For me, before going a lot into trauma, I learned to identify my feelings on a day to day basis. I tended to bury any feeling immediately and it was inaccessible. So I worked on identifying feelings I was having in the room with T, in the here and now, no matter what the topic we were talking about. They were there with us, so I practiced on those, and learning to detect and express them. They could be positive feelings or negative feelings. I was bad at everything! Then later when I had "basic feelings skills", we could do deeper work.