Recognising emotions is a crucial part of our wellbeing and personal growth. Sometimes we can miss what emotions we truly feel or cannot understand them enough in the first place to be able to communicate them to people around us.
The emnotions wheel has been expanded upon and changed over the years. This wheel moves from the more superficial layers of emotions, such as Happy, Sad, Anger and Bad, down the tiers towards more complex words to describe emotions: Inferior, Overwhelmed, Curious, Cheeky, and Indignant.
So, what do we do with the emotion once we understand what it is?
By identifying and labelling our emotions, we can better understand exactly what it is that we feel. We can then backtrack, through reflective questioning, what the situation was that led us to feeling this way. It may also be a flashback, memory, or something someone has said to us.
We have included some reflective questions that help prompt and guide us with the emotions:
- What am I feeling?
- What may be making me feel this way?
- Is there anything I can do with this feeling?
An example would be:
- What am I feeling?
- Worthless
- What may be making me feel this way?
- My friends have all gone out without me tonight.
- Is there anything I can do with this feeling?
- I could feel miserable and hurt, or I could call another friend of mine that does value me. I will do the latter.
(Where you might want to act on that emotion, check out our guide for emotional regulation tips)
It is also worth noting that our wheel does not incorporate all the emotions a human can experience, as we’re very complex, and the emotions cannot easily be labelled. What this tool aims to do, is allow us to start getting to a point where we can harbour an easier understanding of our feelings.
