The Feelings Wheel: unlock the power of your emotions
Clinically reviewed by Dr. Chris Mosunic, PhD, RD, CDCES, MBA
Learn how to understand and process your emotions, increase self-awareness, enhance emotional communication, and boost your wellbeing with the Feelings Wheel.
Sometimes feelings can be big and intense, and other times they’re quiet, buried away, and harder to recognize. If you’re feeling frustrated and angry, it might be difficult to point to just one feeling, but having several to choose from may help you to zero in on exactly what’s going on inside.
Enter: The Feelings Wheel. The brainchild of Dr. Gloria Willcox, the Feelings Wheel can help us put words to our emotions and to care for our mental health.
What is the Feelings Wheel?
The Feelings Wheel offers a unique and nuanced approach to identifying and comprehending emotions. It’s a tool that allows individuals to better navigate their inner emotional landscapes and foster healthier emotional intelligence.
Dr. Gloria Wilcox's Feelings Wheel draws from a diverse range of disciplines, including psychology, neuroscience, and linguistics.
How does the Feelings Wheel work?
The Feelings Wheel organizes the different dimensions of feelings we may have into several categories and subcategories to help you pinpoint exactly how you’re feeling, which can be helpful, especially if you’re overwhelmed by your emotions or in a heated communication.
At first glance, the Feelings Wheel resembles a color wheel, with concentric circles representing different layers of emotions. The Wheel is divided into primary emotions, secondary emotions, and tertiary emotions. Each layer delves deeper into the nuances of emotional experiences, allowing individuals to pinpoint their feelings with remarkable precision.
Primary emotions: The innermost circle of the wheel consists of broad primary emotions, such as happiness, sadness, anger, and fear. These emotions serve as the fundamental building blocks of our emotional experiences. They provide a general sense of how we are feeling, acting as a starting point for further exploration.
Secondary emotions: As we move outward, the wheel introduces secondary emotions that stem from the primary emotions. These emotions offer a more nuanced understanding of our feelings. For example, under the primary emotion of anger, secondary emotions like frustration, annoyance, and resentment can be found. This layer acknowledges that emotions are rarely singular; they often manifest as a complex blend of various feelings.
Tertiary emotions: The outermost layer of the Feelings Wheel unveils tertiary emotions, which are the most specific and detailed emotions one can 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.
Why use the Feelings Wheel?
The Feelings Wheel can serve as a guide to understand the intricate web of emotions we all feel and their interconnectedness with other emotions. It’s a powerful tool that can help you explore your feelings more deeply and also express them more accurately so you can get the support you need, or simply process whatever emotions you’re navigating.
Here are some of the benefits of using the Feelings Wheel.
The Feelings Wheel facilitates effective communication
Clear and accurate communication of emotions is pivotal in maintaining healthy connections with others. With the Feelings Wheel, you can effectively communicate your emotional states, enabling your loved ones or colleagues to respond to you with empathy and support. This tool helps break down barriers in conversations and fosters open dialogue about feelings.
The Feelings Wheel encourages mindful reflection
Being able to reflect on our emotions can benefit our emotional growth and wellbeing. The Feelings Wheel serves as a mirror that reflects the intricate tapestry of emotions within us. As you explore the various segments of the Wheel, you may discover emotions they hadn't previously recognized or considered.
This exploration cultivates increased self-awareness, allowing you gain insight into your thoughts and behaviors.
The Feelings Wheel can support emotional regulation
Emotionally regulating oneself is a fundamental aspect of mental wellbeing. The Feelings Wheel aids in this process by helping you to identify and label your emotions, which is the first step towards managing them.
When we can pinpoint our emotions, we are better equipped to implement strategies for emotional regulation. This might involve techniques like mindfulness, deep breathing, or engaging in activities that align with the corresponding emotional needs.
💙 If you’re feeling stressed or overwhelmed, try this Sign of Relief guided meditation with Jay Shetty.
The Feelings Wheel can help you identify emotional patterns and triggers
The Feelings Wheel validates the diverse range of emotions we experience and can help us better pinpoint our triggers. It helps us understand that our emotional responses are valid and normal, which is especially important in cultures or environments that might stigmatize certain emotions.
