2 Acronyms That Help Create Self-Awareness & Emotional Intelligence (NAILED & HALT) - Video Transcript

Hey everyone, I'm Kristen, the anxiety therapist and today I'm going to be talking about a couple of concepts relating to emotional intelligence and self awareness. So sometimes my clients have kind of a hard time identifying either how they're feeling or where some of their anxiety is coming from.

So there are two acronyms that we can use to kind of, I gained some insight into what might be making us feel a particular way. So, um, the first one is nailed n a I l e d. And that stands for needy, anxious, inadequate, lonely, exposed and depleted.

So if we're feeling emotional in some way or distressed in some way, we can kind of check in with ourselves and go through that list of the nailed acronym and ask ourselves, okay, am I feeling needy? And if I am feeling needy, what does that mean? Usually that means that we want to feel cared for, we want to feel cared about and to go seek out opportunities to create that feeling using your support system.

Second is anxious. So if we're feeling anxious about something, um, you know, a lot of times that's anticipatory, we have something coming up and we're fearing the worst or we have sort of negative assumptions about that so we can do some sort of reframing and really ask ourselves how likely it is that something will, yeah, will happen.

That is truly catastrophic or kind of run through those basic thought processes with ourselves. Third is inadequate. So if we're feeling inadequate, that means that we're not feeling very confident, maybe we're comparing ourselves to others. This can come up a lot if we're scrolling through social media and we're comparing our lives to someone else's highlight real, so to speak, and we might feel inadequate like we don't measure up.

And so I think in that case it's important to um to use some affirmations and some positive self-talk and just kind of focus on the positive things about yourself or your life that you can pick out. Um l is for lonely obviously for feeling lonely, it means that we're feeling disconnected from other people. So I again recommend reaching out to your support system.

If we feel exposed usually that means we're feeling vulnerable in some way, maybe we're embarrassed about something. Um so in that case I think again just sort of reframing the situation, was it really as bad as I feel like it was or um you know, if I'm feeling embarrassed about something, what are the repercussions of being judged for whatever it is that I'm feeling embarrassed about, usually it's much more inflated in our minds than it is in reality.

And then finally the d is for depleted. So if we're feeling depleted, that could be emotionally mentally physically. Um and so we want to do something restorative, we need to do something that will replenish and restore that. Either that emotional mental or physical energy, another acronym I like is halt and that stands for hungry.

Angry, lonely and tired. So I'm sure all of you guys have heard the term hungry. I know I get hungry if I get too hungry and that affects my mood. So um if we're feeling hungry, that can be a physical sensation in which we haven't, we truly haven't eaten in a long time and our body needs food.

But it can also be psychological, so if it is psychological trying to get to the root of why we feel like we need to be emotionally eating. Are we bored? Are we stressed? Um you know what is behind that? Angry is second? So if the a.

Is for anger, if we feel angry, usually that's a secondary emotion. So there's usually more vulnerable emotion underneath that anger. So trying to figure out ok what's actually underneath my anger and my feeling disrespected and my feeling sad about something. Um a lot of times we don't like to acknowledge the more vulnerable feelings because they're scary right, they’re vulnerable, nobody likes to feel vulnerable but acknowledging those is really important.

And then just having an outlet for that anger. So maybe go for a walk or get some physical activity and um l is for lonely. Same as the nailed acronym. So utilize your support system and then finally the t. Is for tired and again this can be physical, let's say we only got a few hours of sleep the night before going ahead and taking a nap but it can also be psychological, so maybe we're feeling burnt out.

Maybe we're just kind of exhausted and depleted because we're overworking ourselves or we have too many commitments and so just kind of making sure that we engage in self-care and prioritize things is going to be super important. So again use nailed and use halt to kind of check in with yourselves about how you're feeling emotionally.

These are also great to use with kids. Um, it's just an easy way, an easy check-in, and easy words to remember so that you can kind of get more in touch with how you're feeling and gain that self-awareness. So I hope you found this video helpful. Um feel free to drop a comment or ask a question if you would like to see more content.

I put out new content every Friday. So follow my Facebook or Instagram pages, @cathartic space counseling or you can follow my subscribe to my youtube channel, the anxiety therapist. So I hope you'll have a great weekend. I'll see you next time.