In 1994, the term Social Emotional Learning (SEL) began to circulate through some school districts in the northeastern region of the United States. Nearly 20 years later, only one state, Illinois, had adopted SEL to their educational standards for learning. To date, all 50 states incorporate SEL into their education systems, but for preschool students only. Most middle schools and high schools do not have a requirement to teach Social Emotional Learning; therefore, most high school students have less than two years of SEL learning, which was given to them when they were three and four years old.

The result is that most adults do not have formal social and emotional learning skills, and yet they are expected to have emotional intelligence.

While this is a disservice to children and adults, Social Emotional Learning can be taught by us, as the counselors and therapists in our clients' lives. With the understanding that parallel processing affects our clients and then their families and then their communities, we can take peace in knowing that if we intentionally teach social emotional skills to our clients, there will be a ripple effect in the larger community.

In my book, The Essential Guide for Counseling Black Women, I dedicate a chapter to understanding feelings. In that chapter, I specifically discuss the need for teaching clients about their feelings and the steps by which we can do it. Using several tools and frameworks, we are equipped to deflect the misguided and underdeveloped efforts of our state education systems while correcting and ensuring that our clients (and their communities) are prepared to engage with each other through healthy social and emotional skills.

Through the definition of emotional intelligence by Daniel Goleman, it is important for clients to recognize, understand, and manage their feelings while perceiving, processing, and understanding the feelings of others. Both functions of the definition require identification and awareness of the feeling. However, due to a lack of formal and long-lasting education on social emotional learning, most adults are only able to identify six of the most commonly known 27 feelings. Those six feelings are: happy, sad, angry, scared, shocked, and disgusted. Yet, on a common feeling wheel, there are no fewer than 50 emotions with a maximum of 135 feelings listed.

How powerful would it be for a client to know at least half of those 135 feelings?

With that power, they could have:

Increased self-awareness

Language to articulate what they are experiencing

An understanding of how to address that feeling

The awareness to correct the feeling (if it is challenging) and to protect it (if it is welcomed)

An ability to teach others, directly or through modeling, different feeling words

The utilization of difficult conversations with solutions in mind, because the exact root feeling is exposed

An opportunity to deepen social relationships due to an increased understanding of each other’s feelings

And a greater sense of divine understanding, since emotions are a natural state of our being.

Therefore, all my clients are required to have a feeling wheel, and at the start of each session, we address the two or three feelings they have been experiencing, as a pattern, since our last session. Starting the session in this matter sets the foundation that feelings are important and powerful, need to be exposed and addressed, and can be managed for our well-being. The predictability of starting the sessions in this manner ensures that the clients have been thinking about and identifying their feelings prior to their session, thus allowing them to practice emotional awareness between sessions. The results are clients who feel more grounded, emotionally stable, and able to conquer any obstacles that come their way. They know that if they are self-aware, they can handle many things in life. They feel empowered.

With this understanding, each client should have a therapeutic treatment goal that aligns with emotional intelligence, whether it is specific to learning feeling words, identifying feelings in the moment, developing skills to articulate feelings to others, managing and regulating one's feelings, or protecting one's emotional peace so they are not easily triggered or overwhelmed by others.

SMART goals are: specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time-oriented. A few sample treatment SMART goals are below:

Client will increase her emotional/feeling words vocabulary by adding and utilizing 10 new feeling words to be achieved within six months.

Client will learn and process 10 new feelings through the use of her feeling wheel and journal prompts, to be achieved within six months.

Client will express two feelings, per difficult conversation, to her spouse and/or family member, to be achieved within 12 months.

Client will identify three situations that cause uncomfortable feelings to be achieved within six months.

Client will create and practice three protective mechanisms to be used daily, to repeal the internalization and cementation of difficult feelings, to be achieved within six months.

Through the intersection of SMART goals and feeling words, clients will gain more self-awareness and emotional intelligence, thus allowing them to get closer to where and who they want to be. And you, as a therapist and psycho-educator, can be the one to teach and guide them. Power up!

© Psychology Today