“Feelings” cards
With an emigration to a new country and a new language, all the therapy tools need to be translated too!
That’s always quite a task!
Here you can see the “feelings” cards coming out of the laminator!
These are cards I regularly use in my therapy sessions. Because answering the question “How do you feel?” is usually not that easy. These cards can help with that. As you read through the different feelings, something tends to click somewhere, and usually, more than one card applies at the same time.
They’re also great to use when exploring emotions more deeply.
So, is the focus on your feelings then?
Often not, but sometimes yes. What do I mean by that?
In today’s society, decisions are often made based on feelings. When something feels right, it must be right, and when it doesn’t feel right, it must not be right. That puts feelings at the top, allowing them to determine what we do.
But we’ve also been given a brain, full of thoughts flying around. The combination of feelings and thoughts more or less determines our actions. One person lets feelings dictate their actions, while another lets their head or thoughts decide. Because sometimes, what feels good now isn’t necessarily good for you in the long run. Think of overeating, drugs, or cigarettes.
Only deciding based on thoughts, without considering our feelings, doesn’t always work either. Because are those thoughts even true? Are they honest? Or have we carried them with us from the past? When we suppress our feelings with our thoughts, those feelings keep demanding more attention until one day everything explodes, and we’re left wondering where that reaction even came from.
As you can see, the interplay between thinking, feeling, and acting is quite complex.
What you do is the easiest to recognize. Then come the thoughts: what were you thinking in that situation? What went through your mind? Identifying your feelings in a given moment is much harder. Hence, a helpful tool: the feelings cards!
If you want to learn, gain more insight into why you do what you do, or why things don’t seem to work, it’s necessary to reflect on your actions, thoughts, and feelings. That way, you discover the “why” and can make changes where needed. Because do you really want to keep doing things the same way you automatically do them? Are there patterns from your past that are now getting in the way? And what does God actually say about that?
Those are very important questions that can only be answered by examining your patterns, your actions, your thoughts and feelings, and by asking what God is calling you to in all of that.
And all that, just from making a set of feelings cards!