ACTIVITY QUICKJUMP LINKS:
KIMOCHIS® FEELINGS FACT:
Feelings don’t like to be ignored.
Feelings want to be acknowledged. When we don’t judge them, it’s easier to do this. People need feelings—and lots of them. Also, people can feel more than one feeling at a time. Not only that, but enjoyable feelings and unenjoyable feelings can be felt at the same time. When feelings make us uncomfortable, it is common to try to not feel them. There are lots of ways to do this. Kids and adults will often go to great lengths to avoid upsetting feelings: ignore them, deny them, hide from them, numb themselves against them, push them away, laugh them off, or bury them deep down. Cutting off feelings in childhood, though, creates grown-ups who are cut off from parts of themselves. People also often have a hard time letting themselves feel positive things about themselves. The Kimochis® Way believes that all people should feel entitled and empowered to feel what they feel and to feel good about themselves. This section is focused on helping the kids you work with learn to acknowledge what they feel and then learn communication tools that will equip them to make themselves feel better.
Therapeutic Objective:
Help children accept that feelings happen and learn to let themselves feel whatever it is they feel in order to name it and choose how to handle it.
The Activities
FEELING “FINE.” One of the most common questions people ask is: “How are you?” And most often, the reply will be “Fine” or “Good.” And then the conversation just moves on. Rather than just moving on, help the children you work with delve deeper into this question by prompting further: “Well, if you weren’t feeling fine, what would you be feeling?” or “Okay, but what else are you feeling?” Pull out the bowl of Kimochis® feeling pillows and let the child choose other feelings they are experiencing. This activity helps kids get more in touch with themselves and with what is going on internally right at the start of your time together.
ALL BOXED UP. Get a small container with a lid and have the child fill it with all the feelings they wish they didn’t have to feel. (The container should be large enough to hold about four feeling pillows but small enough that it cannot be closed with any more feelings in it.) When the lid won’t close or it pops back open or feelings spill out of it, observe the child’s reaction. Talk to them about what is happening. Explain that this is what happens with feelings when we try not to feel them by stuffing them down. Share instances when this has happened or could happen. This can then lead to a discussion about situations they’re dealing with in which their feelings may be “all boxed up.”
Go on to explain that when feelings get all boxed up, behavior can be affected, causing us to make mistakes in how we act or what we say. See if the child can talk about mistakes they may have made or other people they know who have made mistakes due to their own boxed-up feelings. Together, consider ways to grow from these mistakes and/or make amends.
HOLDINGS HINDRANCE. Ask the child to pick some Kimochis® pillows of feelings they don’t enjoy having or feelings they try not to let themselves have. Take two balloons, inflate them, and tie them off. Hand the balloons to the child and tell them that you are going to ask them to do a series of tasks and that they have to hold the balloons while completing the tasks. (In place of balloons, you could use two other objects—something that would be heavy or bulky in their hands). Then proceed through some tasks that become increasingly difficult to do with their hands full, like having them jump up and down, touch the ground, pick up a toy and play with it, scratch their back, unwrap a piece of candy.
Afterward, ask the child what it felt like to try to do something while something else was hindering their ability to do it. Explain that trying to avoid feelings is like this: When there are too many or they are big, the feelings we are holding make it harder to do other things that we need and want to do.
A variation on this activity that also demonstrates the effect of holding in feelings is to again ask the child to pick out some unenjoyable feelings, then sit with their legs out in front of them with those feeling pillows in their lap. Ask them to try to scootch to the other side of the room, to curl up in a ball, to do a somersault. Observe what happens, then ask: “What’s it like to try to move with all those feelings on you? How much effort does it take to keep them all in your lap?” Invariably, some of the feeling pillows will escape. Use this as a way to show that holding on to too many feelings at once causes them to spill over. Explain that when hard-to-have feelings spill over, they create hard-to-deal-with behaviors, which in turn can cause us to make mistakes in our interactions with others. This creates another opportunity to talk about times this has happened to the child or to someone they know.
