What do you do when you feel a difficult emotion? Do you push it away or dive into it? Do you express it in words or become flooded into a state of screaming, sobbing, or shutdown?

Every adult—and especially every parent—can use a sturdy toolbox of healthy ways to handle intense emotions. If we don’t have that, we are likely to try desperately to shove the feelings away and explode when that fails to work—which it always does, eventually. The three best tools I know are to be fully aware of the emotion, ease the emotion with a sense of stillness, and release the emotion.

This post is a guided meditation on these emotional strategies. You can read it silently to yourself, record it for yourself to listen to, or have a friend read it to you. With practice, you can use these tools even when you are experiencing an intense and difficult emotion.

Get comfortable, settle in, and take a few deep........

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