And by doing so, we can do our work better - both in our own AND our clients' eyes. We all have a continual, running dialog with ourselves. Internal dialog, that sometimes barely conscious 'self talk', is essentially the verbal internal mental processing of a significant event. But in the space and time between what they say and what we say in return, there's a huge mental process that goes on. Once we break down the enormous range of terms describing emotions into these nine core affects, we can better grasp what we're feeling in response to something going on.
Emotions are really our inner lighthouse, our beacon.
You feel what you feel. Your task is not to quash them, not to shame them into silence, but to give them space to be 'heard'. Just like the purpose of the pain from a sprained ankle is to tell you to avoid putting too much pressure on a damaged joint, so too with emotions. Imagine that you're on Rte. 128 and some guy runs you off the road onto the shoulder, and you come to a screeching rubber-burning halt.