FEELING OPPOSITES. Kids are often surprised and sometimes confused to realize that they can have very opposing feelings about a single event. For example, having a new baby sister can make them feel happy, excited, and curious, but it can also make them feel sad, left out, and insecure.
To help kids explore opposing feelings in a visible way, use two paper plates, drawing a smiley face on one and a frowning face on the other. As you give them the following prompts (or any others of your choosing), have the child place all of the enjoyable and unenjoyable feelings that go along with these scenarios on the respective plates:
- Starting the school year
- Ending the school year
- Moving on to a new school after graduation
- Moving to a new neighborhood or out of state
- Birth of a sibling
- Giving up their room when a favorite relative comes to visit
- Having a birthday party
- Going to sleepaway camp in the summer
Note: If the child insists that only one feeling applies to each prompt, pull out other feelings you have had in similar situations or tell them about other children who have had multiple and mixed feelings.
Conclude the activity by assuring kids that ALL of their feelings are acceptable.
ALL AND NOTHING. Tell kids that people often wish they could be happy all the time and feel only good feelings. But the truth is, we all need to experience a whole bunch of feelings because unpleasant things can and do happen, and we need to have feelings to express that. Additionally, hard-to-have feelings make nice-to-have feelings even nicer. For example, because most kids experience challenging feelings throughout any given school year, they’re usually very excited and grateful when summer break arrives.
For this exercise, have the child pick Kimochis® feeling pillows that they think they’d like to have all the time. Using those selected feelings, ask the child which of them they’d feel when:
- Receiving their most wanted gift
- Having a favorite person surprise them with a visit
- Getting a high score on a test
Then ask how those same feelings would help when:
- A sibling ruins their art project for school
- They learn they didn’t get chosen for the team or school play
- Someone they love is sick
This first part of the exercise shows kids that nice-to-have feelings can help make hard-to-have experiences better. But now have them pull the feelings they’d actually feel in the second set of scenarios. No doubt they’ll pick feelings like mad, frustrated, disappointed, and scared. Assure the child that these are valid and acceptable feelings and the exact same ones most people would feel in the same situations. So we need hard-to-have feelings to deal with hard-to-have experiences. Remind kids that everyone—parents, siblings, friends, teachers—has these kinds of feelings and they’re not all enjoyable, but they’re all acceptable. It’s just as appropriate to feel cranky when you have to wake up early as it is to feel excited to go on a field trip; it’s just as okay to feel sad when someone gets hurt as it is to feel loved when you get a hug. No one feels something all of the time or none of the time.
STEP INTO FEELINGS TO CREATE CONFIDENCE. When children want or need to do something that is hard to do—like talking to a teacher, telling a friend they’ve hurt them, trying out for a play or a sport, starting at a new school—it can help to “embody” feelings that will help the child be their best self.
Together with the child, pull out the hard-to-have feelings from the Kimochis® feeling pillows bowl that accompany a hard-to-do situation. Next, pull out positive feelings that might support the child in doing the challenging activity, like hopeful, optimistic, and brave. Have the child recall a time they felt one of these feelings. Ask them to embody the feeling by demonstrating how they would stand, hold their arms and head. Have them show what expression they would have on their face. Ask what they might say to themselves. Then have them practice stepping in and out of that feeling—literally have them jump or step away to leave that feeling, then step back the other way to embody it again.
Once that feels comfortable for the child, have them practice the hard thing they need to do while they’re embodying the positive feeling. Just have them keep practicing in your office until it feels doable, though this may take lots of encouragement and repetition.
As a next step, walk the child through multiple trial runs using this new tool before they apply it in real life by having them create a story about themselves that incorporates the challenging situation and “stepping into” their confidence. Remind them to take their time and to step into their helpful feeling before addressing the hard-to-do thing. This can become a helpful habit to use in any hard-to-handle situation.
Now you’re ready to literally create confidence. Take a blank Kimochis® feeling pillow or create one using the Make Your Own Kimochis® Feelings template (see p. 8). Have the child draw a confident Kimochis® face on one side and write CONFIDENT on the other. Repeat the above exercise with confidence!
