Chapter 6 Exercises: Emotion

Part A: Building Emotional Awareness

Exercise 6.1 — The Emotion Vocabulary Expansion (Level 1 | Ongoing)

For one week, practice using more precise emotional language. Instead of "upset," "bad," or "stressed," push for greater granularity.

Keep a brief daily emotion log. For each entry, identify: - The emotion (using the most precise word you can) - Its intensity (1–10) - Its trigger (what event or appraisal produced it) - Its action tendency (what it made you want to do)

Use the following vocabulary expansion as a resource:

Variants of anxiety: apprehensive, dread, edgy, nervous, panicky, uneasy, worried, skittish, tense Variants of sadness: bereft, dejected, despondent, forlorn, grief, heavyhearted, melancholy, mournful, wistful Variants of anger: agitated, contemptuous, exasperated, fuming, indignant, irritated, outraged, resentful, seething Variants of joy: content, delighted, elated, enthusiastic, gratified, jubilant, playful, serene, thrilled

Reflection at end of week: Does greater precision change how you relate to your emotions? Does naming them differently produce different experiences?

Exercise 6.2 — The Somatic Emotion Map (Level 2 | 20 minutes)

The chapter notes that emotion involves physiological changes. This exercise maps emotion onto your body.

Close your eyes. Think of a recent situation that produced a strong emotion — anxiety, anger, sadness, or joy.

Now notice: where in your body do you feel this emotion? Draw or describe a body outline and mark the areas of sensation for: 1. Your most common anxiety experience 2. Your most common anger experience 3. A recent experience of sadness 4. A recent experience of joy

Reflection: Are your emotions reliably located in your body? Do different emotions have different bodily signatures? How does attending to the somatic dimension change your experience of the emotion?

Exercise 6.3 — The Appraisal Detective (Level 2 | 15 minutes per situation)

For three significant emotional experiences from the past month, investigate the appraisal:

Identify the emotion: What did you feel?
Primary appraisal: What did you evaluate the event as? (Threatening? Good for you? Irrelevant? Unjust?)
Secondary appraisal: Did you feel you had the resources to cope? Did you feel agency?
Alternative appraisals: What would have been different if you had evaluated the event differently?

Reflection: Does the appraisal framework account for your emotional responses? Where does it fit cleanly and where does it seem incomplete?

Exercise 6.4 — Emotion Differentiation Training (Level 2 | 30 minutes)

Research shows that people who can distinguish between similar emotions (high emotional granularity) regulate more effectively than those who experience emotion as an undifferentiated mass.

Practice this with the following pairs of commonly confused emotions:

Anger vs. disappointment: Think of a recent situation where you were upset with someone. Was your primary emotion anger (an injustice occurred) or disappointment (an expectation was not met)? What is the difference in what each calls for?
Anxiety vs. excitement: These have nearly identical physiological signatures (high arousal). How do you distinguish them? When does one shade into the other?
Guilt vs. shame: Think of a time you did something you regret. Are you experiencing "I did something bad" (guilt) or "I am bad" (shame)? What does each call for?
Sadness vs. depression: Sadness is connected to a specific loss; depression is more pervasive and not necessarily tied to a discrete event. Can you identify which you are experiencing in difficult periods?

Part B: Developing Regulation Skills

Exercise 6.5 — Reappraisal Practice (Level 2 | Ongoing)

Identify three ongoing situations that produce negative emotions for you (anxiety, frustration, disappointment, etc.)

For each, practice each of the following reappraisals:

Reinterpret the event: What other meaning could this event have? "This feedback is devastating" → "This feedback tells me something useful about what others see."
Consider the larger frame: How will this seem in one year? In ten? "This feels catastrophic" → "This is a setback in a life that contains many others I have recovered from."
Perspective shift: How would someone you admire — someone with wisdom and equanimity — see this situation?
Find the learning: What does this situation teach, require, or develop?

Note: Reappraisal works best when the alternative appraisal is genuinely believable, not just optimistic. A forced reappraisal ("everything happens for a reason") that you don't actually believe will not produce emotional change. Look for genuinely credible alternative framings.

Exercise 6.6 — Strategic Suppression vs. Reappraisal Experiment (Level 2 | One week)

This week, deliberately use each regulatory strategy in appropriate contexts:

Suppression situations (when brief strategic expression management is appropriate): professional contexts where full expression would be inappropriate; situations where you need to gather more information before responding; moments when expression would escalate rather than resolve

Reappraisal situations (when genuine regulation is needed): ongoing negative emotional states; significant relationships; before important decisions

Keep brief notes on: - Which strategy you used and when - How effective it was in the short term - How you felt afterward - Whether the emotion resolved or persisted

Reflection: What do you notice about the relative effectiveness of each strategy? Does the chapter's research match your experience?

Exercise 6.7 — The Jordan Scenario: Regulation Options (Level 2 | 20 minutes)

Return to the chapter's opening scene: Jordan in the kitchen table conversation with Dev, not fully listening because his emotional state is running a parallel process.

