create a log to track your feelings. At periodic intervals (e.g., every hour), record words and phrases that best describe how you are feeling at that moment. Try to be as precise as possible, using terms that capture the essence and intensity of how you feel. Maintain your log for at least one week.

1. What patterns or cycles are apparent? Are there times of the day or week when you are more likely to feel particular emotions?
2. How could you have altered your emotions (e.g., to increase pleasurable feelings and decrease negative feelings)?
3. What have you learned about yourself from this exercise that will assist you in your work as a counsellor?
4. Some people suggest that if you empathize with people who have committed horrible offences such as crimes against children that you condone their behaviour. How might you respond to these assertions?

Recall the 10 families of emotions:

• anger,
• fear,
• strength,
• weakness,
• joy,
• sadness,
• confusion,
• shame,
• surprise, and
• love.

Rate your ability to show or express each one on a scale of 1 to 5 (5 = strong, 1 = unable to express).

a. What are the emotions that you have more difficulty expressing? Are there feelings you would never express?

b. How do your ability and willingness to share emotions vary depending on the person you are with?

Predict and describe the possible emotions that different individuals in the following scenarios might experience. What nonverbal cues might you observe in each case?

a. man, whose wife of 60 years has just died

b. young teenager on a first date

c. middle-aged man fired fromhis job

d. 20-year old man told by his doctor that he has schizophrenia

e. mother discovering her teenage daughter using drugs

f. a woman subjected to on-line harassment

g. person who lost his life savings in the stock market

additional comments: suicidal gestures, withdrawal, self-depreciating comments

h. prisoner about to be sentenced

i. angry client

j. client seeing a counsellor for the first (or last) time

k. patientin hospital waiting for major surgery

l. child entering a foster home

m.man who has just abused his wife

n. couple on the day of their marriage

o. immigrant who has left his wife and children at home while he settles

p. serial killer

q. compulsive gambler after a big win or after losing his paycheque

r. 11 year-old girl who has beensexually abused by her father

s. man who has sexually abused his daughter

Identify feeling words and phrases that best describe how each of the following clients may be feeling:

a. "Everyone in my life keeps putting me down. Even my own children constantly criticize me."

b. (shaking)"Fifteen hard years with the same company and what do they do? Theydumpmewiththree weeks' notice."

c. (a 6-year-old boy, crying while speaking to recreation staff)"No one wants to play with me. No one likes me"

d. "If I ever started crying, I don't think I could every stop."

e. (An ex-offender to parole officer)"Have you ever been to jail?"

f. (A16-year-old boy)"I'd rather live on the street than go to another foster home. Five foster homes infive years. I've had enough!"

g. (A Gay man)"I didn't expect to live to see forty."

h. "Why do you want me to go to see a psychiatrist? Do you think I'mcrazy?. You're the one that's crazy."

i. (patient speaking to a paramedic) "Leave me alone. I just want to die."