📝 Assess Your Relationship with Emotions
This is a reflective exercise, not a diagnostic. There are no right or wrong answers — only honest ones.
Write your honest response to each:
- When I feel a strong emotion, my first impulse is to _______________
- The emotions I find easiest to feel and express are _______________
- The emotions I avoid, suppress, or find most difficult are _______________
- When someone else is upset near me, I typically _______________
- I know I am stressed when my body _______________
- Growing up, the message I received about emotions was _______________
Keep your responses somewhere accessible — you will return to them at the end of this module to see what has shifted.
What This Tells You
Most people have a characteristic emotional relationship — some emotions that are accessible and others that are not. Some people flood easily (everything is felt intensely, immediately). Some people are cut off (awareness is low, body signals muted). Most are somewhere in between, with different emotions accessible in different contexts.
Neither flooding nor disconnection is healthy. Both are adaptations. Understanding your pattern is the first step toward expanding it.