Okay, I want to talk about emotional expression for a little bit. This particular episode came about because one of the listeners Maria suggested that I go into a little bit more detail about how to develop a kind of vocabulary of emotions. And so I have been reflecting on this quite a bit because I haven't always had the best vocabulary for emotions and I've only really just begun to kind of develop more in. Sights or more kind of in-depth insights into my own kind of emotional state of mind and that sort of thing. So I think just to start off with what we need is just a basic vocabulary. And some of these are going to seem obvious but I think another sense it's not always obvious for all of us, especially depending on you know, your background and your own personal experience of how emotions were handled maybe in your home or in your family life. So if we just start off with and talk about some basic emotions things like joy excitement anything sad angry disgust, you know, fear fears always a big one. I think people often mistake fear for another emotion, but if you really kind of go down into it, whatever your state of mind might be there's kind of fears that the core of some of these some of these feelings and experiences we have. So I think the first step is just to have a basic vocabulary a basic kind of dictionary for your feelings. And when I first started trying to reflect on my feelings, I would refer to just a list of feelings in a book and so it was really helpful when I was having conversations to look at that list and to try to identify especially if I was having difficult conversations or conversations ahead any sense of conflict in them. I would just try to look at that list of feelings and say where do I place on this list? Where is My kind of emotional state right now. But it also you have to kind of go through a an initial step before you can even get to that point and that is to kind of get away from thinking about your feelings as someone else's property or responsibility and it has you need to have to get away from thinking about feelings as a state of embodiment. So it's um, sometimes easy to fall into a trap when, You're feeling angry or upset to kind of misdiagnose your feelings and think more in terms of the bodily state so you might be breathing really hard your heart might be racing your mind might be racing your shoulders might be tense and so you might say something like I'm tense not realizing that the tension is something that you might be carrying physically and not necessarily emotionally because there's emotional tension as well, but I think I'll, Have. What people live that people might misdiagnose themselves. So I think it's really important that we develop that vocabulary and that we divorce our feelings from our physical state we separate these two elements and we separate them from what other people are doing. So to say like, I feel that you shouldn't do this or I feel that you're making me this those are your your misattributing your feelings to someone else's actions or activities. And that's not to say that that your context your, Relational context can't inspire feeling certainly when I have conversations with people I might feel excited because of what I hear them say but it's it's a you always want to make sure that you're owning those feelings that you're kind of understanding where they're coming from and what they are. So I think to start off with I would just try to separate my mind in terms of what other people do and how I feel and what I, Physically experience and how I feel and from there you can develop a vocabulary of feelings by looking at just a list and at different periods of the day just describing what it is that you're feeling right then it may be boredom. It may be a tiredness. It may be stress. This dress is again as one of those that could be a physical manifestation of a feeling as well as a feeling in itself.
