Sometimes feeling emotions and actually knowing what those emotions are can be a really tough thing to do. Sometimes we want to avoid them and not take action on them.
The Point Of Emotions
The whole point of emotions is that they are a signal to us. That signal is to help us survive which is what we human beings love to do! We love to survive and we love to help other people survive too.
When you get a signal from your body that you have an emotion, think about what the purpose of it is – what is it trying to tell you. Now let’s look at working through emotions.
Working Through Emotions
It might be hard to work through your emotions if you’re starting off and you’re feeling dissociated or disconnected from your body.
Start with the sensations in your body first before asking yourself what emotion you feel. Are you hot or cold? How does your head and your stomach feel – tight, light, heavy, etc? Are you tingly in your arms? Ask these questions to yourself before you work through this step-by-step process below.
You’re looking to label your emotion: looking to say “I feel [x] because [y]…”, then we’re looking at scaling out of 10 how intense is that emotion e.g. sadness (10 out of 10 being the most sad you have ever felt, 0/10 being not sad at all).
Now you need to ask yourself the question, “what you I do to bring it down from a 6 out of 10 to a 5.9 out of 10.” That signal of sadness is telling me to do something, such as reattach to a meaningful relationship that is important to me.
To Summarize the Process:
- Know your Body Sensations
- Label Your Emotion
- “I feel [x] because [y]…”
- Intensity out of 10
- What can I do to increase (if desired)/decrease (if undesired) said emotion
