Emotional Clarity

What is Emotional Clarity?

Emotional clarity refers to the extent to which people know, understand and are clear about which emotions they are feeling and why they are feeling them. When people have poor emotional clarity, they may have a difficult time understanding the origins of their emotions. For example, they may say things like, “I feel bad and I don’t understand why”. Or they may not be able to easily distinguish between emotions. Poor emotional clarity results in them reporting that they feel overwhelmed or upset rather than feeling more specific emotions such as frustration or sadness. ​

Why is it important to have emotional clarity?

The ability to understand the origins of emotions is essential for being able to take direct action changing the circumstances or thoughts that result in those emotions. For example, when we have poor emotional clarity about how or why an emotion emerges, it is very difficult to prevent it from emerging. Similarly, when we can’t determine whether or not we are feeling sad or angry, it becomes more difficult to enact effective emotion regulation strategies.
​Activities to develop this skill:

What is happiness?

It turns out that getting clarity on what happiness is is not a simple task. Happiness is defined in many different ways. To get emotional clarity, we first need to do an emotion activity to clarify what happiness means to us.

What does happiness look like?

When we visualize events, our brains process these events as if they were real. Our brains have a difficult time telling the difference. In this emotion activity, you'll get clear on happiness by drawing pictures.
Learn about other Emotion Skills >>