Language plays a crucial role in our personal growth, helping us develop empathy, emotional intelligence, and a better understanding of ourselves and the world around us.
Using a feeling wheel can help us better understand and speak what we are feeling appropriately.
Examining and understanding the definitions of feelings provides a pathway to deeper insights. Naming the feeling appropriately allows for deeper exploration of the reasons behind our emotional states. Understanding a feeling when it is not named properly becomes significantly more challenging.
We are emotional beings so getting good at using language to name our emotions benefits us immensely as earthlings.
Here is a feeling wheel along with a few common definitions to get you started. Making this a daily practice will better help expand your emotional language thus expand your ability to address and heal.
Overwhelm: The feeling of being overburdened with emotion and/or mental intensity to a point where one cannot function normally. Life is unfolding faster than we can keep up with it.
-Atlas of the Heart
Peaceful: Encompassing a calm joy or quiet pleasure that arises when our needs are (even transiently) satisfied, and we find harmony within ourselves and our surroundings.
-Berkley Well Being Institute
Vulnerable: A willingness to take a risk to show emotions and provide honest expression despite fears.
-Psych Central
Inadequate: An emotional response when we perceive ourselves as lacking something essential or falling short of our self-imposed standards.
-Berkley Well Being Institute
Confident: Having a strong belief in one’s abilities and a sense of assurance.
Disappointed: An unmet expectation(s). The more significant the expectations, the more significant the disappointment.
-Atlas of the Heart
Joyful: A state of delight, contentment, and positive emotion
-The American Psychological Association
Stressed: When we evaluate environmental demands as beyond our ability to cope successfully. This includes elements of unpredictability, uncontrollability, and feeling overloaded.
-Atlas of the Heart
Thankful: Feeling of gratitude, appreciation, or recognition for something received or experienced. It is acknowledging the positive aspects of life and being appreciative of them.
Hopeless: It is caused by a combination of negative life experiences and negative thought patterns, particularly self-blame.
-Atlas of the Heart
Curious: Possessing a strong desire to explore, discover, and understand. Eagerness to learn, inquisitiveness, and fascination.
Frustrated: experiencing a sense of annoyance, disappointment, or agitation due to obstacles, unmet expectations, or challenges.
Sensitive: Being highly aware of and responsive to emotions, external stimuli, or interpersonal interactions. A tendency to perceive things more intensely or deeply.
