Session 3: Emotional Awareness
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Unpacking Emotional Awareness
Welcome to Session 3: Emotional Awareness. In this session, we will explore what the purpose and value of this E-Skill is, and discover how you can develop and apply it in your day-to-day life. Below is a brief summary of the session goals and what we will cover, as well as all of the session materials.
You will also see that there is a section marked ‘In-Session Exercises’ where you can complete the exercises that we will do during the session (you can also use your Workbook, if you have that to hand, if you prefer), and a section called ‘Homework Exercises’, which you can use to complete the homework exercises online if you don’t want to use the PDF workbook.
Session Goals:
In this session you will:
Learn about emotional awareness.
Learn about two aspects of emotional awareness: attention and clarity.
Practice managing your attention to notice emotions and bodily sensations, and enhance clarity by labelling your emotions.
Session Overview:
In this session, you’ll learn some techniques to help develop the first E-skill: emotional awareness. These techniques will centre around paying attention to emotions and labelling them. By practicing these techniques, you can better understand your feelings, manage them more appropriately instead of being overwhelmed, and express your emotions more effectively. In particular, you will explore:
What emotional awareness is, how it works, what it does, and what it means for you when you have plenty of it as well as when you have little or none at all.
Where you direct your attention (your time, energy, and focus) in terms of your emotions. You’ll think about the bodily sensations you notice (and miss) when you experience emotions, and how you can work towards achieving ‘balanced attention’, so that you give your emotions just the right amount of attention all of the time.
How you can develop emotional clarity (and why it matters that you do) by learning techniques to help you label your emotions, as well as how to unpack each emotion so that you can break it down and really see what is going on (what is known as emotional granularity)
Digging into Emotions and Emotional Intelligence
This session was all about building a solid understanding of emotions and Emotional Intelligence. In particular, we focused on the five ‘E-Skills’ that underpin Emotional Intelligence, and how you currently use those skills. These exercises provide you with an opportunity to dig deeper and not just consolidate and expand your knowledge in this area, but also identify ways that you can apply that knowledge in your day-to-day-life. You can complete the exercises online by completing each of the questions, below, or you can use your workbook PDF.
Exercise 1: Part 1
This exercise will help strengthen your emotional awareness by inviting you to notice, label, and describe your emotions. Follow the steps below and complete this activity at least once daily between now and the next session, remembering to check in with a range of pleasant and unpleasant emotions.
Emotions Awareness:
Instructions
You might initially label your emotion as something general, like happy, sad, anxious, or calm. This is a great place to start, but emotions are often more complex, so use the emotion wheel below to help you pinpoint the exact emotion
Say, for instance, after a pleasant conversation with someone, you notice a general feeling of joy. Using the wheel, you can ask yourself: What kind of joy am I experiencing right now? Can this feeling best be described as excitement, creativity, cheerfulness, etc.?
Similarly, you may have felt ‘sad’ at some point throughout the day. Working outward from the inner circle can help you find a more specific label that fits this emotion. For instance, if you’re feeling ‘sad,’ is it more of a ‘lonely,’ ‘bored,’ or ‘tired’ kind of sadness?
View Full Size
Emotions Awareness:
Instructions
You might initially label your emotion as something general, like happy, sad, anxious, or calm. This is a great place to start, but emotions are often more complex, so use the emotion wheel below to help you pinpoint the exact emotion
Say, for instance, after a pleasant conversation with someone, you notice a general feeling of joy. Using the wheel, you can ask yourself: What kind of joy am I experiencing right now? Can this feeling best be described as excitement, creativity, cheerfulness, etc.?
Similarly, you may have felt ‘sad’ at some point throughout the day. Working outward from the inner circle can help you find a more specific label that fits this emotion. For instance, if you’re feeling ‘sad,’ is it more of a ‘lonely,’ ‘bored,’ or ‘tired’ kind of sadness?
View Full Size
Emotions Awareness:
Instructions
You might initially label your emotion as something general, like happy, sad, anxious, or calm. This is a great place to start, but emotions are often more complex, so use the emotion wheel below to help you pinpoint the exact emotion
Say, for instance, after a pleasant conversation with someone, you notice a general feeling of joy. Using the wheel, you can ask yourself: What kind of joy am I experiencing right now? Can this feeling best be described as excitement, creativity, cheerfulness, etc.?
