Hello, Emotional People!
That’s all of us, you know.
Emotions are vital to everything we think, every idea we have, and everything we do.
But most of us haven’t learned how to work skillfully with all of our emotions. Luckily, we can learn to work well with our emotions at any stage of our lives.
One of our licensed Dynamic Emotional Integration® professionals, Jennifer Asdorian, created a chart to help track her emotions and see what gifts and skills they were bringing to her.
I asked for Jennifer’s permission, and made a version of her chart for you to use. It’s free for you to download (I mean real free, not internet free, where you have to trade me something). Free!
How to use these Emotions Charts
Of course, you can use this chart in any way you like, but Jennifer used it to track which emotions were coming up, and which gifts and skills her emotions were bringing to her during the troubling time of the early pandemic.
You can total out each emotion at the end of the week, or just see if there are any patterns. It’s up to you.
If you find any emotions that show up regularly, you can study what that emotion does, which gifts and skills it brings you, and how you can work with it.
You can read about each emotion: Each emotion is listed alphabetically on my Start Here page so you can find it easily.
Or you can watch a video I made about each emotion on my Emotions and Their Gifts playlist at YouTube.
What do the colors mean?
In Dynamic Emotional Integration, we organize the emotions into 4 families to make working with them easier, and we use purple, green, blue, and raspberry to help people quickly identify them:
The purple Anger Family tells you when a boundary has been crossed or a rule has been broken. These emotions help you set behavioral guidelines for yourself and others. They are Anger, Guilt & Shame, Apathy, and Hatred.
The green Fear Family is your intuition and your instincts. These emotions help you orient to your surroundings, notice change, novelty, or possible hazards, and take effective action. They are Fear, Anxiety & Worry, Confusion, Jealousy, Envy, and Panic.
The blue Sadness Family helps you release things that aren’t working and mourn things that are gone so that you can relax, let go, and rejuvenate yourself. They are Sadness, Grief, Situational Depression, and the Suicidal Urge.
The raspberry Happiness Family helps you look around you, at yourself, or toward the future with hope, satisfaction, and delight. They are Happiness, Contentment, and Joy.
As you use this chart, you may notice patterns where many emotions in one family appear more often; if so, look to the skills in the overall family to see how your emotions are helping you, and which specific gifts and skills they’re bringing to your life.
If you need support
If you’d like more support with your emotions or your empathy, you can work with a licensed Dynamic Emotional Integration® Consultant directly (by phone or internet).
These marvelous professionals have studied with me for two years or more, and they can help you discover the genius in your emotions, develop your emotional and empathic skills, and become more comfortable in every area of your life.
International directory of licensed Dynamic Emotional Integration® Consultants
Take good care of yourself, and pay attention to your emotions. Each of them contains a specific form of genius that can help you during troubled times — and at all times.
Thank you for bringing more emotional awareness to our waiting world.
Monique Lusse
Hi Karla, Love your work, it’s made a big difference in my life and work. I have a question about judgement. Not as discernment, but as judgement of other people. It’s not on your emotions list, not is it on the Center for Nonviolent Communication list, which perhaps begs the question: Is judgement of others or self an emotion? My thought is no, and I’d be interested in your perspective.
I’m wondering if judgment is a pointer to an emotion, such as critical or exasperated, resentful (which are in the Anger and Apathy section). All of those emotions, by the way, are what I feel when I’m examining myself around feeling judgemental about something a client is doing or saying.
Again, thank you so much for your work. It’s been life-changing for me.
Karla McLaren
Hello Monique, and thanks for this good question.
I don’t see judgment as an emotion, though there are emotions involved, because emotions are the building blocks of cognition and meaning-making. So judgment could involve any emotion, really, depending on what the judgment is about.
What I sense when people talk about judgment is that they’re looking at the aspect of shaming others, or of censure. So yes, there’s irritation, exasperation, frustration, anger, and so forth. Also, sometimes lite hatred and shadow in there.
But the judgments can also stem from the fear family (fear, anxiety, panic, etc.) if what others are doing could endanger them or us. There’s a lot going on in this concept of judgment!
Janja Lalich
Karla, your work has been so helpful in our cult/narcissism recovery courses http://www.tbylr.com. I recommend your work all the time and this chart will be so spot-on for our Healthy Relationships course. Carry on, my friend!
Karla McLaren
Thank you Janja, and thanks for your work!