Emotions

Emotions are a very important part of the human experience. Our feelings can bring us great joy or deep despair and everything in between. In my experiences as a mental health counselor, I have found that for some people, it can be very challenging to understand and identify feelings.

Some people are very in touch with their emotions and it is not hard for them to identify exactly how they are feeling and how this impacts their patterns of thinking and behavior. For others, they have a pattern of disowning their feelings or covering up their true feelings, often with anger. For example, if a person is feeling really anxious in a public setting, but they cover these feelings up with anger, they may attempt to solve their problems by shouting, threatening, fighting, etc. This never gets to the root of the issue, that the person is feeling vulnerable or self-conscious in a social situation, and their anger may just end up making their problem worse. 

I like to teach people how to identify their feelings, and then teach them how to cope. This is where the experience of covering up emotions or having a lack or awareness of emotions can be problematic. If a person is lonely or sad, they may benefit from reaching out to a supportive person, asking for positive affirmations, or trying to spend time around people that they care about. If the person has difficulty identifying their emotions, or displays something like anger as a cover up emotion, they will likely try coping skills that actually make their true feelings of loneliness worse such as trying to cool down alone, separating themselves from potential conflicts, or using physical release exercise such as using a punching bag. 

I will certainly be talking more about emotions in future posts, but I have always thought the Emotions Wheel is really interesting. Using something like the Emotions Wheel can help people to improve their awareness of emotions and their emotional vocabulary.