I was terrible at identifying how I was feeling. Then, my therapist gave me an emotion chart that totally changed the game for me.

Running Away from My Feelings

When my husband and I first started dating, I was a mess. I didn’t have great examples of healthy conflict growing up, and I had learned that expressing anger or frustration led to broken relationships and people leaving. I was so afraid of losing this guy I liked so much that if I felt upset with him, I would sometimes literally run away instead of talking to him about it. It wasn’t great.

Additionally, in the religious culture I was a part of in my teens and early twenties, I absorbed that some emotions were not okay to feel. These “negative” emotions included anger, annoyance, frustration, and impatience. They were examples of sin and shouldn’t be expressed. So I buried them instead.

So in my mid-twenties, I found myself in a new relationship and trying to repress any emotion I didn’t find acceptable. I sometimes tell people that it’s a miracle that my husband and I are now married. But it’s really all down to his patience and the work of a great therapist.

A Great Therapist

When I first started seeing my therapist, I struggled to cry in our sessions, even if I really needed to. I would pause, look up, and get it together before continuing on. She would have to coach me to cry, telling me that it was alright to shed some tears over things that really upset me.

I sometimes found it hard to describe the way I felt about certain memories and experiences. I could tell her if I had a “bad” feeling about something. But it could be challenging for me to break it down further.

The Emotion Chart

In one session, she handed me a new tool, an emotion chart. The chart was circular, with three rings emanating out from the middle. The first ring in the middle of the circle had seven general emotions, like sad, angry, and fearful. The next ring built on those first simple emotions, making them more descriptive. And the outer ring was the most specific, with more detailed emotions. Here’s the full chart:

I wasn’t totally unfamiliar with tools like this. I was a middle school teacher at the time, and my school taught a social-emotional learning curriculum a few mornings a week. We would sometimes show kids a chart of faces with different emotions listed under them. If a student was struggling to share how they felt, they could look at the chart and point out the face they most identified with.

The circular emotion chart had a similar function for me. I could look at the middle ring of emotions to find sad and then follow it out to hurt and then disappointed. The power in being able to identify more specific emotions was that I gained a greater understanding of where they were coming from. I could also share them with my boyfriend and explain why something upset me or made me happy. This greater level of communication allowed our relationship to strengthen and for both of us to understand more about ourselves.

The beauty of the emotion chart lies in its simplicity. It allows you to explore your feelings and where they come from on your own. And with time, that work can help you become a healthier version of yourself.