Unfortunately, many of us aren’t taught emotional identification, let alone the value in being able to name our feelings. The ability to name our emotions can be a powerful tool towards addressing our own needs and being able to communicate with the people around us. The following activity is a simple one that I do with many of my clients to establish a baseline of this ability, provide a means for them to begin emotional identification, and often times uncover some roadblocks that have been getting in their way. Follow the steps below to begin your journey.
1) Draw an outline of your body (gingerbread man style is definitely acceptable).
2) Assign a color to each of the following emotions and create a key to identify what color belongs to which emotion:
Happiness
Sadness
Fear
Disgust
Anger
Surprise
3) For each emotion, recall a recent event in which you experienced that emotion and take yourself back to that moment. Now take inventory of where you experienced that emotion in your body and what it felt like. How intense was that emotion on a scale of 0 (not at all) to 10 (the highest possible)?
4) Color in the body part(s) that you experienced that emotion with the color you assigned it in step 2.
Once you finish, take note of what you learned.
Do you experience all of your emotions at the same intensity level? Was there a common theme among where you feel your emotions that may actually be associated with something else? Were certain emotions more difficult for you to tune in to?
Taking temperature on our emotions through our body sensations is often a new approach for people, but it can be very enlightening. I’ve found that this simple assessment can uncover some sticking points for clients that can be addressed in future sessions as well as provide a means for clients to begin their own journey in emotional identification – often the first step towards conquering their presenting problem for initiating therapy.
