Whether you’re in high school or just starting college, growing up means facing a whirlwind of emotions. So much is changing, and often, you can’t find the words to explain how you feel and why.
You see your friends smiling and feel anger.
You see your family happy and feel jealousy.
You see your crush talking with someone else and feel pain.
It’s all so confusing, and without the right tools to manage your feelings and communicate the many ways they affect you, you could end up isolated with low-self esteem and poor relationships.
That’s why the Feelings Wheel exists: to help you understand and navigate these emotions so you can effectively manage the social, academic, and personal pressures you face every day.
Keep reading to learn what the Feelings Wheel is, and how you can use it every day to better manage your feelings, improve your relationships, and feel more control of your life.
The Feelings Wheel is a visual tool that organizes emotions into categories and subcategories. It starts with broad feelings in the center then branches out to more specific emotions on the edges.
The Feelings Wheel was originally created by Dr. Gloria Willcox in 1982 as an evolution of Dr. Robert Plutchik’s Wheel of Emotions. However, since then, many different versions have been created.
The one we use contains four primary categories (Sad, Mad, Happy, Scared), then branches out to a wide range of nuanced emotions that will help anyone, regardless of age, answer “What am I feeling?” and “Why do I feel this way?” more clearly.
That way, you don’t reduce your emotional experience into only two categories: “good” and “bad.”
There are 3,000+ words in the English language to describe emotions. This just scratches the surface when it comes to labeling our feelings.
As you mature, accurately speaking your heart and mind becomes more and more important. Being able to talk about what you feel and understanding why gives you the emotional fluency needed to keep from going crazy in this world.
Emotional fluency is the ability to name, understand, and manage your emotions. It also means the ability to understand the emotions of people around you.
Building emotional fluency is a skill that helps you in many areas of life, including school, friendships, family, and self-growth.
That’s why the Feelings Wheel matters. Because right now, you may often have internal struggles that you can’t label, and you don’t feel comfortable sharing them with people.
That most likely comes from Fear, which leads you to feeling anxious, confused, worried, and/or embarrassed.
See how that works? By being able to go layers deeper into your feelings, you are able to really lock in on what’s going on inside. This allows you to learn what to do about the feelings.
It’s important to recognize your emotions, and to notice when they’re changing. That way you can make better decisions about what actions to take before doing or saying something that harms yourself or others.
Using TFW is simple. Here’s a 5-step process to get started:
Find a quiet moment, then grab your Feelings Wheel, a notebook, and a pen. Take a deep breath and focus on your body. Ask yourself, “How am I feeling right now?”
Look at the main 4 emotions and select if you are feeling Sad, Mad, Happy, or Angry.
Take that core feeling, then look at the outer rings around it. Which feeling describes your emotion in more depth?
Now that you understand how you’re feeling, observe what happens to you when that emotion takes hold. Do you clench your jaw? Does your heart race? Reflect and write down your experience.
If you feel comfortable doing so, share your thoughts with someone you trust. It can be a friend, parent, teacher, or mentor. Talking through your emotions can do wonders for helping you work through them the next time what you wrote about occurs.
Using the Feelings Wheel comes with plenty of mental benefits. In addition to the obvious (learning how to speak about what you feel), you’ll gain:
When you can recognize and name your emotions, you become more self-aware. This helps you notice patterns: which situations make you anxious or happy, and why. As a result, you become less overwhelmed and confused. You also become less anxious and depressed.
Stress usually comes from a lack of something, whether it be time, money, or other resources. Being able to know why you feel stress gives you the starting point for relieving yourself from it. It’s not “I’m stressed out because I have so much going on,” it’s “I’m stressed because I feel a lack of time for myself and all of the tasks I have to complete.”
Self-esteem comes from what you believe about yourself in relation to what you think the world believes about you. When you know yourself on a deep, emotional level, it becomes much harder for external sources to throw off your internal harmony.
Confidence is the result of competence, which is your ability to do the things you want to do. When you know your emotions on a deep level, you feel more confidence because you know what to do about them.
With emotional fluency, you gain the ability to navigate hard conversations and resolve conflicts in a positive manner. Suddenly, arguments become less about who is right or wrong, and more about why you are arguing in the first place and how all parties involved can leave feeling heard, seen, and understood.
With better communication and higher self esteem comes better relationships. You’ll shed the fat of people who should not be in your life and begin to attract those who should. This is because emotional fluency allows you to better set and uphold your personal boundaries.
Ready to get started right now? We’ll give you 1 simple exercise.
Grab your pen and paper, then answer this prompt: Describe the last time you felt relaxed.
What was the experience? How did you feel? Were you calm? Optimistic?
Answer by looking at your Feelings Wheel, then follow the steps above.
Then, if you found this exercise helpful, check out thecharliefund.org for more information about building emotional fluency.