responses were simply part of our personality.
But emotional regulation is not fixed.
It is learned.
Which means it can also be taught.
And when we start to treat emotional literacy as a core life skill — in families, communities and schools — we begin to change the way young people experience themselves and the world around them.
Not by fixing them.
But by giving them the tools many of us were never taught how to use.
Increasingly, this work is extending into schools and youth settings — supporting young people, families and educators with practical emotional wellbeing education.
Big love,
Becki
You can learn more about Big Love’s Youth Projects and School Partnerships here. ⬇️
P.S.
Child and Adolescent Psychotherapist Rachel Bloggs puts this beautifully:
“Children respond to feeling understood… welcoming all of their feelings helps them feel safe enough to bring difficult emotions home.”
Rachel has also shared a guest article on the Big Love Resource Hub about supporting children through change and emotional regulation.
If you’d like to read more of her guidance, you can explore it here.