Emotion Maps
04/12/11: We all do certain things to get past negative emotions and to come back down from good feelings. Striving for this emotional balance, or stability, is one of the most basic principles of human psychology. The following is an overview of a technique to help with this called the Emotion Map.
Emotion Maps
Have you ever been really twisted up with feelings and not sure what they are or what to do with them? We all experience that sometimes, and end up doing something to cope. These coping efforts can generally be healthy for us or not, and activities that directly address the feelings are some of the best things we can do. Enter the Emotion Map.
Essentially, the activity of creating an Emotion Map allows us to a) explore all of the thoughts and feeling happening in us, b) see the inter-relationships between various thoughts and feelings, c) express some of the emotions through writing and drawing, d) access feelings that are hidden from view, and e) give a document to reflect on in the future. I have personally found this to be a very powerful (and fun) activity to do when I am really having strong or complicated emotions.
So here's how it works in 4 basic steps. Let me add that this is just a loose set of instructions, and that I imagine everyone that does this will develop their own individual style. Also, all you need as supplies are a piece of paper (bigger is better) and a pen. In the example below, I am going to use the example of being betrayed by a good friend.
Step 1: Identify the first feeling
The first piece is to know what the primary emotion you are having is. When you know it, write it somewhere on the paper and draw a circle around it. In our example, the first emotion is "anger".
Step 2: Write associated thoughts
Next to the circle, start writing out all of the thoughts you are having associated with that feeling. In our example, these would be things like "I can't believe he did that to me!" and "I hope he suffers!"
Step 3: Lead to the next emotion
A funny thing starts to happen when we can exhaust the thoughts associated with an emotion; another emotion starts to emerge. So in our example, the thought "I can't believe he did that to me" would lead to the next emotion of "hurt". So put hurt on the map and circle it, and draw an arrow from anger to hurt. Then write the associated thoughts that go with hurt.
Step 4: Repeat
You can repeat these steps until you are done. Once you get going with this, a really elaborate picture will start to develop showing all of the feelings, the associated thoughts, and their relationships. What will often happen is that after a few negative emotions, some positive emotions begin to emerge like courage, love, compassion, excitement, gratitude, and peace. Once you end up in that place on in this process, you have now successfully navigated across a variety of emotions and landed on something different than you started.
Other things I have clients do with these are to name the map, and to make a file for themselves to store these. If you decide to use this process, it can be interesting to look them over and see what similar themes start to emerge. To check out a PDF of an example Emotion Map, click here, or see below for a mini version.
Emotion Maps
Have you ever been really twisted up with feelings and not sure what they are or what to do with them? We all experience that sometimes, and end up doing something to cope. These coping efforts can generally be healthy for us or not, and activities that directly address the feelings are some of the best things we can do. Enter the Emotion Map.
Essentially, the activity of creating an Emotion Map allows us to a) explore all of the thoughts and feeling happening in us, b) see the inter-relationships between various thoughts and feelings, c) express some of the emotions through writing and drawing, d) access feelings that are hidden from view, and e) give a document to reflect on in the future. I have personally found this to be a very powerful (and fun) activity to do when I am really having strong or complicated emotions.
So here's how it works in 4 basic steps. Let me add that this is just a loose set of instructions, and that I imagine everyone that does this will develop their own individual style. Also, all you need as supplies are a piece of paper (bigger is better) and a pen. In the example below, I am going to use the example of being betrayed by a good friend.
Step 1: Identify the first feeling
The first piece is to know what the primary emotion you are having is. When you know it, write it somewhere on the paper and draw a circle around it. In our example, the first emotion is "anger".
Step 2: Write associated thoughts
Next to the circle, start writing out all of the thoughts you are having associated with that feeling. In our example, these would be things like "I can't believe he did that to me!" and "I hope he suffers!"
Step 3: Lead to the next emotion
A funny thing starts to happen when we can exhaust the thoughts associated with an emotion; another emotion starts to emerge. So in our example, the thought "I can't believe he did that to me" would lead to the next emotion of "hurt". So put hurt on the map and circle it, and draw an arrow from anger to hurt. Then write the associated thoughts that go with hurt.
Step 4: Repeat
You can repeat these steps until you are done. Once you get going with this, a really elaborate picture will start to develop showing all of the feelings, the associated thoughts, and their relationships. What will often happen is that after a few negative emotions, some positive emotions begin to emerge like courage, love, compassion, excitement, gratitude, and peace. Once you end up in that place on in this process, you have now successfully navigated across a variety of emotions and landed on something different than you started.
Other things I have clients do with these are to name the map, and to make a file for themselves to store these. If you decide to use this process, it can be interesting to look them over and see what similar themes start to emerge. To check out a PDF of an example Emotion Map, click here, or see below for a mini version.
