It's More Important To Understand Your Emotions Than You Think

Part of identifying precisely what you’re feeling means having a wide range of vocabulary to describe accurately how you’re feeling.

Most people have quite a limited emotional vocabulary, consisting of about ten emotions: Good, Bad, Mad, Sad, Fine, Happy, Upset, Anxious, Stressed, Tired. (And yes, I realize that good, bad, and fine aren’t really emotions, but people seem to use them anyway.) 

This limited vocabulary limits our ability to express ourselves in an effective way.

For example:

There's a huge difference between feeling sad and hurt. 

Feeling disappointed and dejected are not the same

And, here is a difference between devastated and bummed. 

It’s the nuances and the semantics in naming our emotions that really make the difference.

Our emotional health works the same way as when we go to see our doctor concerning a physical pain. We have to get an accurate, detailed picture of what we’re feeling if we want to be able to do anything about it as well as explain it to someone.

Why?

Because if you act more in accordance with your emotions, knowing and understanding what you are feeling will help you be effective in making wise choices as well as improve your communication with others.

If you feel emotions but can't label them, you will have difficulty coping with them.

Accurate labels are part of managing your emotions and the thought patterns that are hiding behind them. 

For example. When you say, "I feel stupid," both the thought and the feeling are masked. The thought is: "I am stupid." The feelings may be shame, sadness, or hurt.

Leaving out the thought means you may not see the judgment and invalidation in your thinking.
Because feelings just are; you accept them without requiring evidence.

Instead, you check to see if your feelings are justified. For example, you might say that you feel afraid, accept that you are fearful, then check for the threat. If there is no true threat to your safety, you work on managing your feeling.

It's often difficult to know exactly what we are feeling, and sometimes it can also be even more difficult to put it into words. 

First Steps To  Exploring Your Emotional Vocabulary

There are many different types of emotions that have an influence on how we live and interact with others. At times, it may seem like we are ruled by these emotions. The choices we make, the actions we take, and the perceptions we have are all influenced by the emotions we are experiencing at any given moment.

The list below contains words that describe feelings, and this might be a useful starting point in you being able to understand the connection between your thinking and your feelings. 

Words that Describe Emotions: 

Tense, Enraged, Frightened, Cheerful, Annoyed, Happy, Panicky, Euphoric, Unhappy, Exhilarated, Frustrated,Mad,Calm, Keyed up, Scared, Uneasy, Anxious, Irritated, Flat, Sad, Depressed, Joyful, Tired, Discouraged, Angry, Excited, Nervous, Jealous, 

This is only a limited list but it should give you an idea of the kinds of words we could use to describe our feelings. 

People have complicated emotions, and these emotions would give rise to thoughts that people are aware of (a conscious, clear thought such as a sentence in your head), and thoughts that people are less aware of, (for instance you are doing something but you didn't fully realize that you were going to or are doing it.

Unconsciously there are many more emotions experienced than you are completely aware of that are being experienced. Therefore it is there, in the unconscious mind, that emotions interact in great depth and complexity, barely being felt consciously at times and with the person possibly only slightly aware that something emotional might be going on (unconsciously).

Being able to name your emotions and identify the reasons for your feelings will be important.

The Behavioral Response

The final component is perhaps one that you are most familiar with—the actual expression of emotion. We spend a significant amount of time interpreting the emotional expressions of the people around us.

Our ability to accurately understand these expressions is tied to what psychologists call emotional intelligence, and these expressions play a major part in our overall body language.

Research suggests that many expressions are universal, such as a smile to indicate happiness or a frown to indicate sadness. Socio-cultural norms also play a role in how we express and interpret emotions.

In Japan, for example, people tend to mask displays of fear or disgust when an authority figure is present. Similarly, Western cultures like the United States are more likely to express negative emotions both alone and in the presence of others, while eastern cultures like Japan are more likely to do so while alone.

Connect The Physical Effects of  Your Emotion

Emotions aren't good or bad, they all matter.

The more we strengthen our emotional vocabulary, the better the quality of our relationships will be. Not just with others, but with ourselves too.

The key is, recognize the signs in our bodies as feelings of emotions that need to be expressed arise. The better we become at accurately identifying them, the better we become at learning how to manage and express them.

Defining the term “emotional vocabulary” is as simple as it sounds: associating words with our emotions. Joseph and Strain (2010) define emotional literacy as “the ability to recognize, label, and understand feelings in one’s self and others” 

O.J. Harvey studied this connection between language and violence when he was a psychology professor at the University of Colorado. Using random samples of pieces of literature from countries around the world, he tabulated the frequency of words that classify and judge people—the types of words that often provoke defensive reactions. Not surprisingly, he found a high correlation between the frequent use of such words and the incidence of violence.

The Onion Of  Emotions

With greater insight into your emotions, you can start naming your feelings at a surface level.  

After deeper probing though, you will end up having “a-ha” moments when you realize that the emotion you thought you were feeling was in fact another emotion altogether. (more on that will be explored in Part IV of this series)

Feelings and Emotions are complex and finding the proper descriptor to express how you feel can be a real challenge. Especially at the begining.  

Determining how to categorize a feeling descriptor into an emotional state correctly takes practice.  Much like learning a language, before we can speak it, we must learn the words of the language, i.e. its vocabulary.

Once we have mastered the vocabulary, speaking the language flows effortlessly.

Our emotions are layered with the complexity of our childhood experiences, our culture, our upbringing and our automated thought patterns.

Which basically means, that more often than you think, your initial emotional response is a blanket covering a much deeper rooted emotion.

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