How to be more aware of your emotions?

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I am blind to being able to ‘express’ my emotions, it’s like they are ‘pressed’ under my mind and logic.


How do you/I bring my emotions up, have them and understand them ect?

I usually keep them under control. In public, unless pushed over my limit. I'm usually very calm in situations that bother other people, but i have buttons, and when they're pushed i can be quite able to express myself. If it's personal issue, i can rotate through many emotions very quickly. They are generally east o identify the basics; sadness, anger, joy, fear, surprise,.. they can get more nuanced, then it can be harder to understand exactly .

Hope the image insert works. It's the first time I'm using it.
This image has been useful for me.

Eh, you're not missing much.

I overexpress my emotions, and it usually results in people telling me to ''stop moaning'', which can get old real fast.

Feeling too many emotions too intensely is not good for your mental health. I think in emotions (as well as words and pictures) and it drives me crazy sometimes but I can't not think in emotions, as it's the way my brain is wired.

I can understand my emotions but it doesn't help me deal with them in a mentally healthy way.

I hate my emotions sometimes. I often wish I was like my cousin, who doesn't seem to feel many emotions at all. She just wades through life not minding being shy or underemployed or having a history of an abusive relationship. I wish I could be like her.

Mindfulness can help. Practicing how to quiet your thoughts and focus on how your body feels. And if you're suppressing an emotion before you start doing that, it'll often show up in your bodily sensations, like a feeling like your chest feels like sobbing.

It takes time and practice. I started by learning to identify basic emotions: anger, sadness, fear, anxiety etc. The emotion charts/ wheels are helpful, I agree. There are also charts that can help indicate what emotion you are experiencing based on physical signs, but they are not strict rules or anything.

I think something that really helped me learn to understand my feelings more, is to skip trying to translate them to other people. I'm not saying I don't want to, or that we shouldn't. It just distracts me to try to word things in a way someone else will understand, when I need to understand myself first.

I journal a lot about how I'm feeling, and I know it would not make sense to other people oftentimes. But it helps me process and understand myself better.

I was taught to check my body responses. I have to do this consciously, where I think many NT are able to do this subconsciously. If I am gritting my teeth, if I am making a fist, If my body is restless, if I want to vomit, feel shaky inside, have a head ache, tight muscles across shoulders, pains in my stomach, all are signs of emotions.
I had to learn to recognize my body signs and relate them to emotions.
I had been taught to suppress and deny my feelings from a very early age through abuse and trauma and it was safer to be a robot and respond to others.
Fear is still my major recognizable emotion, but now I can also identify anxiety, sadness, anger... this has made a huge difference in my life and the way I live.
Some therapists (occupational therapists, I think) specialize in emotions and recognizing their signs. See also anger management. No shame in reaching out to get a guide and mentor to help do this!

I remember, not that long ago, being deeply surprised to learn that "feelings" happen in my body and that I can use my body to observe what is going on emotionally.
That speaks to the mind/body separation I had achieved to deal with trauma. I'm slowly knitting them back together. Currently TRE is helping with that.

Usually, talking and discussing about it.
Either with a friend or with a therapist. It's like a diagnosis of symptoms if you're alexithymic.

One usually can pause, examine themselves in a safe place, list or describe what it felt, and pull the chart that's posted around this thread and see which matches.

As for real time, that would be tricky because this is more of an executive functioning thing.
It requires able to hold sheer quantities of stimuli on top of passive thoughts and active actions if one is usually easily overwhelmed by it.
Usually one would have to figure how to meditate while walking and awake. Or at least the ability to observe thoughts and feelings while being detached with and/or without getting caught up with it.



And there are plenty more after knowing the basics. Usually discerning sources, picking up secondary emotions, knowing your habits with emotions, etc.

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I have no idea, this is why I when I was referred for CBT I ended up quitting halfway through because the therapist kept asking me about what I was feeling during situations that I brought up I had no idea how to answer. I really don't know how to describe what I feel. I don't talk to anyone about my emotions or how I feel so I guess it must be a practice thing. A lot of the time I'm not sure I feel any specific emotion really so I don't know how you are supposed to describe it.

I can tell when I'm frustrated though. Maybe that's just the emotion I'm most familiar with.

THE WHEEL IS GREAT; and a surprise to see (and STUDY--think about). But it's a map of what I'm ignorant of, not what I "feel" cuz I don't know "feel" or any of it's parts.

"How do I feel . . . means: "What do I think . . .

Will try body sensing route to "it/them." I THINK it's a good experiment to try.

An on/off switch sounds neatly descriptive of my subjective "associations net." It's mostly OFF around people, and their works/traps.
(Associates to danger-damage, and "Can I get thru it again?") It's ON in deep nature wilds &/or very solo with paper/pencils/watercolors.

Wonder wandering is my only safe place, if there are any such!!

When I'm struggling to place a feeling, I like to compare it to a texture. Intense feelings such as anger often being sharp and feelings of discomfort are typically slimy or weighted down (or both) for me. Rather surprisingly, people often know what I'm trying to describe when I've misplaced the word and I'm describing the texture based on the physical sensations I am experiencing. I find this method useful when it's a compound of multiple basic emotions and I can recognise one of them based on previous experience, but I can't place the other yet. For example, knowing happiness is in there, but there's another texture to it and explaining that texture to the other person. I have found this method to be greatly useful, as when I feel a sensation similar to that particular texture again I can now name it.