Exploring Your Emotions

Emotions are among the least understood facets of the human experience, yet they play an essential part in our life (Ben-Ze’ev. 2001).

In a previous piece “Ready to deepen your relationship with yourself?” we explored the advantages of beginning your journaling journey. Understanding your emotions and being able to be aware of what you’re feeling can help increase the benefits you experience from journaling. But most importantly, it can help you on your positive mental well-being journey! With this in mind, the following piece is going to help you further your understanding of emotions...

👉 What Are Emotions? Emotions can be easily felt but are much more difficult to articulate. The mechanistic perspective on the definition of emotions is that they are positive or negative experiences associated with a specific pattern of physiological activity (Schacter et al. 2011). Emotions are highly subjective and unique. People can experience completely different emotions in response to the exact same stimulus (e.g., event, situation, communication). People can also experience the same emotion completely differently. One person who is feeling the emotion of sadness may cry and withdraw, while another person feeling sadness may binge eat and sleep.

👉 The Three Components Of Emotions: 1️⃣ Subjective component – This is how you experience the emotion 2️⃣ Physiological component – This is how your body physically responds to the emotion 3️⃣ Expressive component – This is how you behave as a result of the emotion you are feeling (Hockenbury & Hockenbury 2007) Remember everybody feels emotions differently. There are no right or wrong emotions for any given experience

👉 Why is Understanding Your Emotions Beneficial? ❇️ You will be able to build and strengthen your relationship with yourself. ❇️ Having an awareness of your emotions will help you identify what you need and want. ❇️ If you are able to understand emotions then you will be able to build deeper and more meaningful connections/friendships and relationships with other people. ❇️ Emotions can influence both our behaviour and decisions. If you are able to understand your emotions then you will be able to act, behave, and make decisions in a way that serves you in the most positive manner. For example, if you can identify that you are feeling angry then you will be able to recognise that making a decision in this emotional state might produce avoidable negative outcomes. ❇️ When you can understand your own emotions, you can better understand other people's emotions. This can help you to respond appropriately to other people. For example, if you understand how you feel and behave when you are upset. You will be able to empathise with another person who is feeling upset.

👉 Labelling Your Emotions... It can be a little bit difficult to know what emotion you are feeling and to then label it. But, this will get easier over time as you deepen your awareness of your emotions. I have included some examples of what different emotions may look like but remember emotions are unique … 🔴Anger – Feeling hot, muscles feel tense, clenched jaw, wanting to shout and scream, tight chest. 🔴 Happiness – Feeling calm, relaxed, and joyful. Muscles are relaxed. Feeling positive. 🔴 Sadness – Wanting to cry. Your stomach making you feel sick or maybe having an upset stomach. Feeling down and depleted. Feeling tired. 🔴 Scared – Muscles feeling tense. Increased heart rate. Butterflies in the stomach. Shallow breath. Once you have labeled your emotions, be curious! Have a think about why are you feeling this emotion. Remember to be compassionate towards yourself. Try not to be judgemental and instead accept your emotion, it is ok for you to be feeling it. Don’t chase your emotion away, let it unfold naturally.

👉 Labelling your emotions can also help you to identify what you could be doing to help yourself…. 🔶 Feeling angry – Engage in some exercise to help yourself calm down. Practice meditation. Allow yourself the space you need to calm down. Avoid making important decisions until you have calmed down. 🔶 Feeling happy – Enjoy your present moment and savor it. Journal about how you felt and what you were doing when you felt happy. 🔶 Feeling sadness – Take a break from what you are doing. Let your body and mind rest. Think about what you need at this moment to feel better. Ask for support. 🔶 Feeling scared – Focus on your breath and slowly begin to take deeper and slower breaths. Leave the situation that is making you feel scared. Be kind to yourself.

👉 What Are Emotional Boundaries? It is really important that you set boundaries with other people concerning your emotions. This can involve sharing with someone how they made you feel. It can also look like you respecting your own space to feel your emotions. Some examples of emotional boundaries include… ✅ I don’t feel comfortable sharing that with you ✅ I value what you are telling me but it is becoming too intense for me to manage at the moment ✅ Can we take a break from this conversation? ✅ I would like to talk to you about something I am feeling ✅ I am overwhelmed and I need some time to myself to process things

👉 It is also crucial that you do not allow people to minimise your emotions, or gaslight you and try and make you feel like your emotions aren’t valid. It can be difficult to tell when someone is doing this to you, so I have included some examples of statements of what this could look like … ❌ "You are crazy". ❌ "You are overreacting". ❌ "You took it the wrong way". ❌ "You are being silly feeling like that". ❌ "I was only joking". ❌ "You are oversensitive". ❌ "It is nothing, stop it".

✍️ Emotion Exercise: To help you to build a stronger understanding of your emotions, take some time to think about how you express your emotions. This is known as your behavioural response. 🔷How do you behave when you are angry? 😡 🔷How do you behave when you are scared? 😖 🔷How do you behave when you are happy? 😄 🔷How do you behave when you are anxious? 😬 🔷 How do you behave when you are sad?🥺 After you have identified how you behave to these emotions, think about your responses to the following questions… ❇️ Do any of my behavioural responses to my emotions negatively impact my life? (for example, when you’re angry you yell at people, this then causes the relationship to break down) ❇️ Are there any changes I would like to try and make regarding how I express my emotions that could benefit me? (For example, you would like to stop yelling at others when you feel angry) ❇️ How could I begin to work on making these changes? (For example, you decide once you have identified you feel angry that you will try to make a conscious effort to count to ten before responding to someone. Or, you decide to tell people “I need a little time to reflect before I continue this conversation”)

🥰 Remember, whatever emotion you experience, it is ok. Your emotions are valid and it is ok to feel them. Do not judge yourself because of what you are feeling. Be kind to yourself. 🥰