“... [P]ositive emotions have an undoing effect on negative emotions,” asserts Fredrickson (2000),
adding that desired feelings such as joy, interest, and contentment broaden a person’s thought-action
repertoire, in turn building enduring resources for survival and well-being. This is much the same
principal as Joseph Wolpe established with reciprocal inhibition and systematic desensitization: You
overcome the undesired emotion by creating the desired one. For parents, teachers, and child ther-
apists this means that the more you help a child discover and experience his or her potential for cre-
ating happiness and well-being, the less likely that child is to experience anxiety, depression, or anger.
Appropriately managing emotions also involves learning that there are times when grief, though
painful, may be an appropriate process of adjustment, or that fear, though uncomfortable, may pre-
vent a child’s entering into a dangerous situation.
Since fear, grief, and guilt are dealt with in other chapters, the emphasis of the stories in this sec-
tion is on helping to build positive emotions. There are tales that focus on the awareness and appre-
ciation of sensory experiences (Burns, 1998), and that talk about fun, humor, and laughter. They look
at how to cultivate contentment, how to change feelings by changing posture, and how to express
emotions congruently. There are also stories about managing anger in a way that delivers the mes-
sage with humor.
CHAPTER 8
Managing Emotions