recognizing your emotions

How did you recognize the emotions you felt: through physiological stimuli, nonverbal behaviors, or cognitive process?

-The way that I recognized my feelings the most was in my thought process. For instance someone said something to me that was unkind and suddenly all my thoughts about them were all negative. I had never really had a negative thought about them before but my thinking was influenced by that and therefor my mood also changed. That made my day have more of a negative outlook, and not because the had made it that way but more like I had chosen it to be that way.

Sometimes I did have difficulty trying to decipher what feelings I was experiencing. Is this because you feel too many at the same time? My experience with this is that they would change so frequently sometimes that I would switch my thinking, I would be happy then sad, then angry. I wasn't sure how to define my thinking at the time so that made it more difficult.

Most often I felt the emotion of being content. I tend to be satisfied with the things around me, not super super happy or anything but pleased. That is a good feeling I think though, a good commonplace to sit. I like to think that I am a generally happy person but sometimes I need the middle ground and I find myself there frequently, and not that that is a bad thing!

The place where I don't show my real feelings is at work. I tend to keep to myself and try to work things uut on my own. This is a place where I do a lot of my rational thinking, such as, should I show how happy I am right now? Or just let what that guest just said about me go? And usually I just stay with a smile on my face whether I am feeling the opposite or not. This is also a safety net for me. I am not the type of person that really tries to show how I am feeling. I usually think that I will endure and get over it, and the feelings usually do pass.

There could be consequences I suppose. In situations where someone may need my support or need a genuine feeling to build a friendship I am more closed and reluctant to share. And that is I think simply just the way I was raised. It is difficult to say because I really can't say what I have missed out on because of this, I missed it! :)