Description: This week, Dr. Boogren gets vulnerable on a personal challenge that might help you better connect with your own emotions.
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Transcription: Hi, and welcome to episode 24 of season four of Self-Care for Educators. I'm your host, Tina Boogren. I'm so glad you're here. This week's invitation is to name our emotions. Many of you have been in workshops with me where we are centered around the book that I co-authored with Tim Kanold, Educator Wellness, and we talk about these four dimension, dimensions of wellness, our physical, mental, emotional, and social wellness.
And, when it comes to our emotional wellness, I always say, this is my least favorite dimension and it's true. And, here's why emotions are hard. I always ... I, I always laugh about, and it's true. I am a absolute type A personality. I'm a big ol' enneagram three. If any of you follow that, which basically just means personality wise I don't have time for emotions. I have work to do, and this is not one of my greatest, greatest traits that is. certainly not bragging. That is me recognizing that of those four dimensions, this is one that I really need to work on. And so, I am and I'm bringing it up this week. When we talk about the dimension of our emotional wellness, we identify these three essential routines are first of all.
The first routine is awareness of how we are feeling in any given moment. The second routine is understanding why we're feeling that way. And then, we talk about mindfulness as a way for us to kind of dissipate some of those more unpleasant, strong emotions. It's the difference between a reaction and a response. For this week, what I want us to do is just start with that very first routine, which is awareness. I want you to pause at various times throughout your day and just identify how you are feeling. Just flat out awareness. For some of you, this might be easy. For some of you like me, look, it's not easy. Ooh, identifying our emotions at any given moment. It just sounds so simple, and it is a simple idea, but again, it, it's not easy.
So, I've been working on this, and I'm going to offer it up for you to work on this, as well. What I typically do is, is set an alarm. Many of you know, that's kind of one of my strategies, otherwise I forget to do the things that I am working on for any given week. And, when that alarm goes off, I just have to pause and identify what I'm feeling in that particular moment. Which is proving to be a challenge. Brene Brown in Atlas of the Heart, her incredible book and the corresponding series that she did, I believe on HBO, nope ... uh, yeah. HBO Max. I'm pretty sure. Talks about how most adults really can just identify three emotions, happy, mad and sad, but there's a whole slew of deeper emotions that when we kind of scratched the surface underneath happy, mad, or sad, there's a whole lot of others.
Like think of let's take happy, right? We could be actually excited. We could be relieved. We can be eagerly anticipating something we can feel accomplished. Like there's just so many emotions under those three. But, what I've personally started doing is, okay, let's just start with those three. So, when I pause and check in an easy starting place for me is like, okay, right now, am I happy, mad or sad? And, once I do that, then I spend just a little bit of time trying to kind of scratch beneath the surface and see if I can get more specific. Now, the next step of this would be to kind of understand why we're feeling that way. But, as a starting place, just let's just start with naming our emotions.
There's this idea that we name it to tame it, and I have found that, that, that is exceptionally true that sometimes just by identifying how I'm feeling, I can kind of tame that feeling, especially if that emotion would be more unpleasant than pleasant. As a reminder here, you know, emotions, how we're feeling, isn't really, we don't have good or bad emotions. They just are what they are. Instead, let's think about our emotions. being pleasant or unpleasant and how we respond to those, that gets into that mindfulness routine. But, to start us off, let's just be aware. And then, what you might start to do like me is start to notice maybe some different patterns coming up that you feel a certain way in the morning when you're getting ready. That you feel maybe a different way in the afternoon, maybe you feel different upon arriving at home, or you feel different when you are, you have different emotions that come up when you're at book club or with your, when you're with your family, certain ...
And, when you start to name it and then that containment, and then start to understand why you're feeling that way in the morning, do you have more unpleasant emotions in the morning, It's because perhaps you're not giving yourself enough time in the morning, and you're feeling really rushed. Are you identifying that by the time the afternoon rolls around, you just feel mad and when you scratch beneath the surface, it's actually, you're not mad, you're just exhausted, but it's coming out as kind of mad and anger towards perhaps the students in your fourth period class or that meeting that you have after school. But once we identify it. Right? Awareness, understand where it's coming from, then just some small, simple things like taking a deep breath or doing a little bit of journaling or talking through those emotions can really help to dissipate them.
So, that's what I want you to do this week. Let's, let's dig into that emotional wellness dimension. And, start by just becoming aware of our emotions and if you want to nudge the dial a little bit more thinking about understanding where they're coming from and thinking about maybe just the simple act of taking a deep breath alongside those identification of the emotions and understanding and see, see if at least naming it tames it. I'm cheering so hard for you.
As always, thank you, Brooke. We so, so, so appreciate you continuing to help us get this podcast out. We're just so grateful for you. And, thank you, thank you, Marzano Resources and Solution Tree for this incredible work that I get to do. And, to you, my bad-ass Self-Care Squad. Oh, you guys, I'm always cheering so stinking hard for you. I hope you have an amazing week.
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