Hi everyone Emma McAdam here. Today I want to share with you a quick technique for
emotion processing. Now emotion processing is the skill of noticing,
naming, and slowing down what you're feeling so that you can make good
choices about it and move forward with more calm and happiness in your life. So
in this video I'm going to teach you the SIFT technique.
So the SIFT technique is a skill that's been developed by Dan Siegel and he's a
pretty well-known author in the field of mental health and parenting and this
technique can be used to help you gain more awareness around what you're
feeling, help you slow things down and notice what's going on for you. So the
SIFT technique is an acronym, "S" stands for noticing what sensations you're
having. So this is all about describing what's going on inside of your body so
if you're feeling upset or if you're not feeling upset, whatever it is you're
feeling you just take a minute and notice what's going on inside of your
body and you're just supposed to describe what sensations you're having,
what physical sensations you're having inside of your body. So that might be
things like noticing a feeling of tension in your shoulders, or noticing
that you have a headache, or noticing that your legs feel relaxed, or noticing
that your stomach feels upset. So the "S" stands for sensation and you just notice
what physical sensations you're having right now. The "I" stands for images. so
this is what kind of images or what kind of impressions are going on in your mind
right now. This might be pictures, it might be impressions of like a scent or
or a place or you know some kind of almost visual something going on inside
your mind, so an image of what? Some people kind of visualize themselves like
if you're really angry you might visualize yourself beating someone up, or
screaming or yelling but it might be something even more subtle than that. It
might just be the sense of you know feeling trapped that could be an image
that you're experiencing. So the "I" stands for notice what images or imagery you're
having inside of you know inside of your mind. The next step in the SIFT technique
is to notice your feelings. So at this point we're actually going to try to
notice and name an emotion going on inside of you and you want to try and
use an emotion word so a word like sad, angry, happy, discouraged and the more
descriptive you can get the better. So they've they've shown that people you
know there's hundreds of words for the emotion anger and the more specific and
the more precise you can be with your language, the more descriptive you can be
about what you're feeling that can help you notice it better, sit with it longer
and then make a better choice about it in the future,
and the last step that we notice in this SIFT technique is "T" is for thoughts. What
kind of thoughts were having. It's not about you know really deep diving into
those thoughts but just noticing what thoughts are passing through your mind
and Dan Siegel says you know we actually don't know what causes thinking. We can't
tell you what causes thinking. It's easy to do a very simplistic explanation like
oh these are neurons bleeping along in your neural pathways in your brain but
thoughts are pretty complex. So take a minute and notice what you're thinking.
So when you do the thoughts part of the SIFT technique you want to just notice
the thoughts that are going through your mind and you don't need to get stuck on
them or try and solve them, this whole process is not about figuring out why,
it's not asking "why am I feeling sad?", or "why am I feeling angry?", or "why am I
having muscle tension?". That is not what the SIFT technique is about it's about
what. This technique is about describing what you're feeling. So if you practice
the SIFT technique a couple of times a day it can help you gain more emotional
control by getting more awareness around what you're feeling. It'll help you
better understand how your thoughts and your feelings and your physical
sensations are all related and it can help you gain a little bit more
self-control and ability to regulate your emotions and this is all just like
one piece of the bigger process of emotion processing. Which is working
through your emotions, noticing them, naming them, asking questions about them
and then deciding what steps to take around them. Anyways I hope you guys
found this helpful thank you for watching and take care.
Hey everyone, real quick I just want to share one very simple thing that you guys
could do to save someone's life. So one of my good friends she was a mentor to
me in college just a really wonderful person her only granddaughter
has been diagnosed with bone cancer and blood cancer and really the best
treatment out there for that is a bone marrow transplant but what they need is
someone who's compatible and in order to find someone who's compatible they
basically need a lot of people to have their information in the system
so that's why today I'm gonna do a cheek swab for Be The Match, so Be The Match
is a repository they keep track of people who are willing volunteers who
submit their DNA through this really simple process and that makes it so that
little girls like Zoey can potentially get the life-saving treatment that they
need. So I'm just going to encourage all of you to sign up on Be The Match, it's
free they'll send you this little cheek swab kit.
it's painless you just swab the inside of your cheek and there's no commitment
but if they do find someone who is a match for you then you could potentially
save that person's life. So I'm just gonna gonna do that cheek swab really
quick and I'm gonna encourage all of you to do the same so go to bethematch.org
and check that out. Thanks very much.
Just like that. Have a good day. Take care everyone.