About this course

Learning Objectives

• Describe the role of emotional literacy, emotional granularity, and self-awareness in clinical practice.
• Differentiate at least 10 commonly confused emotional experiences to improve clinical assessment, case conceptualization, and treatment planning.
• Apply at least three clinical strategies that help clients accurately identify emotional experiences and select interventions that are better matched to the underlying emotion.

Learning Levels

• Beginner and Intermediate, all levels are welcomed

Target Audience

Course Instructor(s)

• 

  Erena DiGonis, LCSW-R

  Trauma Therapist, Educator, and Founder of EngagedMinds Continuing Education

  Erena DiGonis, LCSW-R, is a New York State Licensed Clinical Social Worker, Certified Health Coach, and Certified Clinical Anxiety and Trauma Treatment Professional. She is also a Certified Brainspotting Therapist and has advanced training in EMDR and Pain Reprocessing Therapy. Erena has more than twenty-three years of clinical and professional experience as a therapist, educator, supervisor, and consultant. Throughout her career, she has worked in community mental health, psychiatric, residential, in-home, and private practice settings, providing care for hundreds of individuals with complex mental health needs.

  Erena's expertise extends beyond direct clinical practice. As Assistant Director of Quality Improvement for multiple behavioral health programs, she was responsible for clinical documentation audits, treatment plan reviews, quality improvement initiatives, policy development, regulatory investigations, and preparing programs for reviews and surveys by the New York State Office of Mental Health (OMH), Office for People With Developmental Disabilities (OPWDD), New York State Department of Health (DOH), the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), and the Council on Accreditation (COA). This experience allows her to teach documentation and ethics through both a clinician's and an auditor's lens, helping professionals create records that are clinically meaningful, ethically sound, compliant with regulatory expectations, and audit-ready.

  Erena is the Founder and Continuing Education Director of EngagedMinds, a national continuing education organization providing evidence-informed training for social workers, counselors, therapists, and psychologists. She is a sought-after writer, speaker, and consultant whose work has been featured in Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire, Psychology Today, Reader's Digest, Women's Health, and MEL Magazine. She has served as a reviewer for the National Association of Social Workers (NASW) Press and is an Advisory Board Member for the CPTSD Foundation.

Disclosure

References

• Barrett, L. F. (2017). How emotions are made: The secret life of the brain. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
• Brown, B. (2021). Atlas of the heart: Mapping meaningful connection and the language of human experience. Random House.
• Erbas, Y., Kalokerinos, E. K., Kuppens, P., Van Halem, S., & Ceulemans, E. (2022). Emotional granularity and emotional regulation: A systematic review. Frontiers in Psychology, 13, 875682.
• Kim, M., You, J., Seong, G., Kim, H., Jeon, I., Jung, Y. C., & Lee, D. (2026). Preliminary Evidence for Changes in Functional Connectivity Associated with Emotional Awareness after Mobile-Based Mindfulness Meditation. Yonsei medical journal, 67(3), 238–250. https://doi.org/10.3349/ymj.2025.0012
• Lancastle, D., & Boivin, J. (2024). A systematic review of interventions aimed at improving emotion regulation and mental health outcomes. Journal of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.
• Lane, R. D., & Schwartz, G. E. (1987). Levels of emotional awareness: a cognitive-developmental theory and its application to psychopathology. The American journal of psychiatry, 144(2), 133–143. https://doi.org/10.1176/ajp.144.2.133
• Mete, E., Benli, R. K., Cinbaz, G., Karacan, E., Ayaz, E. Y., Dincer, B., & Yanık, A. (2026). Green Exercise for Emotional Health: Effects on Alexithymia, Depression, and Quality of Life in Older Adults-A Randomised Controlled Trial. Psychogeriatrics : the official journal of the Japanese Psychogeriatric Society, 26(2), e70146. https://doi.org/10.1111/psyg.70146
• Norcross, J. C., & Lambert, M. J. (2018). Psychotherapy relationships that work III. Psychotherapy, 55(4), 303–315. https://doi.org/10.1037/pst0000193
• Nummenmaa, L., Glerean, E., Hari, R., & Hietanen, J. K. (2014). Bodily maps of emotions. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 111(2), 646–651. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1321664111
• Ozomaro, B., Wein, P. Y., Miller, S., Ospina, L. H., Goodman, M., Torous, J., & Kimhy, D. (2025). Emotional granularity in health and psychopathology: A scoping review. Journal of psychiatric research, 190, 277–295. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpsychires.2025.08.008
• Pepping, N., et al. (2025). Improving emotion regulation ability: A systematic review of interventions in clinical populations. Neuropsychological Rehabilitation.
• Wang, Y., Zai, F., & Zhou, X. (2025). The impact of emotion regulation strategies on well-being and positive emotions: A meta-analysis. Behavioral Sciences, 15(3), 342.
• Wright, R. N., Adcock, R. A., & LaBar, K. S. (2025). Learning emotion regulation: An integrative framework. Psychological review, 132(1), 173–203. https://doi.org/10.1037/rev0000506
• Zhu, C., Huang, Y., Li, P., Wu, C., Wang, Y., Liu, D., & Luo, W. (2026). Differential Effects of Emotion-Label Words and Emotion-Laden Words Priming on Estimation Performance: A Disassociation from Math Anxiety. Journal of psycholinguistic research, 55(2), 25. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10936-026-10210-7