Mind and Emotions Read Online Free

to make feelings of fear worse. You say to yourself, “My heart’s pounding like a trip-hammer. I must be scared as hell,” and the fear intensifies.
    Emotion-Driven Behavior
    The last component of an emotional response is the action urge. Action urges always accompany feelings. Anxiety makes you want to avoid. Depression makes you want to withdraw. Anger makes you want to be aggressive. Shame and guilt make you want to hide.
    When you let yourself act on emotion-driven urges, they fuel the emotion rather than regulate your feelings. While there is some survival value to these urges, engaging in emotion-driven behaviors frequently tends to convert episodic emotional experiences into chronic problems. There is abundant research showing the more you avoid anxiety, the more anxious you become (Eifert and Forsyth 2005), and withdrawing when you’re sad makes depression worse (Zettle 2007). There are also studies showing that the more aggressive your response to anger is, the more easily you’ll get angry (Tavris 1989). So emotion-driven behaviors may help you cope with difficult things in the short term, but if you engage in them habitually, they play a huge role in emotional disorders.
Exploring Your Emotional Responses
    Now it’s time to explore your own emotional responses. The following Emotional Response Worksheet will help you separate your feelings into the four components just discussed: affect (the emotion), emotion-driven thoughts, physical sensations, and emotion-driven behaviors. Over the next week we’d like you to use this worksheet to identify and clarify your emotions. Make copies of the worksheet and keep one with you at all times, leaving the version in the book blank so you can make more copies as needed (you’ll use this worksheet in the next exercise too). Each time you feel an emotion during this period, name it in the left-hand column, under “Affect.” In the next column, “Emotion-driven thoughts,” write down any judgments or predictions that occurred as you experienced the emotion. In the “Physical sensations” column, record any feelings in your body that accompanied the emotion. And finally, under “Emotion-driven behaviors,” write down any action urges (whether you actually did them or not) that you felt during the emotion. If you aren’t sure how to fill out the form or need a little help getting started, we’ve provided a sample worksheet.

Using Music to Explore Your Emotions
    This exercise will help you gain familiarity with your emotional responses, and perhaps feel more comfortable with them. The exercise calls for listening to emotionally evocative songs, so the first step is to identify six or eight songs that have an emotional impact on you. Think of music that really moves you and seems to open something emotional within you. Ideally, the various songs shouldn’t trigger the same feeling. Some of them might evoke sadness, some might make you feel hopeful or excited, and some might even make you feel angry.
    Over the next week, play each of these songs at least once. Then, on the Emotional Response Worksheet in the preceding exercise, explore this music-generated affect alongside any other emotions you’re recording during the week. As you listen to each song, turn your attention fully to whatever emotions you feel and try to keep them at the center of your awareness. Whether an emotion is painful or pleasant, look for words that really capture the essence of the feeling. Name the emotion, perhaps also describing some of the nuances or subtleties of the experience. In the appropriate columns, write down any thoughts, sensations, or action impulses that arose while you were listening. Again, here’s a sample to give you an idea of how to fill out the form.

Building Emotion Awareness
    In this exercise you’ll visualize events from the past to intentionally and temporarily bring on stronger emotions so you can learn about them. Right now, look back over the past six