As a Licensed Professional Counselor, I work with people to address their feelings. In the beginning this can be difficult because they may only be able to name a few. I am starting this blog to put more feelings vocabulary out there and offer a way for others to learn to name what they are feeling.
I opened the dictionary, yes, the old, heavy, dusty kind and this jumped out:
APPREHENSIVE - anxious or fearful about the future, uneasy
This feeling of apprehension finds itself at the lower end of the anxiety continuum but it's subtlety may have gotten lost with the rise of anxiety. Maybe we are all living with a slight or more than slight feeling of apprehensiveness on a regular basis. I know that when I walk along the sidewalk of a busy street I feel slightly apprehensive and when I go to the doctor for a blood draw, I feel very apprehensive.
So how can we recognize and check into our feeling of apprehension? Have a chat with it a bit before we hop the express train to the point of no return?
Allowing a few seconds to look at it and possibly trace it's roots is helpful.
Ask yourself, what IS this? And name it.
Ask yourself, why might I be feeling this?
And then ask, is this feeling helpful, rational, useful?
This allows you to see it for what it is and choose your response.
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