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Knowing What You Feel
Handling Negative Thoughts
Building Self-Esteem
Managing Stress
Calming Tools
The key to emotional self-care is being in tune with yourself.
Knowing What You Feel
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Understanding Your Emotions
Excerpted from Understanding Your Emotions @TeensHealth.org
Some emotions feel positive — like feeling happy, loving, confident, inspired, cheerful, interested, grateful, or included. Other emotions can seem more negative — like feeling angry, resentful, afraid, ashamed, guilty, sad, or worried. Both positive and negative emotions are normal.
All emotions tell us something about ourselves and our situation. But sometimes we find it hard to accept what we feel. We might judge ourselves for feeling a certain way, like if we feel jealous, for example. But instead of thinking we shouldn't feel that way, it's better to notice how we actually feel.
Avoiding negative feelings or pretending we don't feel the way we do can backfire. It's harder to move past difficult feelings and allow them to fade if we don't face them and try to understand why we feel that way. You don't have to dwell on your emotions or constantly talk about how you feel. Emotional awareness simply means recognizing, respecting, and accepting your feelings as they happen. Read more...
5 Ways to Become More Aware of your Emotions
Excerpted from 5 Ways to Become More Aware of Your Emotions @TeensHealth.org
As we grow up, we get better at knowing what we are feeling and why. Understanding our emotions can help us relate to other people, know what we want, and make choices. Even emotions we consider "negative" (like anger or sadness) can give us insight into ourselves and others. Read more…
What Are Your Emotions Telling You?
Our emotions inform us about what we need. Learn to notice, identify, name, and interpret your feelings. Improve your emotional awareness so that you can tell yourself:
When I feel ____________, that means I need to ______________________ so that I can ________________.
Notice and Name Your Feelings
What are you feeling right now? What about when you woke up this morning? How about over the past week? Not sure?
Are There Universal Facial Expressions?
Can people recognize basic human emotions of anger, happiness, sadness and disgust across cultures? Try this simple test to find out.
The Atlas of Emotions
This novel online tool is designed to help you explore the world of emotions. If you are ready to dig deeper, take a visual journey through the five core emotions and what science is teaching us about them.
How Emotions Help Us
Excerpted from The Power of Positive Emotions @TeensHealth.org
Negative Emotions Can Help Us
Negative emotions warn us of threats or challenges that we may need to deal with. For example, fear can alert us to possible danger. It's a signal that we might need to protect ourselves. Angry feelings warn us that someone is stepping on our toes, crossing a boundary, or violating our trust. Anger can be a signal that we might need to act on our own behalf. Negative emotions focus our awareness. They help us to zero in on a problem so we can deal with it.
But too many negative emotions can make us feel overwhelmed, anxious, exhausted, or stressed out. While negative emotions can help us, negative thoughts are a different story.
How Positive Emotions Help Us
Positive emotions balance out negative ones, but they have other powerful benefits, too. Instead of narrowing our focus like negative emotions do, positive emotions affect our brains in ways that increase our awareness, attention, and memory. They help us take in more information, hold several ideas in mind at once, and understand how different ideas relate to each other.
When positive emotions open us up to new possibilities, we are more able to learn and build on our skills. That leads to doing better on tasks and tests.
Three Ways to Increase Positive Emotions
Positive emotions don't just feel good — they're good for you. Research shows that people feel and do their best when they experience at least three times as many positive emotions as negative ones. Ready to boost your positivity ratio? Here are 3 ways to increase positive emotions in everyday life:
- Identify and track your positive emotions.
- Focus on increasing one specific positive emotion.
- Create a positivity “treasure chest” – and make it portable.
Read more...