Name the Emotion
Name your feelings
When you’re feeling an emotion that is uncomfortable, unpleasant, or creating distress, take a moment to pause, take a deep breath, and name your emotion.
Take an extra beat and get curious — find more specific words to define how you are feeling.
In doing this, you activate your brain in a healthy way that keeps you connected with your feeling (rather than pushing it down) but creates a bit of space between you and the feeling so you can evaluate it and choose how you want to respond, rather than just reacting.
Use language “I am feeling______” rather than “I am ________”
A lot of emotions have a core emotion beneath them… such as Happiness, Anger, Sadness, Fear and Disgust.
You can she this on the emotion wheel below:
Example “I am feeling overwhelmed” rather than “I am overwhelmed.”
After you’ve named your feeling, take a moment to ask yourself “What can I learn from this feeling” and explore the feeling a bit more.
The more you take this small step, the stronger your brain will become in learning how to respond and evaluate your feelings rather than simply reacting to them.
We have so many words to describe emotions, yet developing emotional granularity can take some practice. It can be enjoyable and helpful to check out a Feelings Wheel (see below) and even look up definitions of words that describe feelings/emotions to increase our understanding of these words.
Here is a copy of a Feelings Wheel to play with. The Feelings Wheel was originally developed by Dr. Gloria Willcox.
Here is Decider Skills video on Naming the Emotion:
Here are some worksheets you can use in naming your emotions:
