How to Check-In With Yourself (Using a Hot Cross Bun)
“You are not defined by your thoughts, feelings, behaviours or sensations. They are part of you, not the whole of you.”
By Simon Hughes, Person-Centred Therapist
How are you?
What happens inside as you hear that? Maybe you try to uncover a feeling. Maybe you feel exposed and want to contain it. Maybe headlines flood in. Maybe your jaw hurts and that’s all you can notice. There is not just one route. The aim here is to help you access your experience in the way that comes easiest to you, so you can check in quickly when you need it.
Hot Cross Buns
Simon explains how to check in with yourself, through the timeless medium of Hot Cross Buns.
In CBT, one way of explaining experience uses four quadrants: Thoughts, Feelings, Behaviours and Sensations. Picture a Hot Cross Bun. If you take one quadrant away, it’s still the bun, and each piece tastes the same.
Two takeaways:
You are not defined by your thoughts, feelings, behaviours or sensations. They are part of you, not the whole of you. We are not angry; we are experiencing anger. A critical thought can move across the mind like a cloud. It may be present, but it is not you, and you can choose how much to believe it.
If one door is hard, pick another. If emotional language is tricky, check in via the body. If self-reflection feels effortful, look at behaviour. If breath focus is uncomfortable, debrief a behaviour that confused or shamed you. No single correct entry point.
Want to learn more about CBT? Read our guide to CBT in Oxfordshire
Based in Oxford? We’ve compiled the ultimate guide to therapy in Oxfordshire
Thoughts
Everyone thinks differently. Some of us run an inner narrative; others think in images, senses or single words. Some think like scientists; others think more creatively. None of these is “better” in therapy. We’ll work with your natural style.
Thoughts often feel like “me”, yet many are running commentary picked up in childhood or in social settings where belonging mattered. The need to belong is basic. We sometimes introject unhelpful beliefs through social mediation so we fit in.
Check in with your thoughts
First notice quality, not content. Become the observer to reduce rumination.
Pace: is your mind busy or still?
Intensity: loud and disturbing or softer and passing?
Judgement: pleasant, neutral, or critical - and is that spilling into another quadrant?
Timing: past, present or future?
Action: does this need an action, or would acting feed rumination?
Feelings
Emotional fluency varies. Some can refine and track several feelings at once. Others have a smaller feelings vocabulary or are alexithymic (common in some neurodivergent profiles) and may not know what they feel. Feelings are a sense like any other. You can develop literacy by clustering experiences and adding labels over time. If you feel you have almost no emotional language, traffic-light-style signals for dysregulation can help. Therapy might then lean on other quadrants, get creative, and follow your communication style.
Some people feel overwhelmed by feelings and fear that if grief arrives, the crying won’t stop. Safety first. We build grounding so you can stay within your window of tolerance. With support, travelling towards difficult feelings can bring breakthrough, and you remain in charge of when to pause or go deeper.
We tend to learn feelings when caregivers recognise and accept them in us, which helps us understand and label them. In therapy, your counsellor may notice and reflect what they perceive. We build empathy for others by first building validated empathy for our own experience.
Check in with your feelings
What feeling(s) are here, if any? Numbness counts. An absence of feeling is a state. Don’t force it.
What judgements show up - pleasant, uncomfortable, allowed, unwanted?
Tolerability: if you’re outside your window, ground for safety. You can contain a feeling with a song, image, or brief time-limited container.
Location: where do you feel it in the body? Anger may show in the fists or chest more than the earlobes.
Sensations
Sensations include what’s inside the body (breath, heartbeat, aches, posture, micro-behaviours) and what’s outside (sounds, light, temperature). Humans have many senses, and intensity differs by person. Sensory processing differences are more common in autism and ADHD; focusing on one sense can be grounding, and low-sensory environments may help regulation.
Mindfulness uses sensations to build an observing stance when thoughts or feelings feel too hot—or when behaviour brings shame. It need not be formal meditation. It’s intentional attention to the body in the present moment. For me, running can be mindful by noticing the rhythm of each step.
Check in with sensations
Spend two minutes with the breath: in-breath, pause, out-breath. Notice stomach movement or dryness at the back of the throat. When other quadrants call, acknowledge them kindly and return to the breath.
Scan the body from toes to head. If you meet pain, breathe “into” it. Notice qualities rather than pushing it away.
Attend to sounds, temperature, thirst or hunger, heartbeat, visuals and smells.
Notice tells: clenched teeth, raised shoulders, closed or open posture, head height, eye contact.
Hold all this as an observer. When the picture feels complete, ask what it suggests about your state.
Behaviour
Behaviour is the most external quadrant. Others often define us by it. As we are not our thoughts, we are not our behaviour. Behaviours are goal-directed attempts to meet needs, often outside awareness, and they make sense given our worldview and history.
Two points:
We are accountable for consequences, but behaviour is not the whole of us. This can soften harsh self-blame.
We can analyse puzzling or shame-tinged actions to see what need they met, then meet that need more adaptively and with self-compassion.
Check in with behaviours
You can notice how you are behaving now - e.g., why you are reading this article.
Or take a behaviour that puzzles you and ask:
What was happening in the other three quadrants beforehand?
What triggered it?
How did you act during it?
How do you judge yourself for it?
Can you shift that judgement towards context-aware self-compassion?
What actions might reduce repeats, or address consequences so guilt eases?
The Spice in the Bun
Every client is unique, and the quadrants interact. For example, much serotonin is synthesised in the gut, reminding us mood is not only about “positive thinking”. People communicate differently too. Some talk in stories we unpack slowly. Some use images and allegory. Some are more somatic and locate emotion in the body. Others prefer frameworks and strategies—I did after a major bereavement; I wanted to know I wasn’t going mad. At Aligned, we adapt therapy to meet your individual support needs.
✍️ Written by Simon Hughes
Simon is a Person-Centred Counsellor and a member of the BACP. He lives in Oxford and works online, through telephone call, or in person. He has many years of experience with a diverse range of clients from Cruse Bereavement Care, where he worked with loss and bereavement, and he has over a decade of experience working in Homelessness in Oxfordshire with a focus on recovery from addiction.
He’s a bit of a geek, who very much enjoys board games and tabletop role playing games, alongside partner dancing with his wife and craft activities such as pottery and wood burning.
View Simon’s therapist profile