When it comes to hard-to-do things, we’ve found that when this issue involves talking to someone else, it’s complicated by that fact that assumptions are made about how the conversation will go. Very often, kids (and adults) assume that a hard-to-have conversation will turn out badly. They assume the teacher will get mad at their question, for instance, or their friend won’t listen or they won’t achieve what they want. So ask the kids you work with about their assumptions. Then create stories with them that have different outcomes. Role-play various ways the situation might go. Does imagining a positive outcome change how the child feels about approaching the situation? Does role-playing help the child gain comfort with addressing the situation overall and feeling more confident in handling whichever responses they may encounter? Discussing all of this before the child puts this new tool into practice will pave the way for more likely success!
MAD MASK. Feeling mad is a very common and human emotion, especially for kids, who are just developing their emotional intelligence. Here’s some of what we know about mad feelings.
- Mad can be a BIG, hard feeling.
- It’s often easier to feel mad than to feel sad, hurt, disappointed, left out, sorry.
- Feeling mad is often a gatekeeper to other feelings that we don’t want to feel.
- Feeling mad can be used as a mask to cover up other feelings we don’t enjoy feeling.
Begin by sharing the above points with the child. Then have the child pull the mad feeling pillow from your basket or bowl. Ask them to show you their mad face., their mad body. Ask them to use their mad voice. Explain that people can go through life not really realizing that anger is very often just the emotion on the surface of something deeper, so it’s worth examining this feeling closely.
Next, pick feelings from the basket that anger can cover up. Place those feeling pillows under something or hide them around the room. (If you’re feeling creative, you could devise some kind of gate to put them behind or procure an angry-looking face mask to place on top of them.)
Invite the child to find or uncover the hidden feelings. Once those pillows are revealed or found, consider them one at a time with the child: “Do you think this is a feeling that could be hiding behind mad?” “Is this something you or someone else might be feeling along with feeling mad?” To keep it nonverbal, let the child use a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down to let you know if they agree.
To further explore this idea of using anger as a cover-up for other hard-to-have feelings, ask the child to give an example of someone they know who seemed mad but was likely feeling something else underneath, or have them create a story featuring “Mad Mask.”
If you wish, you can continue this conversation about anger by posing additional questions—such as, “When feeling mad, which habits are helpful and which are hurtful?” and “What mistakes can people make when they feel mad, and how might they recover?”—or by role-playing how to correct a mistake. For instance, yell out angrily, “I hate you!” But then compose yourself quickly and say, “I’m sorry I said I hate you when I don’t. I’m just feeling really, really mad.”
FEELING PROUD. Pride can sometimes be tough for kids to let themselves experience, because negative judgement often accompanies it. Examples: “Winning that award wasn’t such a big deal.” “Everyone else can already ride a bike.” “I don’t want to sound like I’m bragging.” So talk with the child about times when feeling proud is completely warranted. This will not only give them permission to be proud of themselves for accomplishments, but it can open up an important discussion about how we don’t judge feelings, we just have them.
Holding the proud feeling pillow, have the child describe what they see and think when looking at it. You can repeat the Where Do You Stand? activity (on p. 16), or you can ask them to list some things they think they could feel proud of or things others have told them they should be proud of. On a blank sticker, draw the Kimochis® proud face and write PROUD on it. Put the sticker on the child and see if it sticks or if they feel the need to remove it. If it’s hard for the child to embrace self-pride, help them build up a tolerance for it over time by substituting other words that are more comfortable for them, like “good,” “pleased,” “satisfied,” and “okay.”
BRAVE LEADS THE WAY. Managing hard-to-have feelings is never easy. So we use bravery to guide children through them. As you did in the Step into Feelings activity (see p. 21), ask the child to “put on their brave” or “step into their brave” by assuming the physical stance, facial expression, and tone of voice they associate with being brave or with doing something that is hard for them to do (like when they learned to ride a bike or had to read out loud in class).
Observe and let them notice and feel the difference between their courageous stance and their normal stance. Are they standing taller? Projecting outward? Eyes open wider? Have the child practice moving in and out of feeling brave.
Next, ask the child to pick out a feeling or two they are struggling with. Perhaps they are uncomfortable and scared to tell a friend that they’ve been feeling left out lately. Pass the brave feeling pillow to the child to position in front of the other two. Then ask them to role-play with you, practicing what they might say to their friend. Give positive feedback when they use the Kimochis® Keys to Communication (see p. 4), like making eye contact and using a friendly tone of voice. If the child would like, make a cutout brave feeling pillow they can take home with them, keeping it in a pocket so they can touch base with their bravery whenever they need to in real life. Say the words “Put your brave in front”—it’s a powerful tool to remind children to communicate and act with courage in the face of challenging emotions.
Note: As mentioned before, you can make take-home copies of ANY of the feelings you want to focus on with the children you work with (use the Make Your Own Kimochis® Feelings template), so they can keep them with them at all times to remind them of the tools they’re learning. We call this our Pocketful of Practice!
SORRY CAN BE HARD TO SAY. Even when people know they’ve done something wrong, it can feel nearly impossible to simply say, “I’m sorry.” Holding the Kimochis® sorry feeling pillow in your hand, talk about the word and how it is used. Ask the child how often they think “I’m sorry” is said sincerely versus how often it’s said because the apologizer is made to say it. Have the child pick out the feelings they have when someone says “I’m sorry” to them but doesn’t seem to mean it. Then have them pick feelings that show how they feel when someone meaningfully says “I’m sorry” to them.
Move on to discussing what it’s like to be the one to apologize. Feeling sorry can be confusing for anyone because sometimes when we’re told to say it or feel it, we don’t mean it, and yet when we truly are sorry about something we’ve done, it can very hard to admit it.
Pull feelings out of the basket that can make saying sorry so hard, such as scared (“I might get in trouble”), disappointed (“I know my mom and dad won’t like that I did that”), and sad (“I’m unhappy that I did the wrong thing”). Put them behind the sorry pillow.
Now pick up the brave feeling pillow and place it in front of all the others. Remind the child how we can use bravery when we have to communicate something difficult. Feeling brave can help us say “I’m sorry” even when we’re feeling scared or guilty or embarrassed.
Share with the child that a meaningful apology always includes:
- Making eye contact
- Saying the person’s name
- Using a sincere voice and facial expression
- Specifying exactly what you did
- Explaining why you think it was hurtful
Then model a sample sincere apology, such as: “Delrena, I’m sorry I talked behind your back. That was mean.” Take turns practicing sincere apologies for different scenarios you and the child create until they consistently incorporate the above elements.
Once you see that the child is able to make a sincere apology, it’s important to let them know the hard, sad news that sometimes people will not accept their apology. So role-play again—this time having the child meaningfully apologize but not accepting it from your side, the way kids their own age might refuse. Tell them that when this happens, it’s best to repeat the apology, slowly and just as sincerely as the first time. Model this for them by repeating their own apology several times, explaining that what tends to happen is that others eventually accept an apology when they can tell that you understand that you hurt them. Debrief the child by describing exactly you did with your face, your voice, and your words that made the other person believe you and then accept your apology.
Finally, reverse the roles again, so that the child learns how to slowly and sincerely repeat their apology with the appropriate accompanying body language. This may take lots and lots of practice, but assure the child that they have the power to remain sincerely sorry even when others are not yet ready to accept their apology and that no one can take their sorry away.
FEELINGS SOUP. Kimochis® soups are a staple in our therapeutic approach because they can be used in multiple ways, like celebrating such special events as birthdays, winter break, and personal accomplishments or working through difficult experiences by breaking them down into separate “ingredients” that feel more manageable one hard-to-have feeling at a time. So for this activity, get out your mixing spoon and either a large mixing bowl or a soup pot so you can start cooking!
