Mindfulness of Current Emotion

This week's lesson in DBT is being mindful of current emotions, both positive and negative. The goal is to break the cycle of avoiding emotion. Being mindful and experiencing an emotion without acting on it actually decreases the intensity of the emotion and makes the painful emotion recede more quickly. I spend a lot of energy trying to suppress emotions, especially tears. Suppression rarely works, so I end up crying much more intensely and in addition to the sadness that caused the tears, I experience secondary emotions like self-loathing for not being able to control my tears. This week's homework is to document being mindful to a painful emotion by identifying the emotion, describing how it's expressed bodily, thoughts about the emotion, environmental precipitants, behavior and how I felt afterward.