We all have tons of emotions, while some fall into specific categories no two emotions are the exact same and that makes them quite confusing. As people, facing our feelings can be a serious challenge, especially when we don’t exactly know what kinds of feelings we’re facing.
Emotions are hard to understand and with good reason, as we move through life if we do not work to better understand the things we’re feeling we will fall behind in such areas. Our emotions are strongly connected to one another which is why when we tend to feel one thing we often feel several other things as well. As someone who spent a lot of time running from my emotions, I can honestly say that managing them is not easy without guidance.
In recent times I came across something known as the ’emotion wheel,’ this wheel goes over every emotion within reason and what sections relate back to one another. While we have primary emotions when breaking things down understanding our secondary emotion is very important. Through this wheel, I have learned more than I could have ever imagined and am still even now beginning to get more in touch with my own needs.
In my worst moments or mere moments of intensity, I look to this wheel as most others should. While I might be mad in the moment, this wheel helps me to really dive into the problem and ask myself the questions I need to begin to find answers for so that I can become more personal with myself. For instance, if I’m mad at my partner for something I can ask this wheel what kind of anger I’m feeling and what is driving it to determine if I’m actually feeling betrayed or more-so just jealous in general.
There are six primary emotions, and they depend on which wheel you’re using as your guide sad, angry, fearful/fear, disgust/shame, happy, and surprise. From here things are broken down into about forty-eight different sub-emotions or secondary feelings. You can break these secondary feelings down further and pick things apart through looking at the list and thinking over what each emotion means as a whole. As you can see below this kind of thing is quite extensive.
While a bit hard to grasp at the beginning the more you work with this kind of wheel the more it will benefit you. To learn more about how to use this kind of thing please feel free to check out the video below. I for one find it comes in handy more than most other things of this sort do and it in my life has been a huge game-changer. You can use this kind of thing to teach yourself and others to label emotions that otherwise would go unnoticed. This is a tool that will allow you to grow tremendously.
