The Feeling Wheel

A dictionary for the emotions you don’t know how to name yet.

Have you ever sat with a feeling you couldn’t quite name? A weight in your chest, a buzz in your mind, a quiet pull somewhere between sadness and confusion?

That’s where the Feeling Wheel comes in. It’s not just a chart. It’s a compass. A beautifully simple tool that helps us put words to our inner weather—because sometimes, “sad” isn’t enough. Maybe it’s lonely. Maybe it’s guilty. Maybe it’s a quiet cocktail of both.

Why vocabulary matters in therapy—and in life

In our work as psychologists, we often see clients struggle not with the feeling itself, but with finding language for it. “I don’t know what I’m feeling” isn’t emotional avoidance—it’s emotional confusion. And confusion, as we know, is the enemy of clarity and self-compassion.

The Feeling Wheel breaks our emotional experience down into layers—from core feelings like joy or fear, to more nuanced states like playful, shameful, or vulnerable. Naming our feelings gives us power. It lets us pause, decode, and respond—rather than react from a place of vagueness or overwhelm.

How to use the Feeling Wheel

• Start at the center with the core emotion.
• Move outward to explore what kind of “anger” or “sadness” it might be.
• Notice what changes in your body or mind when the word feels right.

Try keeping it nearby—in your journal, on your fridge, at your desk. Not to diagnose, but to discover. Emotions, after all, are not problems to solve but signals to understand.

This is emotional literacy

We teach children to label colors, shapes, animals. But emotional language? That’s a lifelong syllabus—and one we all deserve access to. The Feeling Wheel is a beautiful first chapter. It reminds us that language doesn’t just describe experience. It deepens it.

So next time you’re spiraling, stuck, or just feeling... something—let this be your soft place to start.

Start where you are. Name what you feel. That’s where the healing begins.