![]() ![]() “Some emotions aren't pleasant, but we make it worse by trying to fight them off,” Aldao says. Plus, if you bring up what you’re experiencing with your friend, you’re more likely to make your point without letting your emotions get the better of you. Naming your emotions removes some of that initial heat and lets you see things a little more rationally-and with more room for forgiveness. ![]() If your pal kept you waiting for a dinner date, for example, “maybe they weren't trying to do something mean, they were late for another reason.” “Say I'm angry at my friend but feeling a little sad-I can begin to think of this differently,” Aldao says. Once you understand what you’re feeling, it’s time to dig into why you’re feeling that way-and how to change it. You might try journaling about it, or talking your feelings through with a friend. What does that confusion feel like? Is it making your stomach turn or your fists clench? Is it leading to negative thoughts, urging you to pull back from the world or lash out at people you trust? Now that you can describe what you’re experiencing, really break it down. Think About the Word(s) You’ve Identified Work your way from the obvious to the nuanced, landing on the emotion that best describes the feeling currently overtaking your body and mind. Feeling startled? You might define your core feeling as shocked or dismayed. If you’re excited, perhaps you’re eager or energetic. Say you’ve settled on “surprised.” Are you excited or amazed? Or feeling more startled and confused? Again, there’s often a mix of emotions, but pick the one that’s coming through the strongest.įrom there, each secondary emotion is split into two even more specific terms. ![]() Once you’ve settled on a chunk/emotion or two, look at the terms that come lumped with that umbrella emotion. It may-and likely will-be more than one (ever felt shocked by a friend’s betrayal, angry at yourself for failing to see it coming, and sad at the loss of a friend-all at once?) so feel free to go down multiple paths. Which seems to best encapsulate what you’re experiencing at the moment? The next time you feel an emotion creeping over you, look at the options at the center of the wheel: fearful, angry, disgusted, sad, happy, surprised, bad. Tweeted by Stephanie Ghoston Paul, it breaks down dozens of emotions you might be experiencing and helps you hone in on your feel du jour. mK3FHvR1iI- Stephanie Ghoston Paul July 21, 2019 Still, Aldao says, “everyone needs a bit of help, to take a step back and say, 'What are all the thoughts going through my head?'”Īre you familiar with the #feelings wheel? This week's challenge: try a new way to describe how you're feeling - either based on this wheel or a word that comes to you because of it. Humans have documented differences in their natural abilities to identify what they’re feeling, which means IDing your emotions might be a breeze for you-but nearly impossible for your partner. Understanding what you’re feeling at a given moment can help you move through uncomfortable emotions. ![]() “Otherwise, it's like playing a sport without knowing where the goal is.” “Having a good sense of what you're feeling needs to be the starting point,” she says. Understanding what you’re feeling at a given moment can help you to make better decisions, move through uncomfortable emotions, and prevent some of those bad feels in the future. “It's not so simple to know what you're feeling.” Part of the problem, she explains, is that we’re rarely feeling one emotion at once. “We see this time and again, that people are pretty bad at identifying how they're feeling.” “(Identifying your emotions) sounds simple, but it's not,” Amelia Aldao, Ph.D., a licensed clinical psychologist, tells Shine. If you've struggled with IDing your emotions, you're far from alone. We know that we’re experiencing something, but we can’t identify what it is until later, if at all. We stomp our feet, lean in for a kiss, lash out, retreat, cry, make rash decisions-all driven by emotions we don’t understand. We feel hot bursts of.something, and react accordingly. It seemed easy enough as a child, but age lets us in on a secret: naming your emotions as you feel them can be seriously tricky. If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands. ![]()
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