Roller Coaster Feelings

One time in a session, I was meeting with a child, and I was teaching the child about emotion regulation and assessing to see what kind of feelings this child could recognize.  When I began to explain what feelings are, all of a sudden, the image of a roller coaster came to mind.  In teaching my client about feelings and how they change, I drew a roller coaster.  I asked my client if they had ever been on a roller coaster.  Prior to using an analogy, I like to see if the client can relate to the analogy in order to make the analogy meaningful.  This client had, thankfully lol.  So, I said, "Sometimes we have roller coaster feelings.  One moment we can feel one way and in the blink of an eye we can feel another way.  Sometimes we can feel more than one feeling at once, and that's okay.  Can you tell me what feelings you know?"  I don't remember if that's exactly how I said that, but close enough.  I had the client use different colors to draw the track of the roller coaster to represent different feelings.  I found this to be a great way to teach about emotion regulation and to assess for feelings. I hope you find this helpful.  Please feel free to comment about the positive aspects of this intervention, and you are welcome to provide constructive feedback!