Reactionary Coping Skill: Body Awareness

Emotions can sometimes be tricky to name. Whether it is an emotion we are not familiar with, one we try to avoid, we are overwhelmed with how much of that emotion we are feeling, or our mind is occupied with other stressors. A skill that you can turn to to help your ability to name emotions is body awareness.

Try and take a couple of minutes at least once a day where you sit comfortably, put aside distractions, and do a body scan. Start from one end of your body and slowly work your way towards the other becoming aware of areas in your body that are catching your attention. Do you notice tension in your neck? Is that stress or anxiety or fatigue? Is your chest tight? Is that worry or fear or anxiety? Are your hands in fists? Is that stress or anger or worry? Keep working your way to the other end and identify areas in your body that are catching your attention. If you are able, put emotion to what you are feeling. If you cannot put an emotion to it, just keep naming areas that are catching your attention and keep going. Try and keep your mind from wandering as well. If you notice your chest is tight from stress, your mind may want to focus on what is stressing you out. If this occurs, kindly bring your attention back to your body scan and let those thoughts of stress float aside. End your body scan with a couple of deep belly breaths.

If you do this consistently throughout your day and week, you will likely start to notice more wholesome emotional attunement. You may be driving home from work and subconsciously notice that your chest is heavy which means you are angry. The more we attune to our body and the way it stores emotions, the easier our mind will attune to our body sensations and correlate that attunement to emotions. And when we know what emotions we are dealing with we can have more control over our responses.