Emotion Regulation Skills
Your Emotions: What Are They?
Emotions are signals
When something pleasurable is happening to you, you feel good; when something distressing is happening to you, you feel bad.
Primary emotions :
If you won a contest, you might instantaneously feel surprised.
When someone you care about dies, you quickly feel sad.
When someone does something that offends you, you might immediately feel angry.

Secondary emotions: These are emotional reactions to your primary emotions.
Ben yelled at his sister because she did something that made him feel angry.
A little later he felt guilty about getting so angry with her.
Example: Mary became anxious when she was asked to make a future presentation at work. As the day drew closer, she became depressed as she thought about how anxious she was getting, and then she started to feel worthless that she couldn’t make a simple presentation. Then, the day after the presentation, she started to feel guilty that she had made such a big deal about it in the first place.
Exercise two: What is your primary emotion and secondary emotions?

Exercise three : Recognizing Your Emotions
The six-step process that will help you recognize your emotions (Linehan, 1993b).
What happened and when?
Why do you think that situation happened?
How did the situation make you feel, both emotionally (1 , 2 ) and physically?
What did you want to do as a result of how you felt?
What did you do and say?
How did your emotions and actions affect you later?