We all have to contend with our emotions every single day. However, identifying and framing our emotions can be quite difficult at times, especially during recovery. If you have decided to take advantage of one of the addiction solutions Florida has to offer, you may need a bit of help to explain your moods throughout the recovery process. And that is where the emotional barometer comes in. This handy tool can help us explain our moods during recovery in Boynton Beach and allow us to progress much faster. But what exactly is an emotional barometer, how can it help, and how do you create one? Those questions will all be answered shortly.
What is an emotional barometer?
To put it simply, an emotional barometer is a resource that can help you frame your feelings. When people ask us how we feel, the answer we provide is usually quite vague. More often than not, we may simply say “I’m fine”. And that is alright in most cases. However, if you happen to be enrolled in an inpatient rehab Florida program, simply saying that you’re fine may not be enough. It is in your best interest to provide more than a simple sharp abbreviation of your mood. An emotional barometer will provide you with this explanation through a pre-set description of your mood.
An emotional barometer has explanations for various moods, such as anxious, weepy, grateful, etc. These explanations are usually formulated as “Cards”, or sheets of text with an explanation of a particular mood. Some emotional barometers also have a “degree of feeling” associated with them, so you can keep track of the intensity of your current mood. Aside from providing an explanation, the barometer usually has a few “suggestions” on how you can deal with that particular mood. Simply reading these suggestions may allow you to eliminate many of the negative feelings that that mood may involve.
There are many already-made emotional barometers (such as the school of life emotional barometer) on the market but the best thing to do is to consider them as a reference for creating your own, unique, emotional barometer. But before you can do that, you might want to know exactly why creating one might be in your best interest.
How can an emotional barometer help us explain our moods during recovery in Boynton Beach?
Throughout the course of treatment, you will most likely experience mood swings. Explaining those mood swings may be crucial to the success of your treatment. But when you feel “under the weather”, it may be quite difficult to explain anything to anyone. It would be much easier if you can simply show someone exactly what you are feeling right now, without the need to use words. And that is exactly what the emotional barometer will allow you to do. You can simply pull up a card that explains your current mood and give it to someone. Of course, you can also use these explanations to help you understand your moods in the first place. Either way, bringing a mood barometer to an intensive outpatient program Florida can only be helpful. Even if you don’t customize the barometer, it is still going to be a fantastic explanation tool.
The basic premise behind this particular barometer is that no singular emotion is more important than another. All emotions can also be either convenient or inconvenient, and we may want to keep some emotions while discarding others. The truth of the matter is that the best way to deal with your emotions is to fully understand them. Only then can we return to the desired state of balance and calm.
Creating your own emotional barometer
Since the purpose of an emotional barometer is to explain your feelings, everyone will have their unique variation of the tool. The standard emotional barometer that you can readily purchase has explanations for the following moods:
- Anxious
- Loving
- Dreamy
- Confident
- Guilty
- Sulky
- Grateful
- Envious
- Solitary
- Obsessed
- Ugly
- Practical
- Weepy
- Sensual
- Melancholy
- Self-Pitying
- Needy
- Hally
- Awed
- Nostalgic
But this is just a starting point. In order for the tool to be able to explain our moods during recovery in Boynton Beach, we need to customize it further. That said, it is possible that you don’t need anything else than the standard barometer if you happen to agree with everything written on the cards. Let’s say that you are attending an alcohol rehab Florida program and that you are feeling self-pitying. You may not know this mood to be as such until you read the description on the card and realize “That is exactly how I feel right now!”.
However, you may also notice some discrepancies in the explanation on the card and what you are actually feeling. That is what we mean when we say it is best to customize your barometer. What you want to do is add your personal “touch” to the barometer, improving its accuracy.
Once we customize the barometer, it becomes exceptionally easy to explain our moods during recovery in Boynton Beach. When asked about how we feel, all we need to do is pull out the corresponding card. That way, we will not need to engage in a long and complex explanation while explaining exactly how we feel at the same time.
Here are some of the “pre-set” emotional barometer cards, so you may see what the explanations look like, to start with.
Emotional barometer – Anxious
Anxiety is one of the most fundamental (and most recurring) states that everyone feels at some point. The driving force behind anxiety is that our bodies are quite vulnerable, with many fragile organs that can let us down, the fact that we have insufficient information upon which we need to make critical life decisions, and because we can imagine so much more than we currently have. The society that we live in plays a huge factor, as envy and restlessness are constant.
