Practice Self-Empathy: Skill 4: When you turn your attention toward them, be able to name feelings (emotions & sensations) as they arise

Each MCD Relationship Competency identifies 6 Skills, along with specific practices for learning each. For more context about MCD Relationship Competency 4: Self-Empathy, see Skill 1: Identify the differences between self-empathy and other responses to your experience, Skill 2: Identify at least 3 anchors / regulation strategies that you can use weekly or daily, and Skill 3: Shared humanity— recall that others struggle with the same difficulties.

Skill 4: When you turn your attention toward them, be able to name feelings (emotions & sensations) as they arise

Learning to attend to your feelings, emotions and body sensations is essential for accessing the complexity of your inner experience and living a life of wisdom and compassion. You can learn to allow a feeling by turning towards it with acceptance and curiosity. Each time you do this you are building trust with yourself that you can be with difficult emotions and nothing bad will happen. Your feelings matter. They give you a signal about what's happening for you and they're valid just as they are.

The purpose of giving your attention to feelings is not to wallow in them or engage in self-pity. The purpose of attending to feelings is to cultivate mindfulness, and to access and identify your needs, which allows you to identify what's most important to you in a given moment.

PRACTICE

Set a timer for one minute. For the duration of that minute, narrate to yourself every feeling and sensation you notice in your experience. Do this at the beginning of your meditation practice every day this week.