Emotions, needs, and the Feelings Wheel

I love working with emotion. For some people it’s almost a dirty word; to be “emotional” is to be “irrational”, and should therefore be avoided at all costs. “It would be so much easier if I didn’t feel this way!”

As humans, we relate to the world in three fundamental ways: behaviour, thoughts, and emotions. Psychotherapy targets one or all of these facets in order to create change. Consider someone who is grieving: they withdraw from normal social activities (behaviour), begin to believe that they will never be happy again (thoughts), and experience overwhelming sadness (emotion). They may find relief through re-engaging with friends (behaviour), challenging their belief with evidence of small day-to-day happiness (thoughts), and opening up to someone who cares (emotion).

I find that, most often, my clients equate therapy with talking exclusively about their thoughts. In this “mind first” approach, clients seek ways to alter their cognition to help them be less anxious or depressed. They hope that by changing their thinking, they will start to “feel better”.

But what if feeling your feelings could lead you to “think better”?

EMOTIONS AS ANOTHER IMMUNE SYSTEM

“Emotions give us information”, says Dr. Les Greenberg. “They are part of an intelligent system” that “signals” to us what we need, whether or not we are comfortable, and what direction we should head in. I often liken this to an immune system - if you have an infection, your body sends white blood cells to heal you. If you wake up with a runny nose, you might reach for cold medication. Similarly, emotions alert us to an underlying psychological need that we have.

  • If I am feeling overwhelmed with the amount of work I have to do, I may need to delegate

  • If I am feeling lonely, I may need to text a friend to hang out

  • If I am feeling hurt by a loved one, I may need an apology

  • If I am feeling remorseful, I may need to apologise

  • If I am feeling frustrated, I may need to take a break

HOW DO I KNOW WHAT I FEEL?

So many of us are used to getting “stuck in our heads”. If something bothers us, we try to explain it away. We prize cognition, logic, and intellectualizing; subsequently, we neglect our emotional reality. Overtime, our emotional awareness shrinks.

Enter the Feelings Wheel:

Bonus - increasing your own emotional awareness and vocabulary allows you to better empathize with others!

We may be comfortable speaking only in the language of the middle circle - “I’m angry”, “I’m sad”. These words, however, miss the nuance of the outer circles of the Feelings Wheel. Someone who is feeling disrespected may need something very different than someone who is feeling jealous. Telling a friend you had a “bad” day may elicit a shoulder shrug and a helpful change of subject; but if you’re actually feeling “overwhelmed”, they might ask “Can I take something off your plate?”

Here, the goal of the Feelings Wheel is to expand your emotional vocabulary so that you might get a better sense of what you need. Increasing your specificity will lead to greater relief. Change comes from the bottom-up: labelling emotions leads to expressing your needs, which leads to a clearer head and more positive thinking.

References

Evolving concepts of emotion and motivation (Berridge, 2018): https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01647/full

The Feelings Wheel: https://blog.calm.com/blog/the-feelings-wheel

Why are Emotions Important by Dr. Les Greenberg: https://www.youtube.com/watch?ab_channel=TheNorwegianInstituteofEmotion-focusedTherapy&v=Tiu13Nioqxo

Amanda Thiessen