Do you know your anger from your anxiety? Hurt from sadness or jealousy from envy? Often we don't really know how we feel, just that it's a 'bad mood' or that we don't like it, but how can we expect to best manage a 'bad mood' when we are unclear on what emotion we are actually feeling?
By learning to notice and label our emotions we can learn a lot about what is driving them and importantly, how to regulate them more easily. This may read as simple but believe me, this is not something that humans do naturally, mainly because we just aren't taught to.
Growing up we often learn that being happy is good but being angry or sad is bad so we quickly learn to hide and push down 'bad' emotions often not then learning how to manage them. The things is, negative emotions are human, they're going to happen and we can benefit hugely from learning how to manage them.
If we learn to recognise when we are angry, hurt or jealous for example, we can instead learn what to do to help ourselves rather than the old knee jerk reactions or loosing our temper or being overwhelmingly upset and saying things we can't take back.
Technique: Commit to keeping a diary for one week, noticing how you feel and when you feel it. Label your emotion(s), notice any sensations in the body where you feel that emotion, and notice what was happening when you felt that way.
This can take practice and dedication to give it a fair go as like I said, it's not something we are used to doing but ultimately if we can learn to tune into what we feel, we can then learn how to respond in a more helpful and healthy way.
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