Practices

Every practice in the library, in one list. Narrow it by how long you have, who it is written for, and where you are right now.

What matches

13 practices

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You do not need a long list of feeling words. Half a dozen you can actually reach for under pressure will do more than forty you have to look up.

Angry, sad, afraid, ashamed, surprised, glad is enough to start with, and most hard moments are some mixture of the first four. The aim is not to…

A minuteEmotions as signalsEmotionally focusedQur’an 91:8One line of research

If someone is saying so much that you have lost the thread, stop them kindly and check. Sorry, that is a lot and it matters, can I say back what I have got so far.

It feels rude and it is usually received as the opposite, because it says the words were worth keeping. Listening while quietly drowning helps…

A minuteEmotions as signalsEmotionally focusedQur’an 8:24One line of research

When someone goes quiet and you can see they have gone inside, that is not your moment to help. Stay still and let the silence run.

You will feel the pull to summarise, to check they are alright, to bring the other person back in. All of it lands as an interruption. Give it a few…

A minuteEmotions as signalsEmotionally focusedQur’an 50:16One line of research

You cannot ask for something you cannot feel the want of. Before working out how to say it, spend a minute finding what you actually need.

This is why advice to communicate better so often goes nowhere. The words come out tidy and land as nothing, because there was no felt need inside…

Five minutesEmotions as signalsEmotionally focusedQur’an 26:13One line of research

Looking for a whole subject rather than a single practice? Start from the nine areas.

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Equanimity and perspective

Your nervous system

Choosing your response

Shame

Ask what the feeling is trying to do for you. Anger clears an obstacle, fear gets you out, sadness calls for comfort, shame hides you from being seen.

Once a feeling has a job it stops being a defect you have to apologise for. That matters, because the ones we treat as shameful are precisely the…

Five minutesEmotions as signalsEmotionally focusedQur’an 12:86One line of research

Often nothing is buried. The pieces are all there, they have simply never been put next to each other.

This hurts but I do not know why usually means the event, the feeling in the body and the meaning are being held separately. So join them up out…

Five minutesEmotions as signalsEmotionally focusedQur’an 28:10One line of research

When someone pours out a lot at once, catch the two or three words carrying the weight and give those back to them, in order.

You said you felt cold in your own house, and like a nuisance. Nothing added, nothing solved. It sounds almost too simple, and it does the thing a…

Five minutesEmotions as signalsEmotionally focusedQur’an 30:21One line of research

Let what they say land in you before you answer. The word that catches somewhere in your own chest is usually the live one.

Cold. Empty. A nuisance. Take each one for a second rather than sailing past it to the reply. Then give back the one that carried the charge, and you…

Five minutesEmotions as signalsEmotionally focusedQur’an 39:23One line of research

If all you can say is that you want to get away, that is already information. Nobody moves away from nothing, so somewhere in there is something that felt hard.

You do not need to know what it is yet. Hold the smaller version for a while: something here is difficult, and the pulling back is how I have been…

Five minutesEmotions as signalsEmotionally focusedQur’an 91:8One line of research

When someone finally gets one true word out about how they feel, resist explaining it to them. Ask what that word is like from the inside and let them find the rest.

The temptation is to say the clever thing: of course you felt rejected, anyone would. It is often accurate and it usually ends the moment, because…

Five minutesEmotions as signalsEmotionally focusedQur’an 3:29One line of research

Emptying the feeling out at somebody does not shift it, and being told what to do instead skips over it. What changes things is feeling it with someone who stays.

You can tell the difference from the inside. Venting has a rehearsed quality, the same phrases coming round again with the heat kept up. Advice…

Twenty minutesEmotions as signalsEmotionally focusedQur’an 21:83One line of research

Take one episode from this week and give it five lines: what set it off, how you read it, what happened in your body, what you took it to mean, and what you wanted to do.

Doing this with an actual event, rather than in general, is what makes it useful. Keep the lines short and resist tidying them into something more…

Twenty minutesEmotions as signalsEmotionally focusedQur’an 3:29One line of research

You cannot taste food you are eating fast. Feeling works the same way, so slow the pace until there is something to actually notice.

In practice that means one sentence at a time, with a pause after it, and questions like what happened in you just then. Both of you will want to…

Twenty minutesEmotions as signalsEmotionally focusedQur’an 13:28One line of research