Emotion Training Tools

Use art to teach young clients to name, identify, and recognize their emotions, and their associated bodily sensations. Ask your client to choose a color to represent each emotion, and then color in the part of the body where they experience that feeling. For example, children might color fists red to represent anger...

Plutchik's wheel of emotions identifies 8 basic emotions including joy, trust, fear, surprise, disgust, anger, and anticipation. Combinations of these basic emotions result in advanced emotions, such as optimism, love, submission, awe, disappointment, remorse, contempt, and aggression. This Wheel of Emotions diagram beautifully depicts the relationships between each emotion in the form of a spectrum...

Children will love the bright colors and pictures that accompany the Wheel of Emotions handout, and the possible uses are endless! We like to use this printout when children have a hard time finding the right word to describe a feeling. It can also be fun to ask children to choose an emotion from the sheet, and to tell a story about that feeling (great group icebreaker)...

Sometimes, you just need a long List of Emotions. This printout is just that. The 57 emotions listed in this worksheet range from basic (e.g., happiness, sadness) to complex (e.g., inadequate, disdain). It can be helpful to have one of these worksheets handy when you're working with clients who have difficulty verbalizing how they feel...

The How I Feel worksheet is a CBT-inspired activity that will encourage children to learn more about their thoughts and feelings, and how to manage them. First, your client will describe their feelings, and consider the consequences of several actions they could take to deal with them. Finally, with your help, they will identify a new and healthy way to manage their emotions...

Use beautifully illustrated emotion cards to help children verbalize how they feel.

Pinning down the word that perfectly describes a feeling can be difficult, even for adults. Developing emotional intelligence requires experience and introspection, but a basic vocabulary comes first. We created the Emotion Faces printout to help children match a word (and a face) with their feelings...