Design five different regulatory interventions Jordan could use at different points in the process model:

Situation selection — before the conversation
Situation modification — during the conversation, if it escalates
Attentional deployment — during the conversation
Reappraisal — of the conversation's significance or meaning
Response modulation — after the emotion has arisen

Evaluate each: Which is most accessible in the moment? Which would be most effective? Which requires advance preparation?

Exercise 6.8 — The Guilt-Shame Audit (Level 2 | 30 minutes)

Think of three situations in your life where you have done something you regret or where you have fallen short of your own standards.

For each, identify whether your primary response was guilt ("I did something bad") or shame ("I am bad"). Use these markers:

Guilt: You want to apologize, make amends, do better. The feeling is about the specific action.
Shame: You want to hide, disappear, or become someone other than who you are. The feeling is about the self.

For any shame responses you identify: 1. Can you reframe the situation as guilt? ("This action was wrong and I can address it" rather than "I am wrong and deficient.") 2. What would be required to move from shame to accountability without the self-attack?

Part C: Going Deeper

Exercise 6.9 — Emotional Contagion Audit (Level 2 | One week)

The chapter discusses emotional contagion — the automatic transmission of emotion between people.

This week, track how the emotional states of the people around you affect you: 1. Which people in your life reliably lift your emotional state? 2. Which people consistently lower it? 3. Are there relationships where you are the emotional "giver" — consistently more regulated than the other person — and where this produces depletion?

Reflection: Are your choices about who you spend time with adequately informed by the emotional effects of those interactions? What would change if you designed your social environment with emotional climate in mind?

Exercise 6.10 — Anxiety Profile (Level 3 | 30 minutes)

Anxiety is future-oriented — the emotion of anticipated threat. Build a profile of your anxiety:

What triggers it? (Social evaluation? Physical safety? Loss of control? Abandonment? Failure? Uncertainty itself?)
What is the recurring content of anxious thoughts? (What do you tend to anticipate?)
What is the physiological signature? (Where do you feel it? What happens in your body?)
What do you typically do with it? (Avoidance? Over-preparation? Seeking reassurance? Distraction?)
What does the anxiety typically prove to be about? (Is the anticipated threat usually accurate, usually overestimated, or usually about something different from what the anxiety says it's about?)

Reflection: Is your anxiety informative (pointing toward genuine risks that need attention) or is it mostly noise (overestimating threat, generating costly avoidance of non-threats)? What would a more calibrated relationship with your anxiety look like?

Exercise 6.11 — The Damasio Decision Test (Level 2 | 30 minutes)

Think of a significant decision you made in the past that you consider successful — a decision that "felt right" and turned out well.

Now think of a decision you made that turned out poorly — one where in retrospect, something about the decision felt wrong before you made it, but you overrode that feeling.

Describe both decisions: 1. What was the emotional information available to you before each decision? 2. Did you attend to it? 3. In retrospect, was the emotional signal accurate?

Reflection: What does your personal track record suggest about the reliability of your emotional signals in decision-making? In what domains should you trust them more? In what domains should you apply more deliberate scrutiny?

Exercise 6.12 — Emotion and Values (Level 2 | 20 minutes)

The chapter notes that emotions arise when events are appraised as relevant to goals and values. This means your emotional responses are a map of what you care about.

Look back at your emotion log from Exercise 6.1 (or recall significant emotional experiences from the past month).

What do your emotions reveal about what you actually value — as distinct from what you think you should value?

For each significant emotion: - What does this emotion reveal about what matters to you? - Is this value one you consciously endorse? - Is there a gap between your professed values and what your emotions reveal you actually care about?

Exercise 6.13 — Amara's Emotional Style (Level 2 | 20 minutes)

Based on what you know about Amara from Chapters 1–6, sketch her emotional profile:

What emotions appear most frequently in her experience?
What are her primary appraisal patterns? (What kinds of situations reliably produce what kinds of evaluations?)
What is her characteristic regulation strategy? (Does she reappraise? Suppress? Approach or avoid?)
What is the functional cost of her current emotional style?
What would a healthier emotional style look like for her?

Exercise 6.14 — Developing Your Reappraisal Repertoire (Level 3 | Ongoing)

Identify your three most problematic recurring emotional patterns — the emotional responses that most consistently interfere with your wellbeing or behavior.

For each, develop a reappraisal repertoire: a set of three or four genuine, credible alternative appraisals that you can draw on when the default appraisal arises.

Write these down. Practice them in low-stakes situations before they are needed in high-stakes ones.

Note: This is not positive thinking or denial. It is expanding the range of interpretations available to you, so that the default (often worst-case) interpretation is not the only one your mind produces automatically.

Exercise 6.15 — Emotion and Relationship (Level 3 | 30 minutes)

Choose one important relationship in your life.

Emotional expression: What emotions do you express to this person? What do you withhold?
Why: What drives the expression or withholding? (Fear of burdening them? Fear of judgment? Past experience?)
Cost: What is the cost — to you and to the relationship — of the emotions you withhold?
Imagine: What would change if you expressed one withheld emotion authentically and skillfully in this relationship?

Reflection: Is emotional authenticity in this relationship possible? What would it require from you?