We shouldn’t be training our young people to ignore difficult emotions; here’s why and what YOU can do to help – Part 1

Michelle Stephens

Mi chiamo Michelle e sono una dottoressa in neuropsicologia, un educational coach e un’insegnante con quasi 20 anni di esperienza. Lavoro con Oxford School di Padova e questo è un articolo di una serie in cui parliamo della neuropsicologia e dei diversi modi in cui potete aiutare i vostri studenti ad avere più accesso all’educazione.

My name is Michelle and I’m a neuropsychologist (LM51), educational coach and qualified teacher (PGCE) with nearly 20 years of experience in the field. I’m working with Oxford School of Padova to bring inclusion topics into the field of English teaching and education in general. This article is part of a series in which we’re exploring different neurological and neuropsychological concepts which aim to not only improve accessibility to education, but also give YOU – the parent or teacher – concrete ways in which you can achieve this with your students.

Feeling bad about a mistake can help neurotypical kids learn – but only if it tells them what to do next. If it just makes them feel worse, it actually makes learning harder.

We see a lot of conversations in society that seem to want for all bad emotions to become extinct. Proponents of these theories might say things like “there’s no point in dwelling on what’s happened, we can only focus on the future”, but in my personal and professional opinion, this isn’t realistic.

We need to not only acknowledge negative feeling emotions, but also teach our young people how to recognise them and how to use them in their day to day lives.

No one is going to go through life always feeling positive, and if we shame people for feeling badly, or for showing those negative emotions then we’ve stopped acknowledging the very human side of our job.

Why this matters now

In many modern conversations around wellbeing, there’s a strong push to eliminate negative emotions altogether. We hear phrases like “just stay positive” or “don’t dwell on mistakes,” and while well-intentioned, this can create a misleading goal: that feeling bad is something to avoid entirely.

But in reality, emotions – including uncomfortable ones – are part of how we learn.

When we remove or suppress them, we don’t remove the problem. We remove the signal that helps us respond to it.

For children especially, this can mean they either:

• avoid responsibility altogether, or
• become overwhelmed by emotions they don’t understand how to use

Neither of which supports long-term emotional development.

So how can we “use” these negative emotions? What SHOULD we be teaching our kids?

Guilt isn’t generally considered to be a basic human emotion, it’s something that requires higher level cognitive processes, self-awareness and moral judgement. Basic emotions, like fear, joy or disgust are innate and automatic – hardwired in to aid survival whereas guilt is something much more elegant – acquired through socialisation, social survival and soft evolutionary processes.

Today, I’m going to be talking about guilt. Guilt is thought to have evolved as a way of keeping social groups stable and fair, aiding cooperation – avoiding that individuals took too much from the group, or acted in anti-social and possibly dangerous ways. This became an alarm system – there has been a mismatch from the expected behaviour to what actually happened, we need to fix this.

It’s an emotion that needs higher level reasoning, so it involves lots of our newer and flashier brain parts – the prefrontal cortex and the anterior cingulate cortex for higher level tracking, but it also ropes in more primitive parts of the brain, like the insula and the amygdala to give bodily feedback on the feeling.

Guilt vs Shame: a crucial distinction

One of the most important things we can teach children is the difference between guilt and shame.

• Guilt says: “I did something wrong.”
• Shame says: “I am something wrong.”

This difference might seem small, but cognitively and emotionally, it’s huge.

Guilt keeps the focus on behaviour – something that can be changed, repaired, or retried.
Shame shifts the focus to identity – something that feels fixed, personal, and often hopeless.

When children experience shame, they’re more likely to:

• withdraw
• avoid the situation
• become defensive
• or stop trying altogether

Whereas guilt, when guided correctly, can lead to:

• reflection
• problem-solving
• and prosocial repair (like apologising or making amends)

Healthy guilt CAN lead to change 

Healthy guilt, “this action is not good” (not: “I am bad”) in neurotypical brains is good for helping individuals change their behaviour and studies show that guilt, when used correctly can help children to learn from mistakes – guided conversations helping kids of 4-6 years old to understand what the guilt felt like, what it meant and how it could be lessened showed these kids were able to be more reflective and relational (Misaldi et al., 2021). Guilt was also found to be useful in pointing kids towards repairing with others, leading to more prosocial behaviour.

So, techniques found in traditional classrooms have some merit – short term, ACTION focussed guilt can help kids learn from their mistakes, but studies also show that guilt ISN’T a good long term motivator.

What does this mean for teachers and parents?

Well, it means that guilt, when focussed on an action and NOT on the person, can be useful when it’s used as a signal, not a sentence. It tells kids “something went wrong, fix it” and NOT “you’re a bad person, you made me feel bad”. This is ESPECIALLY useful in younger kids – if we can train our young children to recognise the feeling of guilt, see it as a signal for change and teach them not to link it to their personality we would have a more emotionally capable younger population.

When looking at the “guilt signal”, even with our teenagers, we can still teach them that: it should be short lived, that it’s simply a signal to change a behaviour that didn’t work; it should be linked to trying again or repairing a situation; & should only ever be moderate in its intensity.

We should NEVER guilt trip our children or students, or make them feel badly for long periods of time. And it should never be linked to their ability or personality.

What DO we actually say in the moment?

If a child makes a mistake, the goal isn’t to remove the emotion – it’s to shape what the emotion does next.

Instead of:

• “Why did you do that?”
• “That was naughty”
• “You’ve made me upset”

We can guide the guilt signal by asking:

• “What happened there?”
• “What do you think went wrong?”
• “What could we do to fix it?”

This keeps the focus on behaviour, understanding the process and eventual repair.

Crucially though, it keeps the child out of an identity-based spiral which can lead to degredation of their percieved self-worth and capacity.

Why this is especially important in younger children

Younger children are still developing:

• self-awareness
• emotional labelling
• and cause–effect reasoning

Which means they don’t automatically know:
👉 what they’re feeling
👉 why they’re feeling it
👉 or what to do next

Without guidance, guilt can feel overwhelming or confusing.

With guidance, it becomes one of the earliest tools for learning social behaviour

A simple way to think about guilt

When teaching children about mistakes, we’re aiming for this pattern:

1. Notice – “Something feels off”
2. Name – “This is guilt”
3. Understand – “What went wrong?”
4. Act – “How can I fix or try again?”
5. Release – “I’m allowed to move on”

If guilt doesn’t lead to action, it’s not doing its job.

So yes – feeling bad can help kids learn.

But only when it points them somewhere.

Because the goal isn’t to raise children who never feel bad, it’s to raise children who know what to do when they do.

If you liked this blog, check out our YouTube channel for more neuropsychological based posts about education and learning!

Stay tuned for part 2: Why and HOW this differs in neurodivergent brains.

Follow us for more as we launch our new inclusion programme aimed at increasing accessibility to education for neurotypical and neurodivergent students alike!

For more information on the programmes, workshops and coaching we offer please contact inclusione@oxfordschool.com or 049 656180

References and reading

Choquette (2023), Achievement-Related Shame and Guilt in Elementary Students: A Pilot Study. https://journalhosting.ucalgary.ca/index.php/cjnse/article/view/77892/57122

Donohue & Tully (2019), Reparative prosocial behaviors alleviate children’s guilt. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31343231/

Lapan & Boseovski (2017), The effects of guilt on preschoolers’ cognitive flexibility and inhibition. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0885200617302193

Misailidi et al. (2021), Conversations about guilt and mental states can improve young children’s performance on the happy victimizer task. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0885201421000897