I find that playing the piano is a particularly useful technique for gauging my emotions, when they are suppressed/muted. This works better when I’m just making stuff up by ear than it does when I’m playing something I know or reading music. (And learning to make stuff up is a lot easier than learning to read music if you don’t already play.) Playing the piano does not help me feel the emotions any more strongly, but it does let me hear them—I can tell that music is sad, happy, or angry regardless of its impact on my affect. Most people can.
Something that I don’t do that I think would work (based partially on what Ariely says in The Upside of Irrationality, partially on what Norman says in Emotional Design, and partially on anecdotal experience) is to do something challenging/frustrating and see how long it takes for you to give up or get angry. If you can do it for a while without getting frustrated, you’re probably in a positive state of mind. If you give up feeling like it’s futile, you’re sad, and if you start feeling an impulse to break something, you’re frustrated/angry. The shorter it takes you to give up or angry the stronger that emotion is. The huge downside to this approach is that it results in exacerbating negative emotions (temporarily) in order to gauge what you were feeling and how strongly.
I find that playing the piano is a particularly useful technique for gauging my emotions, when they are suppressed/muted. This works better when I’m just making stuff up by ear than it does when I’m playing something I know or reading music. (And learning to make stuff up is a lot easier than learning to read music if you don’t already play.) Playing the piano does not help me feel the emotions any more strongly, but it does let me hear them—I can tell that music is sad, happy, or angry regardless of its impact on my affect. Most people can.
Something that I don’t do that I think would work (based partially on what Ariely says in The Upside of Irrationality, partially on what Norman says in Emotional Design, and partially on anecdotal experience) is to do something challenging/frustrating and see how long it takes for you to give up or get angry. If you can do it for a while without getting frustrated, you’re probably in a positive state of mind. If you give up feeling like it’s futile, you’re sad, and if you start feeling an impulse to break something, you’re frustrated/angry. The shorter it takes you to give up or angry the stronger that emotion is. The huge downside to this approach is that it results in exacerbating negative emotions (temporarily) in order to gauge what you were feeling and how strongly.