Begin by sprinkling all the Kimochis® feeling pillows on a table or the floor word-side-up. Place the bowl or pot in the middle of them, then invite the child to engage: “Let’s make Kimochis® soup!” Start with one that will contain mostly good feelings, like “Vacation Soup.” Have them toss in all the feelings they have about taking a vacation.
Note: When it comes to soups containing mostly challenging feelings, like “Getting a Bad Grade Soup,” it can be helpful to keep this activity more objective in the beginning by using conditional and third-person language, such as, “What feelings might kids your age have when they get a bad grade?” Once the child gets the hang of making Kimochis® soup, you can make this activity more personal.
Here are some suggested recipes for school-age children:
- First Day of School Soup
- Test Soup
- Fighting Soup
- I Am Moving Soup
- Family Soup
- Homework Soup
- Birthday Party Soup
- Recess Soup
- I Want More Soup (feelings the child wants more of)
- Soup I Don’t Like (feelings the child wants less of)
- I Need Help Soup (feelings the child wants to work on)
Once a topic or theme is chosen, let the child select any and all feelings they have about that topic and toss the pillows in the pot. You can toss some in too, to make the soup richer and more complex for discussion. Hand them a mixing spoon and let them stir the soup as they explain why they included each “ingredient.” For example, “When I didn’t do well on my math test, I felt embarrassed. And I also felt sensitive, because I didn’t want the other kids to think I wasn’t as smart as them.” Acknowledge what they’ve shared with you—“Yes, that makes sense; I think most people feel embarrassed when they don’t do well on an exam”—and then share your reasons for adding your own ingredients: “But I’m curious about why you got a bad grade. Do you think it was because you didn’t study enough or maybe because you didn’t understand the directions?” Then add, “School is a place for learning. So I’m hopeful that your teacher will help you with your math skills and that you’ll do better next time.”
Take turns with the child exchanging tips and tricks for managing each feeling. Wrap up this activity by having the child identify one new idea or lesson they learned from this “recipe” that might help them with these particular feelings in the future.
The best thing about this activity is that you can do it over and over—creating new and different soups—talking about how life is a great big bowl of mixed feelings too and learning something new each time. Consider adding a “Soup of the Week” to start off each session, letting the child toss in and mix up all the feelings they had since they last saw you last. Once the soup is made, have the child pull out each feeling and discuss which other feelings might have made the situation better. It’s a great ice-breaker with unlimited variety and potential!
FEELINGS HELP FEELINGS. Put the optimistic, hopeful, loved, happy, excited, grateful, and proud feeling pillows between you and the child. Take turns picking up each feeling and describing what this feeling word means and how it feels inside one’s body. For example, optimistic makes you feel like things are possible; it’s a good feeling in your brain and it fills your heart with hope. Ask the child to pick up one of the positive feelings you have talked about. Explain that you are going to show how positive feelings can help with hard-to-have feelings. Have the child pull a feeling that has been hard to have this week. Put the positive feeling on top or under the hard-to-have feeling and then start a discussion about how this positive feeling can support, comfort, and help the child with the hard-to-have feeling. For example, loved can help someone remember that they are loved by many others while they’re going through sadness and grief over the loss of a beloved relative or pet.
MORE AND LESS. It is important for kids to know that other people can help them with their feelings, but it’s just as important that they know that they can develop tools and habits to help themselves feel better when going through tough times.
For this activity, both you and the child choose one Kimochis® feeling you are currently enjoying. Talk about ways you can continue to have this feeling in the coming week. Explain that feelings don’t just happen to us, we can make them happen for ourselves, then brainstorm about ways to bring more of this feeling into each of your lives. For example, you can increase feeling grateful by making a list of all the things you are thankful to have in your life.
Repeat the exercise with a feeling each of you didn’t enjoy having this week. Now brainstorm about ways to have less of this feeling in the coming week. For example, to make mad smaller, you can count to 10 in your head before reacting, you can go to a quiet place for a few minutes to get calm, you can practice deep breathing.
Lastly, each of you pulls feelings you will have if you can manage to make more or less of your chosen feelings.
