By Trafalgar’s Editorial Team
This Content is Created By Kinga Burjan, M.A., R.P.
Thank you for joining me on your wellness journey. Today’s short video is journaling prompts for managing emotions.
There are a lot of emotions that one person can experience, and sometimes one emotion can have multiple emotions underneath, such as anger. For example, feelings of anger can have feelings underneath, such as disappointment, hurt and resentment.
Therefore, if we give ourselves some time and space to be with our emotions, you will get more clarity to the underlying feelings, which will also give us clarity to the underlying thoughts that might be driving these feelings or behaviour.
We can’t control what feelings come up, they come up. However, the more we learn about how to notice and label our emotions, the more control we have on how we react to them.
So mindfulness is a great way to be aware of your emotions and journaling is another way to get our thoughts associated around that emotion onto the paper rather than it floating around, and that’s not knowing what to do with them.
So following prompts are prompts you can always expand on these, you don’t have to use all of these when journaling, but hopefully they’ll help you in your journaling process around managing your emotions.
So first, ask yourself what happens inside me. When I’m feeling this emotion, where is it in my body? And you can also notice what you’re breathing is like. So what is my breathing like when I feel this emotion? Is my breath shallow? Is it slow? Is it fast? And what happens inside me when I breathe into this emotion?
What emotion am I actually feeling? Are there any thoughts attached to this emotion? Is it possible that there are other feelings underneath or attached to this emotion? And what are they? What do I think might be causing this emotion? Has there been a time in the past where I felt this way? And if, yes, what did I do in the past to move past this emotion?
What could I tell my best friend if they were experiencing what I’m experiencing and we’re kind of confused about it? So is it possible that I have any unmet needs or feelings that I haven’t expressed or neglected to share that might be important to share with someone?
How can I stay grounded and connected with my breath while I allow this wave of emotion to pass? How can I shift my mood slightly so that this feeling isn’t as intense? So by shifting your mood, you might want to look at the situation differently, so writing things down from a different perspective, bringing some compassion towards another person, if for some reason they’re the one that has brought up this emotion, in you.
Breathing into the emotion, allowing that feeling to dissolve slightly or remembering a time when you were feeling better or a time or place that brought you some joy or peace or calm.
And sometimes writing things out might not be the most helpful way. However, you can also do something to engage your body in a different way. Maybe you want to do jumping jacks or go for a walk, because sometimes changing our behaviour can also affect our mood and help us manage our feelings.
There are so many educational pieces on emotions, especially through mindfulness, but journaling is one way to bring more awareness of how your mind, body and behaviours are connected, and the more we know about ourselves, the more choice we have in how we react to things and the decisions we make. Thank you for joining me and have a beautiful day.
