The Feelings Wheel

This one is a little more personal. But don’t worry, it’s not too personal. You will not need tissues.

At work the other day, I was approached by a colleague who is in the second year of his health and family counseling master’s degree program. He handed me a printout of a feelings wheel—a circular wheel with words for specific emotions, with the six most basic and universal in the center and four additional rows spanning outward with adjectives of increasing complexity and specificity.

Borrowed (temporarily and without permission) from Geoffrey Roberts.

“My graduate advisor told me I need to work on my feelings words in counseling,” he said. “I know you’re not much into talking about your feelings, either, so maybe this will help you, too.”

I laughed. “How did you know?”

“Pfft. Come on,” he scoffed.

It’s true; as a female INTJ, I have always struggled with identifying and expressing my emotions in words. One day, I came home from preschool and told my parents and grandmother that I didn’t want to go back anymore. They asked me a series of probing questions to figure out why from my vague response that I didn’t want to see Miss Jodie, one of our young, bubbly teachers, anymore, but I couldn’t articulate an answer.

“Was she mean to you?” No. “Did she hit you?” No. “Did she yell at you? Punish you? Blame you for something you didn’t do?” No, no, no. I just didn’t want to see her anymore. I didn’t know why; I just didn’t want to go back to preschool.

My mom thought it was because I didn’t like being made to take naps, which was also true, but not enough to make me not want to go back to preschool at all; I did usually have fun there. My dad thought I was using not liking Miss Jodie as an excuse because I wasn’t ready to leave the comforting company of my grandmother, who’d babysat me, along with a couple neighborhood kids, since I was a toddler and my parents had to work. That might’ve been true as well, but what I was really feeling toward Miss Jodie was intimidation. It was my very first confrontation with the the awareness that I’m not like other little preschool kids. Even at the age of four, I already felt like my mind worked differently and I didn’t quite fit in. And it was obvious to me that Miss Jodie, although very bubbly and sweet, was not like me. I could already tell the she was one of the “cool kids,” and I could already tell from among the toddlers who the future “cool kids” were, and I couldn’t help but notice how Miss Jodie gravitated toward them and not me. It was a painful realization that I was not, nor would I never be, a cool kid myself, and so I wanted to go home.

I also struggled with regulating my emotions as a child without going completely ape. Luckily, with age and a master’s in psychology came training in recognizing situations that might trigger an emotional outburst and develop appropriate coping mechanisms to get through them without flying off the handle. I am forever grateful for this knowledge. I probably would’ve benefitted from receiving this informative little wheel as an elementary-school kid, but it’s better late than never.

Sidenote, and just out of curiosity, how far back in your childhood can you remember? Are you able to remember long-ago experiences with freakish accuracy? Do you know your MBTI type? You can take a free version of it here! [Disclosure: this is not an empirically validated test and should only be used for entertainment purposes as an aid to help you on your introspective journey.]