The Emotions Wheel
Most adults navigate an entire inner life with about four words. Mad. Sad. Fine. Pissed off. That is like describing a whole ocean using the word wet.
You cannot ask for what you have never given yourself the words to name. So let us find the real word, and then the one on the other side.
Tap a slice to open it. The warm colours on the right are the hard words. Directly opposite each one, across the circle, is the other side.
Start with the big word
Pick the one you would normally say. We will find the truer word from there.
Two ways I use this
One
Find the word that is actually true
You thought you were angry. You look at the wheel and you find disrespected. Or dismissed. Or unimportant. And something in your chest goes quiet for a second, because that is the real one, and you have never once said it out loud.
That is not a vocabulary exercise. That is the difference between swinging at fog and knowing what you are actually dealing with.
Two
Turn the wheel to the other side
I sat with a woman whose every word about her husband came from the same side of the circle. Furious. Resentful. Humiliated. Every one of them true, and every one of them earned.
So I asked her one question. Not what happened, not who was wrong. Just this. What do you actually want, at the soul level? She cried harder than she had all afternoon, and she said, I want to fix my marriage.
The hard words are honest. Keep them. But hard words are almost always a report about the past. The other side of the wheel is the only place you can speak about what you want next.
If every word you use about a person comes from one side of the circle, they will never learn what you are hoping for. They will only ever learn what they cost you. And a person can only walk toward you if you have told them where you are standing.
Teach it to a child
Almost nobody taught us any of this. Not our parents, not our schools, and I say that with no blame, because nobody taught them either. So we learned to stuff it. A stuffed feeling does not disappear, it waits, building pressure like a pot with the lid clamped down.
Give a child the words and you have given them a valve. They can say I feel left out instead of throwing something. They can say I am nervous about tomorrow instead of a stomachache with no explanation.
It would be a wonderful thing if this were taught in every classroom. It is not. So it gets taught by whoever knows it, to whoever is in front of them. That is you now. You know it.
Tend your garden
There are no wrong answers. Only more accurate ones.
- 1.Write down the four feeling words you actually use in daily life. Just four. Now look at how much of your inner life is being described with them.
- 2.Think of the last time you said you were angry. Underneath it, what was the truer word? Disrespected? Frightened? Forgotten?
- 3.Pick the relationship that is heaviest for you right now. What do you want from it at the soul level? Not what you are owed. What you want.
- 4.Write one sentence to that person from the other side of the wheel. You do not have to send it today. Just find out whether you can write it.
Want help finding your words?
This is the kind of work Darci Shin does with clients, one honest conversation at a time. The first call is free.
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This tool is for personal reflection and encouragement. It is not therapy, and it is not medical or mental health treatment. If you are in crisis, please call or text 988 in the United States.