How to recognize emotions? 6 useful tips

The process of recognizing emotions It is of great importance to ensure a healthy quality of life, especially in terms of mental health. When we are able to recognize the emotions of others and our own, we worry less.

There are people who are good at the process of recognizing emotions. Others, on the contrary, need to learn to do it by putting more effort into it; but that does not mean that they are incapable of mastering this psychological ability.

In this article we will see several tips and recommendations that can be very useful for all those people who seek to know how to recognize emotions, as well as some considerations to take into account.

• Related article: "The 8 types of emotions (classification and description)"

How to recognize your own emotions?

Recognizing emotions consists of the ability of a person to identify and accept emotions, their own and others.

It's basically like speaking a language. At first it is confusing and we may not understand the meaning of some things, but then, as we go handling this language on a daily basis, it becomes more understandable and we become able to handle it with fluency.

To recognize our own emotions we need to be able to bring to the conscious part of our mind some aspects of our person that we often overlook or avoid thinking about. This is essential to develop Emotional Intelligence.

There are always issues related to ourselves that we prefer to leave forgotten. However, the sooner we dare to review these aspects with an objective criterion, the closer we will be to understanding how we feel.

• You may be interested in: "What is emotional intelligence?"

How to recognize the emotions of others?

At the time of recognizing the emotions of others it is necessary understand to some extent how body language works; this is an aspect that is intrinsically related to emotionality.

When we feel sad, our face expresses it through gestures and movements of the small muscles spread all over the face, and even if we try to hide it, non-verbal language largely responds to unconscious aspects of our personality; therefore sadness could be noticed despite the effort to hide it. The same happens with the other emotions and feelings: happiness, nostalgia, euphoria, etc.

In this way, when we are able to relate a person's body language to their emotions, we are closer to understanding how they feel.

Another essential aspect to identify the emotions of others goes through know how to properly interpret his speech.

A person can appear to be fine, and at the same time when we talk to her when we talk to her she gives us signs that something is wrong, if we know how to listen carefully and interpret between the lines what we says.

Tips to understand our emotional side

Now we will see some ways in which we can be more accurate when recognizing emotions, both our own and others.

1. Accept the real reason for emotions

All emotions respond to reasons that have a particular meaning for us, capable of altering our levels of consciousness.

If we accept the situation and are able to face it no matter how irrational the cause may seem, then in the same way we will recognize the emotion that we are having at that particular moment.

2. Acknowledge your surroundings

The environment greatly influences our emotionality, the situations that develop around us are capable of making us feel in many ways. That is why when we have a better mastery and recognition of the place that surrounds us, we can recognize what exactly triggers the emotions we feel.

3. Be consistent with your actions

In order to be able to properly recognize our emotions, we must try to be as consistent as possible with our actions.

This means that to the extent that our thinking and our actions follow the same path, we will be able to recognize our emotions more clearly, without falling into cognitive dissonances.

For example, inaction in the face of certain problems that we have in our lives may also it will cause us difficulties in analyzing how that makes us feelthrough self-deception.

4. Prevention against negative emotions

When we have the ability to recognize the factors that cause us distress, we may be able to prevent coming into contact with those factors (to the extent possible).

By doing this we are decreasing the probability of presenting very intense negative emotions that block our ability to analyze. Therefore, the process of recognizing our emotions will be favored, since we will not have to deal with extremely unpleasant emotions.

5. Understand situations as they are really happening

This point refers to the capacity for cognition that all human beings have. Cognition involves using higher mental processes (analysis, logical thinking, interpretation, conflict resolution, memory, etc).

In order to understand situations as they are really happening, and not as we would like them to be, when using this type of thought we are already recognizing emotions in a very real way and we can look for the best alternatives to our situation.

6. Accept that some things are out of your control

At certain times you will meet situations in which you will not be able to intervene to alter its result the way you'd like to. It is important that you keep this limitation in mind.

Sometimes you just have to accept that things are happening in a certain way, and face it. Understanding that makes us more sensible people and capable of recognizing our emotions in all their breadth, assuming that we cannot handle them as we please.