Abuse & Personal Mastery LO15232

JTHuba@aol.com
Mon, 6 Oct 1997 07:32:50 -0400 (EDT)

Replying to LO15225 --

In a message dated 97-10-06 03:04:04 EDT, Benjamin Comptom writes:

>The process, then, that has worked for me (in identifying and processing
>my feelings) is:
>
> 1. Identify and lable the emotion
> 2. Associate the emotion with it's source
> 3. Self-validate the emotion
> 4. Choose to feel what I want

I found a helpful tool for identifying and labeling emotions. All
emotions fall into one of four categories...mad,sad, glad, or scared. Each
one of these falls in a continuum for mild to severe. For instance, I
might be a little bit irratated or I might be livid. I might be a little
down or I might be clinically depressed. I might be feeling ok or I might
be estatic. I might be a little uneasy or I might be terrified.

For a person like myself who was taught to bury feelings all of my life,
having some handles to explore and then express the depth of feelings was
helpful to me. Early on I would literally have to go through the list -
"I'm not glad, I'm no sad, I'm not mad - so I must be scared .... and so
on. One other helpful insight was when I learned that guilt and shame are
not primarily feelings. They are thoughts - judgements as it were - about
your feelings. I feel sad (or any other emotion) and then I judge myself
for feeling that emotion and that results in guilt. Or I feel sad (or any
other emotion) and then I feel that others judge me for feeling sad and
that results in shame.

As we seek to practice personal mastery in our organization, we have used
Steven Covey's 3 day seminar - 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. When
we come to the section on Seeking First to Understand, we spend an entire
morning helping people with these handles on emotions. Since listening is
so much about picking up on the emotional content that goes with the
words, people say, having some handles for capturing emotions is very
important. Our team members have found this to be very useful in their
individual lives and in the common life of the team.

By the way, Love is a Choice is by Minrith and Myer. I highly recommend
it.

Jim Herrington

-- 


JTHuba@aol.com


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