Once you start to recognise and experience your emotions, you can begin to identify them. Specificity is key, here.

“Once we label our emotions, we are paying attention to them,” Boudou notes. “But this is not as simple as it may sound. In the same way as we often struggle to articulate our feelings, we find it hard to label our emotions. Most of us have a limited vocabulary of emotions. We often struggle to recognise or label the more nuanced ones and miss opportunities to really understand what we feel.

“There are many extended lists of emotions that you can find on the internet. When you look at the lists you may find for example that what you thought was ‘anger’ is in fact ‘frustration’ or that ‘humiliation’ is more accurate than ‘ashamed’ for what you feel when a colleague shouts at you during a meeting. You can use these lists at home with your family to get them used to the range of emotions and to become more familiar with them.”

No more false “I’m fine” declarations: 5 expert tips to get to grips with your emotions