Similarly, you may have felt ‘sad’ at some point throughout the day. Working outward from the inner circle can help you find a more specific label that fits this emotion. For instance, if you’re feeling ‘sad,’ is it more of a ‘lonely,’ ‘bored,’ or ‘tired’ kind of sadness?
View Full Size
Emotions Awareness:
Instructions
You might initially label your emotion as something general, like happy, sad, anxious, or calm. This is a great place to start, but emotions are often more complex, so use the emotion wheel below to help you pinpoint the exact emotion
Say, for instance, after a pleasant conversation with someone, you notice a general feeling of joy. Using the wheel, you can ask yourself: What kind of joy am I experiencing right now? Can this feeling best be described as excitement, creativity, cheerfulness, etc.?
Similarly, you may have felt ‘sad’ at some point throughout the day. Working outward from the inner circle can help you find a more specific label that fits this emotion. For instance, if you’re feeling ‘sad,’ is it more of a ‘lonely,’ ‘bored,’ or ‘tired’ kind of sadness?
View Full Size
Emotions Awareness:
Instructions
You might initially label your emotion as something general, like happy, sad, anxious, or calm. This is a great place to start, but emotions are often more complex, so use the emotion wheel below to help you pinpoint the exact emotion
Say, for instance, after a pleasant conversation with someone, you notice a general feeling of joy. Using the wheel, you can ask yourself: What kind of joy am I experiencing right now? Can this feeling best be described as excitement, creativity, cheerfulness, etc.?
Similarly, you may have felt ‘sad’ at some point throughout the day. Working outward from the inner circle can help you find a more specific label that fits this emotion. For instance, if you’re feeling ‘sad,’ is it more of a ‘lonely,’ ‘bored,’ or ‘tired’ kind of sadness?
View Full Size
Emotions Awareness:
Instructions
You might initially label your emotion as something general, like happy, sad, anxious, or calm. This is a great place to start, but emotions are often more complex, so use the emotion wheel below to help you pinpoint the exact emotion
Say, for instance, after a pleasant conversation with someone, you notice a general feeling of joy. Using the wheel, you can ask yourself: What kind of joy am I experiencing right now? Can this feeling best be described as excitement, creativity, cheerfulness, etc.?
Similarly, you may have felt ‘sad’ at some point throughout the day. Working outward from the inner circle can help you find a more specific label that fits this emotion. For instance, if you’re feeling ‘sad,’ is it more of a ‘lonely,’ ‘bored,’ or ‘tired’ kind of sadness?
View Full Size
Emotions Awareness:
Instructions
You might initially label your emotion as something general, like happy, sad, anxious, or calm. This is a great place to start, but emotions are often more complex, so use the emotion wheel below to help you pinpoint the exact emotion
Say, for instance, after a pleasant conversation with someone, you notice a general feeling of joy. Using the wheel, you can ask yourself: What kind of joy am I experiencing right now? Can this feeling best be described as excitement, creativity, cheerfulness, etc.?
Similarly, you may have felt ‘sad’ at some point throughout the day. Working outward from the inner circle can help you find a more specific label that fits this emotion. For instance, if you’re feeling ‘sad,’ is it more of a ‘lonely,’ ‘bored,’ or ‘tired’ kind of sadness?
View Full Size
Exercise 1: Part 2
Each day, after you have completed your entries for part one, you need to be sure that you record the specific emotions you experienced, what was going on around those emotions when you experienced them, and exactly where in your body you noticed them.
As you complete this part of the exercise, consider whether you have noticed the same bodily sensations before? If so, when? Also ask yourself if similar situations led to similar emotions and sensations in the past? And then think about what patterns you may be noticing.
Emotions Log:
Sensations List
Emotions Log:
Sensations List
Emotions Log:
Sensations List
Emotions Log:
Sensations List
Emotions Log:
Sensations List
Emotions Log:
Sensations List
Emotions Log:
Sensations List
Exercise 2: Session Reflection and Looking Ahead
What did you get out of this session? Take a moment to reflect on what insights you gained and what you have learned about emotions, emotional intelligence, and yourself.