Labeling Emotions Helps Control Them

Meditation and other “mindfulness” techniques are designed to help people pay more attention to their present emotions, thoughts and sensations without reacting strongly to them. Meditators often acknowledge and name their negative emotions in order to “let them go.” When the team compared brain scans from subjects who had more mindful dispositions to those from subjects who were less mindful, they found a stark difference—the mindful subjects experienced greater activation in the right vent...

 Parents Who Know Their Child's Emotions have Power Over T...

Why does this work? We know only a couple parts of the story. The first is that parents who possess emotional information gain the great power of behavioral prediction. Moms and dads become so acquainted with their children’s psychological interiors, they become pros at forecasting probable reactions to almost any situation. This results in an instinctive feel about what is most likely to be helpful, hurtful, or neutral to their child, and in a wide variety of circumstances. That’s about as v...