Wednesday’s Words of Wellness
Words of Wellness are resources for students and the college community
to access and utilize to improve and maintain their overall wellness.

While the Wellness Center’s Counseling and Wellness Services are available Monday – Friday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. for counseling, consultation, and referral needs to currently registered students, in person or remote via Zoom video sessions, we wanted to share additional resources that may be beneficial during this time.

Emotions surround us day in and day out. Sometimes our emotions are fleeting and only appear for a short period of time while at other points, we find them lingering around and even seeping into various areas of our lives. Emotions can guide our behavior and decisions. They can also give us feedback about if a situation or experience was positive or negative. The following resources include information that allows us to recognize and identify our emotions, as well as ways to manage and process these emotions.
Learning About Emotions
The Emotions Reference Sheet handout is designed to help recognize and talk about feelings. This handout is a simple but helpful resource that presents a list of emotions, along with common signs and behaviors that can help to identify them. This handout is a great reference when you are having difficulty describing how you are feeling. It also helps you connect an emotion to a behavior.
https://www.therapistaid.com/worksheets/emotions-language-signs-behaviors.pdf
The Wise Mind
Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) uses the concept of a reasonable, emotional, and wise mind to describe a person’s thoughts and behaviors. The reasonable mind is driven by logic, the emotional mind is driven by feelings, and wise mind is a middle-ground between the two.
In DBT, clients will learn skills to use their wise mind and better manage their behavior.
https://www.therapistaid.com/worksheets/wise-mind.pdf
Wheel of Emotions
Plutchik’s wheel of emotions identifies 8 basic emotions including joy, trust, fear, surprise, disgust, anger, and anticipation. Combinations of these basic emotions result in advanced emotions, such as optimism, love, submission, awe, disappointment, remorse, contempt, and aggression. This Wheel of Emotions diagram beautifully depicts the relationships between each emotion in the form of a spectrum.
https://www.therapistaid.com/worksheets/wheel-of-emotions.pdf
Managing and Processing Our Emotions
Write It Out
Journaling is a tool of self-exploration and stress-management and can be a therapeutic way to assist us in processing our emotions, connecting our feelings with our experiences, and we can use it as a way to catalog the happenings of our lives. Journaling is unique to the individual utilizing the exercise. Make journaling what you want it to be.

Reach Out and Connect

Sometimes emotions are too much for us to handle on our own. Reaching out to your supports can be beneficial in processing and managing your emotions. Connecting with a supportive friend, family member or mental health professional can have significant impacts on our emotional health.
Social support

Social support is the help provided by other people, such as family, friends, groups, and communities. The forms of assistance that are given through social support come in many forms, and have a significant impact on a person’s well-being. Benefits of social support include improved physical health, greater resilience to stress, a feeling of security, and more.
https://www.therapistaid.com/worksheets/social-support.pdf
Finding and Creating Joy
TED Talk: Where Joy Hides and Where to Find It – Ingrid Fetell Lee
Cherry blossoms and rainbows, bubbles and googly eyes… Why do some things seem to create such universal joy? In this captivating talk, Ingrid Fetell Lee reveals the surprisingly tangible roots of joy and shows how we all can find — and create — more of it in the world around us.
Wishing you all a wellness filled Wednesday!
Counseling and Wellness Services
Siek Campus Center Room 270
(518) 629-7320
counseling@hvcc.edu
Published: Wed, 08 Dec 2021 12:40:08 +0000 by k.weeks