Feelings can be big and intense or quiet, buried away, and hard to recognize. When you are feeling frustrated and angry, it might be difficult to point to just one feeling. And too often, you bury your feelings not understanding your feelings continue to live buried alive within you. It is imperative for you to better navigate your inner emotional view and foster healthier emotional intelligence to identify and understand your emotions. Otherwise, your buried emotions will burst out of you in a most inconvenient and unpleasant way. Emotions play a crucial role in your experience, influencing behavior, decision-making, and interpersonal relationships. They involve subjective feelings, physiological changes (such as heart rate and hormonal shifts), cognitive processes (thoughts and interpretations), and behavioral responses.
Feelings encompass a range of personalities, each with unique characteristics. Understanding the interplay between your emotions and personalities is essential for comprehending your behavior, fostering self-awareness, and promoting psychological well-being. Your personality are patterns of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that distinguish you from another person. Understanding these traits help to influence your emotional stability and how you regulate your emotions. Each feeling related to your personality trait brings both challenges and benefits. For example, when you feel joy, your personality trait is vibrant and optimistic with characteristics that are energetic, enthusiastic, and positive. Its challenge is the tendency to overlook potential risks.
Your feelings and the personality of your feelings shape your emotional landscape, influence decision-making, and interpersonal dynamics. Acknowledge your emotions without judgment. Techniques like mindfulness and reframing your belief can help navigate challenges. Managing your feelings and emotional personalities enhances relationships, fosters empathy and effective communication. It improves decision-making, as a balanced emotional state allows for a clearer perspective. Mental well-being is also positively impacted, reducing stress, and promoting resilience.
Gloria Wilcox’s Feelings Wheel offers a unique and nuanced approach to help you more clearly pinpoint how you are feeling. This is especially true when you are overwhelmed by your emotions or in heated communications. The Wheel represents three different layers of emotions. Each layer delves deeper into the nuances of your emotional experiences allowing you to pinpoint your feelings.
1) Primary emotions are happiness, sadness, anger, and fear. They provide a general sense of how you are feeling, acting as a starting point for further exploration. On the surface, people say they just want to be happy and struggle to go deeper to understand what that means.
2) Secondary emotions offer a more subtle understanding of your feelings. Under the primary emotion of anger, secondary emotions like frustration, annoyance, and resentment can be found.
3) Tertiary emotions are the most specific and detailed emotions you experience. These emotions capture the subtle distinctions that make each emotional experience unique. Under frustration, for instance, tertiary emotions might include impatience, exasperation, or agitation.
The Feelings Wheel serves as a guide for you to understand the intricate web of emotions you feel and your interconnectedness with other emotions. It is a powerful tool that can help you explore your feelings more deeply and express them more accurately so you can get the support you need, or simply process whatever emotions you are navigating. The benefits include:
· Clear and accurate communication of your emotions.
· Being able to reflect on your emotions ensuring emotional growth and wellbeing.
· Ability to emotionally regulate helping you to identify and label your emotions.
· Validation of the diverse range of emotions you experience to pinpoint your triggers.
· Cultivating empathy by exploring emotions beyond your own experiences.
Google the “Feeling Wheel” and check in with yourself to reflect on how you are feeling in the moment. Take a few breaths and notice how your body feels. Do you have tension anywhere? Then check in with your emotions. Do you feel like you want to cry, hide, or yell? Scan the wheel to discover what adjective best describes your state and then allow that understanding to empower how you want to meet the moment.
Once you identify, understand, and express your feelings you can act. By accurately identifying your emotions and emotional personality traits, you can better understand the triggers and underlying causes of your feelings. This insight empowers you to manage your emotional responses more effectively, reducing impulsive reactions and promoting thoughtful, measured responses. Taking action with your feelings enables you to better understand and explore them. Learning about your feelings encourages you to engage in introspection, reflecting on the subtleties of your emotions and the deeper meanings behind them.
