Mindfulness of emotions and feelings

Sat Jan 29, 2022 · 186 words

Increasing your mindfulness of emotions and feelings puts you on the path to regulating them. If you aren’t recognizing that your emotions are intense, there’s little you can do to regulate them.

Mindfulness of emotions is a skill and takes practice to improve.

Below are some examples of intense emotions manifesting in concrete behaviors:

Avoiding someone or something
Bullying someone
Crying
Harming yourself
Overdoing alcohol or drugs
Wanting revenge
Wanting to fight someone
Wanting to hit someone or something
Withdrawing from others
Yelling at someone

The next time you find yourself engaging in these behaviors, start noticing how you feel…

Do you feel hot or cold? Is your heart pounding? Are you sweating? Do you feel frozen and can’t act? Is your body language droopy?

Once you start noticing how you feel during these behaviors, you’ll start noticing them more frequently.

You’ll begin identifying more behaviors, and you’ll get better at recognizing and observing how you feel when your emotions are intense.

With an understanding of your triggers, you can apply the HALT acronym.

See also