Helping Kids (and Ourselves) Understand Big Feelings
“Big feelings” is a phrase we use often when children are distressed, overwhelmed, or behaving in ways that are hard to understand. It sounds compassionate — but it can also blur something important.
Not all big inner experiences are the same.
Children’s distress can look similar on the outside — crying, anger, withdrawal, agitation — while coming from very different places inside. When we respond to all distress as if it were one thing, we can end up confused, exhausted, or unintentionally making things harder.
Understanding what kind of experience a child is having helps us respond with more clarity and less urgency.
What Are “Big Feelings,” Really?
Big feelings are not a single category. They include different kinds of inner experiences, each with different needs. When we don’t distinguish between them, we often reach for responses that don’t quite fit.
Below are four broad ways children’s distress commonly shows up.
1. Feelings About What’s Happening Right Now
Some feelings are direct responses to the present moment.
A child may feel sad because something ended, angry because a boundary was set, or worried because something feels uncertain. These feelings make sense in context.
What helps here is understanding and information — listening, acknowledging, explaining what’s happening, or supporting the child through the situation. When a child feels understood, these feelings often soften on their own.
Children can also experience emotions when a basic need isn’t being met, especially before they have the language to name that need. Hunger, fatigue, missing a caregiver, needing closeness, feeling unsafe, or having had too much stimulation can all show up as sadness, frustration, anger, or distress.
In these moments, the emotion isn’t something to fix — it’s information.
A child may not be able to say “I’m exhausted” or “I need connection”, but their feeling communicates it clearly. Listening to the feeling helps the underlying need come into view.
What supports present-moment feelings is understanding and information: listening, acknowledging, helping the child feel oriented, and responding to what the feeling is pointing toward. When the need is met, these feelings often soften without further work.
2. Feelings That Need Expression
Some distress is not really about what’s happening now.
Children (and adults) carry emotional experiences from earlier moments that were overwhelming, frightening, or lonely at the time. When enough safety is present later, these feelings may surface as intense crying, raging, trembling, or emotional release that feels much bigger than the current situation.
In these moments, explanations or reassurance often don’t help. What supports these feelings is presence.
Simple phrases like “I’m here” or “I’m listening” communicate safety without trying to fix or change the feeling. When feelings are allowed to move through in this way, they often lose intensity and connection returns.
3. Thoughts That Sound Like Feelings
Sometimes what sounds like a feeling is actually a thought or belief shaped by experience.
Statements such as “Nobody likes me,” “I’m not safe,” or “You’re going to leave” can feel emotionally intense, but they are not emotions themselves. They are meanings a child has made about the world.
These experiences tend to soften through gentle listening, reflection, and repeated experiences of safety over time, rather than through emotional release alone.
4. Overwhelm and Sensory Saturation (Not a Feeling)
There is another experience that is often mistaken for a “big feeling,” especially for neurodivergent children and highly sensitive children.
Overwhelm is not an emotion.
It happens when too much is being processed at once — too much noise, too many demands, too many transitions, too little rest. The nervous system reaches capacity, and everything feels like too much.
In these moments, there is nothing to express or analyse emotionally. What’s needed is relief: fewer inputs, less talking, more space, quiet, rest, or predictability.
When overwhelm is treated as an emotional problem, children are often asked to look inward or talk about feelings when their system actually needs the opposite — less demand, not more.
So How Do You Know What to Do?
You don’t need to be certain about which category a child’s experience fits into.
Instead, you respond — and watch what helps.
If reassurance or information settles things, the feeling was likely about the present.
If expression deepens and then softens when you stay close, feelings were ready to be released.
If everything escalates until demands are reduced, the child was overwhelmed.
Children show us what they need through what helps.
Responding Without Shutting Feelings Down
Sometimes children’s feelings come with behaviour that isn’t safe or workable. In these moments, it’s possible to hold both boundaries and connection.
Phrases like “I’m saying yes to the feeling, and no to the behaviour” communicate that emotions are allowed, even when certain actions are not. Staying present while holding a limit often brings feelings to the surface — not because something has gone wrong, but because safety has been established.
The Role of Play
Play can also be a powerful support when children are holding stress or tension that hasn’t yet become overwhelming.
Through play, children often:
release accumulated stress
explore power and control safely
make sense of experiences indirectly
restore connection and laughter
Play doesn’t replace listening when strong feelings are present, but it can prevent feelings from building up and support emotional integration over time.
This Applies to Adults Too
Adults are often encouraged to “feel their feelings” when what they are actually experiencing is exhaustion, overload, or stretched capacity. No amount of emotional processing resolves a system that is consistently asked to do more than it can hold.
Understanding the difference between emotion and overwhelm can help you discern what’s needed in the moment.
Understanding Before Answers
This way of thinking doesn’t offer a checklist but orientation.
When adults understand what they are seeing, responses tend to become slower, kinder, and more accurate — without needing to be perfect.
Big feelings are not one thing.
And children don’t need one kind of response.
They need to be met where they actually are.
Related Resources
Important Information
This post offers an educational and relational perspective on children’s emotional and nervous system experiences. It does not provide clinical advice, diagnosis, or treatment, and is not a substitute for professional support. The distinctions shared here are intended to support understanding and attunement, not to prescribe specific interventions or outcomes.
