Published on 12, July, 2020
Well well.. a very important topic for me.
How to name a feeling is a huge struggle. I could describe myself as a colour blind person who is looking at a very long colour palette. My emotions and feelings are the hundreds of colours in the palette and I'm the person who can't see more than blue, red and yellow and hundreds of shades of grey. Although I'm very sensitive and I know that my emotional landscape is very rich (hundreds of hues in my palette), I can't always name my feeling (recognise the hue for what it is), therefore I don't know how to manage it. An example, although I felt anxious in many situations in my life, I've never knew that this feeling is anxiety until last therapy session when my therapist said "when you feel anxious it's good to think of ...." And I was like "wait a minute, is this what I just described to her now (racing thoughts, restlessness, stomach pain..) is called anxiety? Wow, I finally have a name for this feeling!".. even tho I don't consider names as useful info at all, when it comes to feelings, I think it's important to name them in order to memorize it easily and research how to manage it.
Question here is, is there a book, therapy, technique or anything that would help me recognise and name my feelings? Also, am I now describing Alexithymia? I tend to really relate to others and it sort of feels like I could recognise how others feel more than myself..
Does this help? Or google 'feeling wheel' for other versions.
There are a handful of core basic human emotions, with many subtler gradations. Due to alexithymia many autistic people struggle to identify and name their emotions, albeit we have very many, often quite intense ones.
Some folk find using the wheel as a guide to the range of possible emotions helps them pinpoint this to explain to others; a bit like knowing you want your bed room a certain shade of pink, but you've no idea what Dulux called it in order to ask the B&Q staff until you pull out their colour pallet to find it's 'dusky dawn', or 'rose petal' or something you should be asking for.
Thank you for this :). It definitely can help at times.
Thanks for this! I've never seen this version before :)