I think of myself as a very articulate person, and yet when it comes to emotions I have an incredibly limited vocabulary. During the
conflict resolution training I took earlier this month, one of the online lectures included a list of almost 100 different emotions. As I turned to that slide, my jaw literally fell open. I was shocked to see so many different words, so many different possible feelings I might be experiencing. I felt like a small child seeing the chart of facial expressions and corresponding emotions for the first time. It is difficult to accept that I am at such a basic level of understanding of the range of human emotions. I feel like I'm behind, like I shouldn't be in kindergarten anymore, but in this area I am. I also feel some anger that I was not given these tools earlier in life, that my parents utterly denied that emotions existed and repressed their own emotions at all times. Someday I hope to look at this array of emoticons and be able to name the emotions expressed by each of the faces above. For now, I'm just working to identify the basics - sad, happy, angry, and scared. One small step at a time...
This is an area where I have seen significant shifts over the past 10 years. I am a lot more aware of different emotions and the varieties of presentation and sensation that can accompany them. I wouldn't say I'm at expert level on this, but it is rare that I don't have a word to accurately describe how I'm feeling these days. If you feel similar to how I did in the original blog post, I recommend reading Atlas of the Heart, Brené Brown's book that describes 87 emotions and how they relate to each other.
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