• Facial expressions and body language tell a person what others are feeling (such happy, sad, anxious, angry or stressed).
• There needs to be context in photos used to support learning this skill – never teach feature recognition without context/situational cues.

• Visual supports such as the use of an outline of a body can support the person to begin to identify emotions in themselves. Ideally a separate body outline should be used for each emotion discussed.
• Identifying body signals helps link to the label of an emotion (such as such as feeling tense, hot, shaky, breathing fast, heart beating faster).
• Discuss in a way that is meaningful to the person, situations which may evoke different emotions (teaching context).

• By recognising their own body signals the person can engage in a calming strategy, in order to reduce the intensity of their feelings before they become too big to handle.
• Investigate how emotional responses vary in depth and strength.
• Develop a ‘feelings’ rating scale to use when teaching the person how to distinguish the intensity their emotions, and to build awareness of triggers and the range of their emotions and responses.
• Link the affect the situation has on the person’s thoughts, emotions and behaviour by examining factors that influence their response and ability to regulate emotions.

• Learn a range of responses matched to emotions of different intensity.
• Identify activities that calm at each level of the person’s rating scale.
• Regulation strategies identified should be effective (manages bodily symptoms) and easily used across environments for the person, to reduce sadness, anger, stress or anxiety.
• Practise individualised self-management strategies through the use of:

- learnt relaxation strategies (such as slow controlled breathing practices)

- thinking strategies (for example helpful thoughts)

- physical strategies (such as, going a walk)

- relaxation activities, feel good activities (like reading a book, playing a game on an iPad, manipulating a sensory gadget)

- distractions (engaging in interests).

• Learn thinking skills to put thoughts into context.
• Talk about other people feeling different emotions, which may not be the same as the person’s experience.
• It is important to explain that the person can know someone is thinking something different to them by looking at their face, body and what is around them (situational cues).
• Use visual supports such as, stick figures with thought, speech and a feelings bubble (image of heart with emotion person is feeling included) to explain that both people are thinking different things.

• Extending on learnt self-regulation skills through discussion on the size of the problem and what emotional reaction is typically perceived to be matched to the severity of the problem.
• Important to note, if a person is experiencing distress because of a problem, those supporting need to acknowledge this is valid for the person.
• Review how emotional responses vary in depth and strength.
• Visually support concepts taught for size of problem.
• Visually support the person to match emotional responses to context.