Emotions have finely tuned flavours that, if we become aware of them, help us understand how we are feeling and responding to the world.
The emotion or feeling wheel is a fabulous resource that helps us broaden our emotional awareness and language.
Using a feeling wheel, can help you get in touch with your emotions and enrich your emotional awareness.
The Gottman Institute include a printable version of this on their website.https://www.gottman.com/blog/printable-fee
Begin from the centre of the emotion wheel, with broad emotions such as mad, scared, sad, peaceful, powerful and joyful. Move out one layer and then another to fine tune your understanding of the intricacies and flavour of that emotion. For example, you may be feeling mad, but upon closer investigation see that you are feeling critical; looking even deeper you may realise that these feelings arise from an initial feeling of jealousy.
In this way, you can develop a greater understanding of your emotions, and this gives you a wider emotional language with which to talk about your feelings.
For many of us, we have become so busy and stressed in our adulting that we have lost touch with our emotions and when asked how we feel, we realise that we actually have no idea.
Sometimes, half of the battle with our emotions comes in naming them. Once you recognise and name a thing, you gain some understanding of it. Then, armed with greater awareness, you can take appropriate action – which may simply be sitting with whatever emotion you have discovered.