One of the most effective strategies for regulating emotion is this: cultivate an attitude of acceptance towards your emotions and the emotions of others. Practice saying ‘yes’ to your emotions, your children’s emotions, your partner’s emotions, and your friends’ emotions and notice how, not only your relationship with emotions changes, but also your relationships with people. When it comes to emotions, what we resist persists. By accepting our emotions, and the emotions of others, we give emotions space to move, to come and go, to rise and fall. Our own experience with emotions tells us that no emotion lasts forever, but when we resist and struggle against our emotional experience, we are more likely to get stuck in our feelings. We can’t push our emotions away (at least not for long), and we can’t push our children’s or partner’s emotions away either. When we are open to the full range of our own emotions, it becomes easier to open to other’s emotions, and this emotional openness pro...