Naming Emotions/Triggers

[SurvivingEveryday]

My therapist has been having me "name" my emotions and triggers. For example, shame is named "Bane". She has been having me develop these personalities of them so that I can identify them "taking over" and have an internal dialogue with them to "keep them in their lane."

I am not sure how I feel about this. I did the exercise, it was ok. But, I feel like it is disassociating from life, somehow, and I worry it is not healthy. My therapist (very helpful and thoughtful) means well, and thinks that this is better than avoiding things/emotions/triggers.

Has anyone ever done this? What are your thoughts?

[Nathalie99 Partner]

Hi SurvivingEveryday,

I have heard of naming emotions like "sadness, anger, fear, joy" etc but not giving them human names, this is first time I hear of this technique.

My experience with therapy is, sometimes what the therapist suggests, doesn’t work for me and we discussed that I need to tell her if something is making me uncomfortable or any other concerns. She said that if I don't let her know early on, she would think I'm finding it helpful and she would do more of that.

We changed things when something wasn't for me. She said that it is a part of therapy to find what works and what doesn’t and be honest about this. I said I didn't want to disappoint her. But by not telling her, I disappointed her later as well as myself.

I share your concerns. I feel the same way. I think everyone is different and we need to feel what is right for our individual needs and situation. From my personal perspective, I feel the same way you do but that's just me with my bias and different experiences.

It wouldn't work for me.

I think if you tell your therapist honestly how you feel, then they might have another approach that might be better suited.

You don't have to avoid triggers and emotions but for me, naming them as separate entities is not helpful. However if it really helps others than that's what they need.

I think it is personal and we are different...

Thank you for sharing your experience. I learned something I didn't know...

[SurvivingEveryday in reply to Nathalie99]

Thanks so much, I am so glad that someone agrees with me

[012703060610 in reply to SurvivingEveryday]

Agree here with Nathalie99 . I'm not quite sure you need to give those emotions names. Shame is shame, why call it anything else. I like the idea of pulling out these emotions and learning to recognize when we are triggered and how to cope. I would be asking for other thoughts from your therapist. I can't envision anyone starting in the mirror saying "Hey Bane, go away today, I'm fine." I can see myself looking into the mirror and trying to affirm that I have no reason to feel shame. Keep us posted, this is quite interesting to me!

[Nanii in reply to 012703060610]

Thinking the same, like your example: looks the same as someone with severe health problems ready for a clinic. Not for those who do this and it really helps of course! Just talking about the general image.

[healing2thrive]

hey Surviving Everyday,

I have a tool that may help you, and congrats for sharing. Have you heard of an emotion wheel? If you look it up you’ll find pics, sorry I don’t remember the link, but let me know if you can’t find it. So it’s a color coded wheel with about 5 or 6 basic emotions in the middle for ex. Happy, sad, mad etc., then the second circle has about 3 emotions relating to each basic branching off in the middle and the outside circle has even more relating back to the basics in the middle. So it’s an easy visual quick tool that takes minutes to figure out why you may be feeling one of the basics, like sad. Or if you are confused about how you are feeling in the moment which is pretty common with PTSD, it gave me some relief to have some clarity when I used it, I hope this helps!

-Z

[SurvivingEveryday in reply to healing2thrive]

Thanks so much! I found one and am working on it right now

[Mamamichl]

I think this is normal for cbt. 🤷‍♀️. It wasn’t my thing either, but having a somewhat physical form of your emotions you can actually interact with was an interesting idea.

[Mamamichl in reply to Mamamichl]

what helped me otherwise was to write a list of emotions I was exhibited, what brought it on and what the result was (in aba, it’s called anc data; antecedent, behavior, consequence.). I also labeled situations that the emotion/behavior as helpful or not, and then made a plan on what I could do instead that would be helpful. Sometimes my overplanning helps. 😅

[Nanii]

To be honest, this therapy sounds worrysome to me. I felt like that when reading and then later on you wrote it yourself: you feel more dissociative. This might work for some, there are all kinds of minds out there, but to me it seemed like -creating dissociation- instead of solving it. Creating a multiple personality disorder (a small one maybe, but still).

Again, if this works for some, because your (reader) mind and feelings work differently like that: fantastic! , but SurvivingEveryDay, if you feel worse, instead of better: please talk to your therapist and change this together.

Looking at your emotions helped, so maybe the same thing can be adjusted to a way which suits you. Personally, I think internal dialogues can be helpful, But maybe it's better for you to not go as far as making your emotions seperate persons.

I'm really serious, once I was interested in multiple personalities and watched some documentaries and youtube vlogs. They really talked about "..." taking over and stuff like that. This tool might be really useful for people who for example have extreme problems adressing their emotions or even acknowledging them, but it's certainly not for everyone. So if you feel dissociative because of this, I support you go talk to your therapist about this.

[SurvivingEveryday in reply to Nanii]

Thank you so much! I agree with what you said. I think this might not be a healthy thing.

[Nanii in reply to SurvivingEveryday]

Hopefully you're able to figure it out with your therapist! If you feel like it, you can give an update