Emotional difficulties

Through life, we all experience ups and downs with our emotions which happen as we learn to respond to different situations. When you reach adolescence (age 10 to 19 years), there are many changes to deal with including physical changes to your body, the start of different relationships and friendships, and new challenges at school.

You might experience a wider range of emotions throughout adolescence, and you will most likely find ways to regulate them.

For some children and young people, regulating these emotions can be difficult and people might call this ‘emotional dysregulation’. This means you might find it more difficult to:

be aware of your emotions. 
accept and tolerate unpleasant emotions. 
identify specific emotions you are feeling, and tell the difference between them. 
recognise and understand patterns in your emotional reactions. 
manage emotional reactions in ways that work well in the long-term.

With emotional dysregulation, you might notice your emotions go from 0 to 100 very quickly. This can feel overwhelming and intense, sometimes leading to impulsive behaviours.

If you have emotional dysregulation, you might show the following signs: 

Have a negative view of yourself and others, stemming from difficult early experiences, such as trauma or insecure attachment.
Self-harm and/or experience suicidal thoughts.
Have difficulty following instructions and rules. 
Have low self-esteem and self-worth.
Struggle with building and maintaining relationships. 
Respond inappropriately, for example with anger or aggression. 
Struggle to self-regulate, for example to sooth or calm yourself.
Risk-taking behaviours, such as restrictive eating or substance misuse.

Do you need support with this?

If you think you, your child or young person you care for might be experiencing signs of emotional dysregulation, a first step to finding support is to understand more about emotions and learn ways to manage them.

Resources

Take a look at this young minds page for information about difficult feelings

Apps to help manage difficult emotions

Try these apps to help you manage your difficult emotions:

Calm Harm: an app designed to help reduce self-harm and manage difficult emotions. 

Headspace: a mindfulness and meditation app to help you manage feelings and thoughts with the lifelong skill of everyday mindfulness. There are some costs associated with this app. 

If you think you, your child or young person you care for, has been affected by emotional dysregulation for more than three months, or more severely affecting their life, they might need some more help managing their emotions and behaviours.

Here are some services that can help

Creative Youth Network – get support from a youth worker or wellbeing practitioner to understand more about your mental health and develop some coping skills to help you manage.
Off the Record North Somerset and Bristol - Some of the services available differ between Bristol, South Gloucestershire and North Somerset.
Sign up to groups to learn more about mental health and how to build resilience, and start to develop some coping skills. Or instead, you could sign up to one-to-one therapy with a professional or build your confidence through Pro Real, their virtual reality-based form of counselling.
Kooth – join an online mental wellbeing community and talk to a trained counsellor through their chat function. Visit the online forum for support from people like you and to hear from others experiencing similar difficulties.
Primary Mental Health Specialists (PMHS) - professionals are part of the specialist CAMHS teams and link with the wider community and other children and young people’s organisations and services, including schools. Alongside supporting professionals, PMHSs also offer direct work to young people and their families when appropriate, for low to moderate needs, or where the difficulties may be school based.

For families and carers of people with emotional difficulties

Local Authority Parenting support

Reading

Reading Well: books for younger children to help understand their feelings.

Information for professionals supporting people with emotional difficulties

Primary Mental Health Specialists - PMHSs are part of CAMHS and can offer advice, specialist consultation and some training to other staff who work with children, young people, their parents and carers.
Young Minds: support for professionals.

Things you might experience

You or the young person you are supporting is experiencing intense emotions that are causing you high levels of distress. You might be finding it impossible to go about your usual everyday activities.

Support

If this is happening, you should speak to your GP who can refer you into CAMHS to look into treatment to help you manage or overcome your symptoms and distress, if you both feel it is the right thing for you. Sometimes other professionals might also refer you to our service if they are concerned. Find out more on our Professionals page.

I need help now

Please check our urgent support page if you feel you are unsafe and need urgent help.

Page last updated: 24 March 2022