Note: This is a great activity to end your sessions because it sets an intention for the coming week. Take a photo with your phone of the feelings the child chose to work on, then begin the next session with a meaningful conversation about how much progress they made, how their set goals played out.
FEELINGS FUEL BEHAVIOR. Once children begin to embody their feelings and experience them in concrete ways, they can learn to develop positive communication tools to help their feelings get bigger or smaller. These tools also help children develop more effective ways of dealing with communication mistakes.
Begin by printing out the Kimochis® Feelings Fuel Behavior Worksheet. Then remind the child what they learned in the Size Matters activity above (see p. 15)—that feelings come in different sizes—and tell them that there are things they can do to make feelings bigger or smaller, to make hard-to-have feelings easier to manage and nice-to-have feelings easier to hold on to. Have the child choose one Kimochis® feeling pillow that they’d like to work with to start. Write the name of the feeling in the first row of the worksheet. Is this a feeling the child wants to make bigger or smaller? Check whichever box they choose. Ask how they’d like to approach dealing with this feeling. Would they like to think, do, or share something about the feeling? Put a check in the column they choose. Then brainstorm* with them about ways to deal with that feeling. Whatever way you come up with becomes the tool that will be written in that section of the feelings chart. With practice, a tool becomes a habit.
Any feeling can be approached in multiple ways. For example, entries on the feelings worksheet might look like this:
Mad/Smaller/Think: Mad makes me feel bad, and I want to have fun playing with my friend.
Mad/Smaller/Do: Punch a pillow and scream into it until I feel less mad.
Mad/Bigger/Share: Say to my sister, “I don’t like you coming into my room without knocking. Please knock next time.”
Note: Sometimes feelings need to get bigger before we’re ready to address them.
*In our experience, brainstorming is a tool worth developing that deserves the practice it takes to make it a habit. People often get tripped up on brainstorming because they judge their ideas before even getting them out of their head. We promote jotting down EVERY idea that comes to mind, regardless of how wild or wacky it may seem at first. The brain works in mysterious ways, and we don’t know which seemingly dumb idea might spark another, better idea. After jotting down every idea, go back and examine them more closely. Some ideas may be good but not doable. Others may be easy to do but not effective. So go through them one at a time and evaluate them individually. Organize them into themes. Flesh them out. Create a plan. Execute the plan. Brainstorming can be a detailed process and it may take a few sessions to figure out how you want to deal with the situation/feeling, but it’s worth the time and effort when you hit upon a suitable solution!
PILLOW FIGHT. This is a mostly just a game for fun, but fun always has a therapeutic benefit! It demonstrates that all feelings can be handled and managed. Feelings can create a big mess, but with tools, resiliency, and maybe some help from others, they can always be tidied up.
Tell the child that you are going to have a Kimochis® pillow fight. Pick one theme to start, like feelings you enjoy having, then toss those pillows at each other one at a time. (Make a rule that pillows are not to be thrown at faces or at anything important in your therapy room.) Proceed through a couple other themes, letting the pillow fight be organic and spontaneous, with laughter and no scripted language.
When you’re done, ask the child to help gather all the pillows and return them to where they belong. As you jointly attend to this task, ask the child: “Why do you think people fight?” “What do fights look like at school?” “At home?” “What is not helpful about fighting?” Talk about how feelings can be messy but manageable.
A Kimochis® pillow fight can be a very effective conversation starter, but, really, talking isn’t as important here as just sharing fun and laughter in this safe space between you and the child. Once you’ve introduced them to this activity, kids might request a pillow fight at other times—maybe as a way to let off some steam without using hurtful words or actions when they have upset feelings—and you can incorporate it into your sessions when suitable to relieve tension, maybe to lighten a heavy moment or as a way to bring up a topic they’re reluctant to broach. You can just toss a strategically chosen pillow at them and say, “How about this one?” Let the child respond and toss it back at you.
As for young kids, we’ve learned from experience that they enjoy having all the pillows dumped on them at once and rolling around in them. This shows them just how many feelings they have inside and that they have what it takes to handle all of them!