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Everyone has emotions or feelings. Some common emotions are happiness, sadness, anger and excitement. Sometimes, we express our feelings by laughing, crying or shouting. At other times we don’t express them, and they stay inside us.

When this happens, it can be because we aren’t sure exactly why we feel a certain way, or we don’t want to admit it to ourselves. This can be true when the emotion is something like jealousy, frustration or regret. Often, it is really difficult to work out exactly how you feel about something that’s happened to you because you experience all sorts of emotions at once. Some people don’t like expressing their emotions and others tell everyone how they're feeling straight away. That’s OK because everyone’s different.

As you grow older you will learn to recognise certain feelings in yourself and understand what they are and how to deal with them. It’s good to understand which emotions you need to control because they can sometimes damage your relationships with your classmates, your friends, your family and your teacher. Anger is a particularly difficult emotion to manage. We all get angry sometimes, but anger can make us say things that we don’t really mean and do things that we will regret afterwards.

Everyone gets annoyed by little things sometimes.

It could be your sister teasing you; your friends laughing at a mistake you made; getting told off by the teacher when you weren’t doing anything; or being given something for lunch that you don’t like! On good days, you might be able to shake your annoyance off and get on with life, but on other days you might let your anger get the better of you and end up shouting at someone, crying or being disruptive and rude.

When you start to feel yourself getting angry it can be good to take a few minutes on your own, count to ten and then think about why you feel angry and what you should do about it. If you explain to people quietly and calmly how you feel, they are much more likely to understand than if you are shouting in their face!

Anger is only one of hundreds of emotions that you feel. Sadness is another emotion that can affect your life in a bad way. There are many, many reasons why people feel sad and when you are growing up it can be really difficult to deal with. When you do feel sad, the most important thing is to have someone you trust to talk to about it. This could be a friend or someone in your family who really loves you and will be able to listen to how you feel and help you.

Often when you start talking about being sad it helps you understand exactly why you are feeling that way. When we keep our thoughts locked away inside, it’s easy to get very muddled and confused and as this goes on it can make it harder and harder to understand our own feelings.

So, whatever emotion you are experiencing, always try to take some time to think about why you are feeling that way, particularly if it is making you unhappy in any way. If that doesn’t help, find someone you trust to talk to. Whatever you do, don’t bottle your feelings up inside - it’s always better to talk, even if you feel guilty about something. We’re all human and we all have feelings. Make sure you’re able to share yours with someone else.