Being anxious is, ultimately, not a sign that something has gone wrong with our lives. It is, instead, merely a confirmation that we are alive. Everyone feels anxious, after all, and we are definitely not alone in this. Trying to escape anxiety in one of the drug rehab Florida facilities by pursuing things you may imagine will spare you the anxiety is also quite normal but needs to be approached with a bit of skepticism. After all, you will still be feeling anxious even when you finally make the full recovery and start leading a normal life. And that is alright.
The best thing you can do to get anxiety under control is to learn to laugh about your anxieties. Laughter is the ultimate expression of relief, after all, and it will help deal with your issues. You may need to suffer alone but that does not mean you can hold out a helping hand to your similarly anxious neighbors. Having someone around who can say: “I know…” and really means it can be extremely powerful. Anxiety is not a sign of any sort of degeneracy. In fact, it is actually quite the opposite. It shows a certain level of insight into our mysterious participation in this uncertain world.
Grateful
One of the most common habits of our minds is to take careful notice of all that is not right in our lives. That usually leads to obsession about all that we might be missing. However, at some point, we also tend to pause and notice all the things that are right in our lives. It may be that our bodies are in pretty good health, that we are financially stable, or simply that we have a good roof over our heads. When we feel that way, we are feeling grateful for what we have. However, it might be quite difficult to explain our moods during recovery in Boynton Beach, and why exactly we might be feeling grateful.
This is a mood that grows with age and it can be quite rare to experience true gratefulness before we reach the tender age of 22. But as time goes on, and we age, being grateful becomes a larger part of our lives. The “little things” start to matter and we start noticing them for what they are: Something to be grateful about. We start to appreciate the simple slice of toast in the morning, a casual friendly encounter, and the quiet winter evening, all while keeping in mind how much worse it all can be. It can be difficult to feel grateful throughout a heroin rehab Florida program, for example, but it does happen. After all, you’re still alive, well-cared for, and have the rest of your life in front of you. Simply having the chance to do something about your life is worth feeling grateful for.
Weepy
When we are not actually crying but the tears are almost there, we feel weepy. There is a whole host of things that are lining up to breach the floodgates. And the strange part is that these things are not usually associated with crying, they might be tender, beautiful, or even pure, things. For example, we might feel that our eyes begin to moist when we see a parent with their children animatedly talking with one another. Or we may simply see a beautiful flower rising from the earth after a hard winter.
Ultimately, feeling weepy is a place where the kindness and goodness of the world collide with all the troubles of life. The loveliness that we observe clashes with the ugliness and makes it a lot more vivid. What happens is that we cry at those lovely reminders and think about the things we crave.
The best thing to do when feeling weepy is to find someone else that experiences the same mood. That is why many crack cocaine rehab centers provide ample opportunities for socialization between individuals, allowing them to help out each other. When we are feeling weepy, all we may need is to weep quietly with someone who understands exactly what we are going through.
Self-Pitying
Feeling self-pity is a very important aspect of humanity. If we could not pity ourselves, things would be much worse than they are now. We might know that we are slightly exaggerating in our self-pity but it feels good, even necessary! Throughout the mood, we experience powerful feelings about how unfair the world is, how we are singled out and how mean people have been to us. Self-pity is a coping mechanism, one of the few protective shells that we possess. It may not be as rational as some other moods but it allows us to manage numerous frustrations and disappointments that life may throw at us.
Getting out of this mood involves expanding outwards. Our suffering may matter but the more important thing is that all suffering matters. This realization allows us to unite within a collective and feel pity for one another. In fact, many meth rehab Florida centers teach that the suffering brought by self-pity does not need to isolate us. It can, instead, bring us together! Self-pity is not strange or deplorable, but a defense mechanism we all turn to at some point in our lives.
Solitary
At some point, we all feel the explicit need to simply be alone. Our society may place a high value on sociability and being solitary may feel awkward but feeling solitary is a very important mood. People who often experience a solitary mood usually take other people very seriously. They listen closely to stories, respond with empathy and emotion, and are generally great conversational partners. However, as a result of this enhanced ability, people who are in a solitary mood simply cannot function around others all the time. They need to be alone, without the relentless pace of jokes, excitement, and insights. It is not uncommon to find these people undergoing one of the Florida prescription drugs addiction treatment programs, as they try to maintain their social responsibilities in lieu of how they are feeling.
The fact of the matter is that feeling solitary does not mean that we despise humanity. What it does mean is that we are particularly receptive and responsive to the company of others.
In conclusion
By understanding our moods through an emotional barometer, we will be able to explain our moods during recovery in Boynton Beach and pave the road to successful recovery. The barometer itself is a tool, one that we need to customize to our own individual preferences. But once we do so, we are opening the doors to understanding.