The fall semester of my second year of college was extremely mentally and physically taxing for me. I had a change in medication at the beginning of the semester (this medication was different from my antidepressants), and then I decided to withdraw myself from the medication completely. My body of course did not respond well to this. I fell into a serious depression, and I stayed in that state of depression for months. It wasn’t until winter break, and by God’s grace, that I was able to pull out of my depressive state.
In an attempt to put some order back into my life, I started going to the free counseling offered to students at my university. As a student I was given 12 free sessions, and I used up everyone. During these sessions, the counselor I was seeing taught me about mindfulness. Psychology Today explains mindfulness as, “a state of active, open attention to the present. When you’re mindful, you carefully observe your thoughts and feelings without judging them good or bad. Instead of letting your life pass you by, mindfulness means living in the moment and awakening to your current experience, rather than dwelling on the past, or anticipating the future.”
I really enjoyed studying mindfulness with the counselor, but I realized that I was having a difficult time observing my thoughts in the “now.” This came from the fact that I couldn’t accurately pinpoint what my real emotions were in the “now.” As a result of not being able to identify my emotions, I found that all my emotions where just turning into anxiousness. To help me better identify my emotions, my counselor gave me what I call, “The Rainbow Wheel of Emotions” (I call it rainbow wheel because I colored it).
The Rainbow Wheel of Emotions is just a circle that is compromised of six main levels of emotions. The six main emotions are: Happy, Sad ,Disgust, Anger, Fear, and Surprise. From there each one of the six emotions is broken down even further into subcategories, and then the subcategories are broken down again into a third and final category.
For example, say for some reason that I am feeling sad; I can go to the SAD section of the circle. There I see that there are six subcategories stemming off of SAD that include: Guilty, Abandoned, Despair, Depressed, Lonely, and Bored. So I have realized that I am sad, and then from these subcategories I realize that this sadness I’m feeling also falls under the subcategory of Depression. From their Depression then breaks off into a third grouping compromised of the feelings of Inferiority and Empty. Now I can break down my sad feeling even further by realizing that I am sad due to depressive feelings that stem from issues of inferiority.
The Rainbow Wheel of Emotions helped me live more in the now because it allowed me to pinpoint my emotional state. I went from just being anxious or depressed all the time to realizing that my anxiety and depression were masking other emotions I couldn’t identify. This brought my mindfulness to a whole other place where I could begin to heal honestly and truthfully with myself.
If you struggle with pinpointing your emotions, or you feel like anxiety and/or depression are covering up your true feelings, I would give The Rainbow Wheel of Emotions a try! I keep it with my bullet journal – that way I can write down and record all that I am feeling and experiencing from day-to-day. I am attaching the original wheel to this blog, and I encourage everyone to color his or her own Rainbow Wheel of Emotions, and give it a try!
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