Adapted Mindfulness · Knowing Where You Are
find your state without having to feel it, yet.
Every instruction in this practice starts with knowing which state you're in, and for a lot of us, that question is unanswerable on demand. Interoception is unreliable. The body reports late, or loudly, or not at all. So this page doesn't ask how you feel. It asks what the evidence shows.
Work the evidence below. Pick the highest-numbered rung with two or more items true. One item is noise. Two is a read. You are not checking in with yourself: you are looking at the record.
tick what is true right now, then apply the two-or-more rule.
That is itself a Rung 5 answer. Two shorter routes:
text one person who knows you and ask what you've seemed like today. Or look backward instead of inward: what did the last two hours actually consist of.
these produce Rung 1 and 2 signatures without the underlying state. reading them wrong sends you up the ladder when you need the opposite.
it changes hourly
You are not a Rung 4 person. You were a Rung 4 at 3pm. Re-read after any form.
a camera would catch these
Every item below is behavioural. Nothing asks you to rate or name a feeling. Alexithymia does not disqualify you from using this.