Emotional Clarity

What is Emotional Clarity?

Emotional clarity refers to the extent to which you know, understand and are clear about which emotions you are feeling and why you are feeling them. If you have poor emotional clarity, you may have a difficult time understanding the origins of your emotions. For example, you may say things like, “I feel bad and I don’t understand why”. Or you may not be able to easily distinguish between emotions. Poor emotional clarity results in feeling 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, if you have poor emotional clarity about how or why an emotion emerges, it is very difficult to prevent it from emerging. Similarly, when you can’t determine whether or not you 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, you first need to do an activity to clarify what happiness actually means to you.

Mental Time Travel

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 activity, you'll get clear on happiness by imagining it.

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Berkeley Well Being Institute