Emotional Awareness: Learning to Feel

One of the most important  skills I teach is Emotional Awareness. Emotional Awareness is the ability to clearly identify what I am feeling in the moment.

Emotional Awareness is important as it helps ground us in our bodies and helps answer the question of what is going on for us. Our bodies, through our feelings, have an amazing ability to sense our environment in ways that our minds cannot.

Emotional Awareness is also a pathway to tapping into our intuition.

A surprising number of people struggle with the essential skill of Emotional Awareness. Learning it is like learning to whistle: it may seem difficult or impossible at first, but with practice it becomes easy, even natural.

In the first stages of Emotional Awareness I have noticed that most people, when asked what they are feeling, respond from their mind. Something like: “I feel like I didn’t want that to happen”, or “I feel like I want to do something different”, or “I feel like he is a bad person”. In this context these are not feelings they are thoughts.

Emotional Awareness is really simple. Like light, which is made up of a spectrum of  primary colors, the emotional spectrum can also  be divided. While somewhat arbitrary the primary emotions are fear, anger, joy, sadness, acceptance, disgust or shame, surprise, and expectation.

At different times each of us can experience these emotions intensely or lightly. For example anger could be felt as hatred or annoyance. We can also experience blended emotions. For example, acceptance and joy might be love, or anger and disgust might become contempt.

To practice Emotional Awareness begin to identify your primary emotions on a regular basis, particularly when you are feeling strongly. Avoid qualifying your emotions by saying “a little angry” or “I am feeling some fear”, just identify and say the primary emotion.

For a graphic that is very useful in identifying emotions see Plutchik’s Wheel of Emotions.

If you have not already done so please subscribe to our email list. Next week I will discuss specific techniques for developing emotional awareness.