The Subtle Art of Naming Your Emotions
From Confusion to Clarity: The Power of Emotional Granularity
You’re home alone on a quiet evening when you hear music coming from the living room.
Strange… You weren’t expecting anyone…
You walk in and freeze. There’s a full-on party happening in your apartment.
A girl is puking into your plant while her friend holds her hair.
A guy is crying in the corner.
Someone’s digging through your drawers, tossing things around.
Another person is jumping on your couch like it’s a trampoline.
It’s loud. Messy. Overwhelming.
And the weirdest part is that you don’t recognize a single face.
Who are these people? Who let them in? And how do you bring back peace?
That’s what it can feel like when we’re flooded with emotions we haven’t taken the time to examine.
Situations like these are often caused by a disconnect between what Alain de Botton calls our Feeling Self and our Observer Self.
In other words, when our Observer Self fails to register our Feeling Self’s inputs—or mislabels them—it can lead to strong inner storms.
This may sound trivial, but it can result in a range of regrettable consequences: leaning into numbing behaviors like excessive drinking, emotional eating, hurting our relationships at home and at work, or falling into endless mental loops because we’re unable to formulate a simple thought like:
“I’m feeling anxious about looking like a fool at that big work event tomorrow.”
Fortunately, there’s a way to break the loop:
Properly naming our emotions.
From Crickets to Clarity
Sometimes, to the questions: “What’s wrong with me? What am I feeling?”, all we get is crickets.
Although uncomfortable, this is more common than you’d think.
In her book Emotional Agility, award-winning psychologist Susan David shares the story of a patient who struggled with alexithymia, the inability to identify or describe emotions. He used to express every difficult feeling the same way:
“It’s been just a little bit of bother.”
One day, she asked him how his mother—the only person he still had a connection with—was doing. His response?
“It’s been just a little bit of bother. She died.”
While this is an extreme example, it stuck with me. How many of us are disconnected from our bodies and minds? Roaming this earth on autopilot, suffering unnecessarily?
A Simple Practice
When everything feels chaotic inside, here’s something I invite you to try:
Find a quiet spot where you won’t be disturbed for 15 minutes. Close your eyes and take a few deep breaths. Focus only on your breath. If your mind wanders, skip the harsh scolding, and gently bring your attention back to your breath.
Do a quick body scan. Are your shoulders raised? Is your neck tense? How does your jaw feel?
Now, ask yourself: “What am I feeling?” and wait.
Your first answer might be vague: good or bad. So we’ll want to dig deeper. Soon enough, something more specific will emerge: Angry. Sad. Happy.
This is a surface emotion. Often, it hints at something more complex underneath.
I like to have a little fun with this part. I try to dissect my emotions as if I was trying to guess the ingredients of a cookie recipe, after taking one bite. For example:
“2 cups of frustration, 1 cup of fear, a pinch of disappointment”.
The key here is emotional granularity, the art of breaking down our emotions into precise parts. It allows us to see them clearly and understand what’s going on inside us.
If you’re not used to thinking or talking about emotions, you might find it useful to use an emotion wheel to help you highlight what feels accurate. (I’ll link one I like at the bottom.)
Not only will this practice extend your emotional vocabulary overtime, but it’ll also unlock powerful aha moments as you discover your patterns and triggers.
Grab a Pen. Start Digging.
My favorite way to get my Observer and my Feeling Self to talk is through journaling. I sit down at my laptop, and start writing streams of consciousness.
No rules here, the important part is to get started.
Just like an archeologist with a brush, I start digging and see what comes up. And I can’t tell you how many fascinating fossils I’ve uncovered by taking the time to do this.
This habit has helped me become more self-aware and less reactive. I’m more intentional about the way I want to show up in life.
Plus, it’s always fun to come back to past entries, notice my progress and laugh at the dozens of worries that never came true.
Over to You
If you often feel emotionally “off,” consider this your official invitation to stop the autopilot mode and do some name-calling. Your emotions aren’t just noise. They’re trying to tell you something important and deserve your attention.
So, start today and:
✨ Try the journaling practice
✨ Use this emotion wheel if you need a vocabulary boost
✨ And let me know in the comments: What’s one emotion you’ve recently identified that surprised you? I’d love to hear from you.
I love the idea of an emotion wheel!
There was a time in my last marriage, and my relationship before that where I felt emotionless. Just numb. Which dials in to anger on your wheel.
These days I am mainly happy but anger can still arise in some ways. Naming emotions is a great idea, especially if we use ‘I feel…’ statements and never ‘I am…’ Using I am is owning the emotion. It doesn’t want to be owned, it wants to flow.💕