The Many Faces of Emotions: What am I Feeling?
Emotions are vital clues for your health, happiness and well-being. Unfortunately, many people cannot identify their emotions or answer the question: "What are you feeling?" Often they are numb and dissociated ("shut down" "bored" or "blocked"), or experience all negative emotions as anger or sadness.
Life is not always a positive experience, and emotions of discomfort are inevitable: A healthy person has access to all their emotions from joy to grief. In not denying the reality of the inevitable upsets and losses in life, a person can feel both the healing quality of grief, as well as the joyous quality of gratitude.
Your emotions are the roadmap to your inner world, and along with awareness of your physiological responses can become a vital clue to changing your life. The more articulate a person becomes about their inner experience, the more they can identify when something needs to change, and the more power they have to find meaning and satisfaction in life.
We present here an extensive (but not exhaustive) checklist of different types of positive and negative feelings. They are broken into categories to make them easier to think about. Typically, when a person gets familiar with their emotions they find there are many that apply to a certain situation. For additional types of emotional experiences, please see Are Your Relationships in Trouble?
The EMDR Therapist Network: We are professionals skilled in the therapeutic use of EMDR and we support your quest for health, happiness and well-being.
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