How to be an expert at identifying your feelings

Emotions vs. feelings

Wait! There’s a difference?! 

In fact there is. 

Emotions are the biochemical reactions (e.g. neurotransmitters) to an external stimulus. The amygdala is primarily responsible for this emotional arousal. The amygdala is at the center of our brain and also where the flight-fight-freeze-fawn responses originate. Like when the hair goes up on our necks, or our stomach drops? That’s emotions; the generalized physical sensation experienced. 

Feelings on the other hand are the conscious experience of the emotion stimulus. The feelings, or labels, we apply are actually our personal interpretation of the emotional response. The interpretation comes from our lived experiences, beliefs, memories, thoughts and awareness of the situation or trigger. 

To get an accurate understanding we must collect information from both our emotions and our feelings. By creating this awareness within ourselves we can then more fully appreciate the experience and more healthfully respond to the trigger. 

Each human experience triggers an emotional response, which in turn triggers our feelings, and responses. So let’s ask a few simple questions to get a better grasp of things. 

Tell me, oh great amygdala, what am I feeling? 

 In my years as a therapist helping others navigate their emotions and feelings, I’ve learned that many are unfamiliar with their own body’s physical response to feelings. So I talk to them about building awareness of their physical sensations in everyday situations. 

What are physical sensations? Those are the biological events occurring in our body, again triggered by our amygdala. Some examples include sweating, hot red cheeks, tingling on our hands, rapid heart rate, or shallow fast breathing. Think back to a time earlier today when there was an increase in tension or excitement. What was happening in your body? I tell my clients to do a mental body scan—head to toe—to see what’s different in that moment. 

Once there is a new awareness of the emotions, or physical sensations, experienced, I then help my clients create an understanding of the feelings associated with it. Here is where we get to label things. 

[pulls out her label maker…]

Did you know that there are approximately 3000 words used to describe feelings in the English language! That’s a lot of labels! How did we get so many? Read on to find out. 

One of the most prominent theories of the 20th century is Robert Plutchik's wheel of emotions. Since we now know that once we label the emotion, it is called a feeling, we will now refer to them as feelings on the Plutchik wheel. Plutchik proposed eight basic feelings—joy, sadness, trust, disgust, fear, anger, surprise, and anticipation. Using colors to represent each basic feeling, the wheel showed that these overlapped and bled into the next like hue on a color wheel. With those 8 basic categories to start, that leads to over 34,000 combinations of feelings! 



Too many choices! I need an easy answer!

Like the Pixar movie, Inside Out, sometimes it’s easiest to identify a fewer number of options. In the movie there are five major categories of feelings portrayed—anger, sadness, joy, fear, and disgust. The key is to collect all the data points possible to identify the final answer. So how do you determine what you’re experiencing? Here are some simple steps to Identifying your Feelings applied to a simple example. 

Picture it. You are at work and the boss stops by your workspace saying, “Come find me later, we need to talk.”

(Gulp. Anyone else having an immediate reaction to this? No? Just me. Okay.)

1. Pay attention to what’s happening in your body. This means creating that awareness of body language and physical sensations. 

   “I immediately notice that my heart rate has increased and I’m starting to sweat. My shoulders have climbed up into my ears (tensing) and I have an awkward smile and am nodding foolishly.”

2. Decide what happened to make you feel this way. This can be the full situation or a portion of the situation. Don’t negate the automatic negative thoughts (ANTs) that come into play. 

   “My boss just unexpectedly came to my work space and asked to see me. I don’t know the reason and it’s an unusual way for her to ask me.”

3. Decide what to call the feeling. Here we get to put all the data points (see step 1) together and out a label on what’s happening. What label do we place on what we are experiencing? 

   “I’m feeling anxious and concerned about my performance on the job.”

 (Note that all the steps of the skill, Identifying your Feelings, are done mentally; not aloud).

Now that you have some clearer steps on how to more accurately and consistently identify our feelings, I hope that you find it useful while navigating everyday situations. If you are experiencing more intense feelings or find it difficult to find a helpful and healthy response to those feelings, I encourage you to find a  therapist who may be able to help.