Developing emotional awareness means increasing the skills to recognize patterns that match our emotions, that is, identifying what factors activate our emotions, how they do it and how far this activation takes us.
Human beings follow certain lines of action, more or less stable, throughout their lives, but change is also a constant. In particular, our emotions are always on the move, we are not passive beings in the face of what is happening around us, so we maintain a great internal dynamic. Developing emotional awareness is also a way to identify these changes.
Consciousness is the voice of the soul; passions, that of the body?. – William Shakespeare-
The ultimate goal is to stop being a passive viewer of what’s happening in our inner world. No emotion happens or disappears by chance. If we can identify how we feel and anticipate how this can affect us, we will definitely put more accommodations in place. Here are three key points for developing emotional awareness.
One of the exercises that helps us most to develop an emotional consciousness is the frequent analysis of our motivations, motivation would be the force that drives us to act in a certain direction, psychoanalysis and other contemporary trends have shown us that we do it often. We don’t know what our real motivations are.
Sometimes we genuinely follow the deepest desires of our being. Therefore, we act according to our wishes. It gives us some balance. At other times, however, we don’t know why we’re leaning towards one option and not another. Or we think one way, but we act in another. Or we just feel dissatisfied with what we’re doing, not knowing exactly why.
An analysis of motivations leads us to explore precisely these forces that make us act, is it willpower or fear?Is it a decision or habit, frustration, anger or some other emotion?Challenging our motivations leads us to develop an emotional consciousness.
One of the most revealing elements of our emotional world is the distribution of time, it is an abstract category that offers valuable clues to understanding our psychological reality, so by analyzing how we manage time we can also develop an emotional consciousness.
In particular, it is important to note if there are elements present in this task, these are: the dilation, the feeling of exceeding time and the perception of slowness in time, each of these states informs us about specific emotional situations.
Procrastination reflects insecurity and lack of commitment; In addition, sometimes it can also show us an unconscious rejection of what is happening; the sense of lack of time reflects obsessions and anxiety; the slowness of time suggests the presence of melancholy; therefore, analyzing our perception and how we manage time is a valuable source of information to get to know each other better.
One of the factors that helps us develop emotional awareness is to identify the most intense emotions we often experience, some emotions prevail in our way of being relative to others, for example, some people spend their days with a lot of irritation, others tend to laugh at everything or feel despondent. It is the predominant emotion that gives each of us a particular emotional tone.
We often marry exclusively one of these emotional dimensions, build an explosive personality, whether passive and fearful, or chronic sympathy, and stay there forever; without realizing it, we forget how to feel otherwise, we get used to these dominant emotions. and end up making them the centerpiece of our way of being.
To develop emotional awareness it is advisable to learn to regulate the emotional tone, that is, to put a limit to these predominant emotions, allowing unusual emotions to arise too, it is a way to explore other areas of our being and also to bring out new sensations and emotions, this, in turn, makes us more aware of what is in us.
The development of emotional consciousness gives us more clarity to act, it also gives our actions a more authentic sense, without a doubt this is one of the tasks that translates into a fuller life and a healthier personality.