The Hop will drop you off at 9th and Arapahoe. Take the N, which goes to Nederland, and get off at Settlers Park Drop off.
The Zone’s of Regulation can be an important tool and language for all people to understand how they are doing. In this short video, Ashley explains the different zones and how she uses them in therapy with clients. Below the video you will see the full transcript also available. The Zones of Regulation is a trademarked and copyrighted framework. For more info, visit www.zonesofregulation.com.
Hi, my name’s Ashley. I’m a therapist here at Whole Connection and one of the things I want to talk to you today is about the zones of regulation. Now this is something that I’ve noticed a common theme throughout a lot of my clients, specifically sometimes gift clients, right? Uh, struggling with emotional regulation and how do we identify what we’re feeling and what to do about it.
Alright, so today I have the four zone. The first one, we’ll start off here, is the green zone. Just how the green lights, the green zone. We’re feeling regulated and controlled, ready to go, right? Everything is feeling good. We’re having happy thoughts. In the second zone here, the blue zone, this is kind of like the rust stop sign, right?
We’re feeling sluggish, tired, maybe sick, um, or even sad. All right, so some things we can do when we’re in the zone is we can take a break, right? Maybe taking some rest if you feeling sick. We can also talk to an adult or any trusted person, such as a parent, a teacher, or a best friend, right? We can also try getting in comfy spots or asking for a hug, anything that will make us feel good.
Right. Another thing, um, when we transition out of that, we also have a yellow zone. So just like the lights, a yellow is we need to slow down, right? In this zone, we’re starting to feel a little too elevated, so we might be feeling stressed, anxious, or a little too excited. Um, so in this we need to slow down a bit to be more in control of our body.
Some things we can do is. Belly breathing or any breathing exercise. But belly breathing has been very helpful for a lot of kids. ’cause it’s very easy to remember. We can also take a walk, right? If the weather’s feeling nice or we can try talking to someone about what’s going on with us, right? What are we stressed about?
What are we anxious? Um, those different things. The next zone we have here is the red zone. In this zone, we’re not feeling a lot more intense emotions and it’s very hard to control our body and our emotions, right? So oftentimes we feel angry, maybe rage or fear, panic, right? In those stages where it’s very hard for us to think clearly or how we’re acting, right?
So some things we can do to cope when we’re in the zone is we can take a timeout. We can do a belly breathing exercise. We can try counting to 10. Oftentimes, some exercise can be helpful to get some of those intense emotions out and moving through our body. Or we can also try talking to someone about what is the issue, right?
What’s going on? With these four zones, it’s been very helpful for kids to be able to talk about what’s going on. If they’re having issues, actually identifying the emotion. It’s a lot easier to name I am in the yellow zone, right? And act accordingly than to say I’m feeling anxious maybe. So I hope these tips have been helpful, um, for you guys to try and just rem remember, this can also be helpful for adults as well, not just for kids.
And that’s all for today.