I am still sick, and I'm in and out of it if you know what I mean. But chat is in the morning and if I'm late someone please wake me up, ok?

Last week we talked about mindfulness in the sense of being mindful of emotions - paying attention to them, or observing and describing emotions. There are several things to pay attention to besides naming the emotion. What do you feel in your body, and where? How do you express the emotion? What action urges are associated with the emotion? What is the function of the emotion? Do you have other emotions related to the first emotion, such as secondary emotions (feeling mad about feeling sad, etc.)?

We also discussed the "Opposite to Emotion Action" technique. To practice this, observe what action urges you have with a painful emotion, and choose to do the opposite.

If you are sad or depressed, the emotion says to hide, sleep, avoid, shut down, etc. To change what you are feeling, do the opposite. Get moving, do something fun, exercise, call a friend, or do something that makes you feel competent.

If you are scared or afraid, you might feel like running away or avoiding the thing you are afraid of. To reduce your fear, face the thing you are afraid of instead (if safe).

If you feel guilt or shame, see where it's coming from. If you do need to apologize or set something right or make amends, then do so. But if you feel guilty or ashamed and you are not doing anything wrong, then keep doing what you are doing. Like if you feel ashamed when you go to T and talk about trauma or abuse memories, keep on talking about it until you don't feel ashamed.

If you feel angry you might feel like breaking something or being aggressive or hurting someone. The opposite could be to stay away from that person, or it could be to do something nice for them, or generally do something constructive.

See 'ya in the morning!