One of the best ways to explain deep feeling kids, Wallace says, is through the movie “Inside Out.”
“When Riley [in “Inside Out”] is a toddler, her ‘control panel’ was very simple and her emotions reacted quickly, but as she aged, her control panel grew and emotions worked together,” Wallace says. “For deeply feeling kids, their control panel grows at a slower rate.”
The result? DFKs continue to express emotions intensely, even explosively, past the point when they “should” have them under control.
Being a DFK isn’t the challenge, adds Allison Chase, senior clinical advisor at Pathlight Mood & Anxiety Center in Denver, but rather the challenge arises because “the child does not typically have the understanding or capacity, due to their age, to know how to manage or handle all of their big feelings.”