This validation fosters a sense of empowerment, encouraging individuals to embrace their feelings without judgment and also to better learn how to manage them when they come up.
Support for mental health:
The Feelings Wheel has found a valuable place in therapy and mental health treatment. Therapists often use it as a tool to facilitate discussions about emotions, allowing clients to delve deeper into their experiences. Moreover, it aids therapists in teaching clients about emotional intelligence and coping strategies. As a result, the Feelings Wheel contributes to more effective therapeutic outcomes.
The Feelings Wheel helps to enhance emotional awareness
Empathy and emotional awareness are key in understanding and sharing our feelings with others. These are cornerstones of healthy relationships and effective communication.
The Feelings Wheel can help individuals cultivate empathy by encouraging them to explore emotions beyond their own experiences. By engaging with the wheel, people develop a broader perspective on emotions, enabling them to relate to and support others more effectively.
Using a tool like The Feelings Wheel can help you to get better in tune with yourself and your feelings. It can be a great tool for communication, or even when journaling your feelings.
💙 For more resources like this, check out Calm’s Feelings Journal
How to use the Feelings Wheel
The Feelings Wheel serves as more than just a visual representation of emotions; it's a practical tool that empowers individuals to develop their emotional intelligence. Here's how the Feelings Wheel can be effectively utilized:
1. Download the Feelings Wheel
We recommend downloading this handy tool for the next time you can’t quite name what’s arising within.
We also included a black and white version of the feelings wheel so that you can color it in yourself. Coloring the wheel is an opportunity to get to know and contemplate each word.
2. Check-in with yourself
The first step in using the Feelings Wheel is to take a moment to check in with how you feel 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, 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.
Figuring out the basic category of feelings you’re in can help you to pinpoint exactly what’s going on. Sometimes we struggle to accurately identify our emotions beyond the basic ones. The Feelings Wheel helps us delve deeper into our emotional states, allowing us to differentiate between, for instance, sadness and melancholy. This heightened emotional awareness is the cornerstone of emotional intelligence, fostering healthier self-expression and communication.
3. Communicate your emotions
Once you know exactly what you’re feeling then you can start communicating it either to yourself, your partner, or someone else in your support system.
Expressing emotions can be a challenging task, especially when words fall short of capturing the complexity of feelings we’re having. The Feelings Wheel offers a common language for describing emotions, enhancing communication between individuals. This can be particularly helpful in personal relationships, workplace settings, and therapy sessions, where understanding and articulating emotions is crucial.
4. Take appropriate action
Once you’ve expressed your feelings you can take action. By accurately identifying our emotions, we can better understand the triggers and underlying causes of our feelings. This insight empowers them to manage their emotional responses more effectively, reducing impulsive reactions and promoting thoughtful, measured responses.
💙 Feeling stressed? Try SOS Breath Work with Chibs Okereke.
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 our emotions and the deeper meanings behind them.
The Feelings Wheel FAQs
What is The Feelings Wheel?
The Feelings Wheel, created by Dr. Gloria Willcox can help us put words to our emotions which inturn can help us care for our mental health. Sometimes feelings can be big and intense and other times they are quiet, buried away, and harder to recognize. If you’re feeling frustrated and angry, it might be difficult to point to just one feeling, but having several to choose from may help you to zero in on exactly what’s going on inside.
How can I use it?
The Feelings Wheel serves as more than just a visual representation of emotions; it's a practical tool that empowers individuals to develop their emotional intelligence. The wheel made of concentric circles shows primary emotions and then breaks them down further into secondary and tertiary emotions to help you pinpoint exactly how you’re feeling. It’s a great tool for communication, or even journaling exactly how you’re feeling. Download here.
What is it best used for?
The Feelings Wheel is best used for communication, but it also enhances emotional intelligence, empathy, reflection and emotional regulation.
Are there any downsides?
There are very few downsides to expressing your emotions when you’re able to do it in a mindful manner. If you feel nervous about expressing how you feel, you can use The Feelings Wheel with a mental health professional. That way if expressing the feelings triggers anything big and scary, you have an advocate there to help you process it.
Where can I find The Feelings Wheel?
You can download it for free right here.
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