Very interesting game:
Step 1. Pick an emotion to use during the exercise (anything will do): happiness, sadness, anger, disgust, jealousy, guilt, surprise, fear, anxiety, and so on. (You can also randomly pull the emotion out of a hat or bag.)
Step 2. Get a partner, face each other, and stand at least twenty feet away from one another.
Step 3. Explain to your partner that you are both going to experience and demonstrate the selected emotion in the subtlest form, which we’ll call a Level One. Then take a step closer to one another, and express that emotion as a Level Two, until you eventually reach Level Ten, which is the most intense version of that emotion and you’re right in each other’s faces. (Be sure to start subtly so you actually have somewhere to go when you get to the most intense level.)
Step 4. Then back up, step-by-step, softening the emotion until you are back at Level One. (You can repeat this exercise with a different emotion as often as you like.)
Step 5. Review what happened by answering the following questions:
- Did one of you max out on your emotions before Level Ten?
(This exercise is especially helpful to people whose emotions tend to go from Level One or Two to Level Ten, without realizing how quickly they escalate. These are the people who push others away with their intense anger, or have their feelings slightly hurt at Level One and jump immediately to Level Ten, devastated and ready for revenge!)
From: "You Say More Than You Think" - Janine Driver
