The teaching practice, like the other professions with high relational intensity, is emotively dense, and according to literature it involves a considerable amount of “emotional labour” (EL), which is described as the effort to feel internally or, at least to display externally, those emotions that are consistent with the emotional rules of a professional context. The article argues that teachers should be prepared to care for their emotional dimension, facing the EL in a way that is not only effective in the perspective of the optimisation of the scholastic context but that is also sustainable in the perspective of their own well-being. The problem lies in the identification of a working method on the emotional experience that can be both effective and feasible in the daily life, and moreover has the capability to contribute to teachers’ care for themselves. In addressing this issue, the authors start from the philosophical and psychological assumption according to which emotions are epiphenomena of the cognitive activity, therefore they are an affective experience with an intimate conceptual core. This assumption is the ground for the development of a theory of self-caring that suggests the importance for teachers to engage in a practice of emotional self-understanding, conceived according to the phenomenological method. The article describes this practice, highlighting its effectiveness for teachers, and presents a tool to train in it, namely the “diary of the life of the mind”.