Why Labeling Your Emotions Matters

After working with many physicians in our coaching sessions, I have noticed one thing in common. In the beginning, most of them had a restricted way to describe their feelings. The question “how are you feeling today” would yield answers like “good” or “bad”. Occasionally, there would be “happy” or “sad”.

A very important part of emotional well-being is to know what you are feeling. What does it mean to feel “good”? Do you mean content, delighted, upbeat or joyful, just to name a few? To feel “bad”, does it mean frustrated, angry, lost or disappointed?

It is interesting how we have learned different adjectives to describe emotions and yet many of us have a limited vocabulary when it is our turn to describe how we are feeling.

Labeling your emotions is simply the act of putting a name to what you are feeling emotionally. Human beings act according to their emotions. If we have the capability to know what we are feeling, then we will understand our actions. We will also understand why we are experiencing that feeling.

Our feelings are generated by our thoughts, our opinions, or our values. If you know exactly what you are feeling and how you are feeling, it is easier to figure out why you are having that emotion. By labeling your emotion, you are gaining more insight to your situation. By calling out your exact emotion, you are gaining power over it, rather than the other way around. With this increased clarity, there is also decreased intensity of a negative or unpleasant emotion. Labeling your emotion also makes you somewhat of an observer of yourself, especially if you use a sentence like “I notice that I am feeling [fill in the emotion]”. This also means that you are not bound so much by how you are feeling. By making your more of an observer, you are also decreasing the risk of spontaneous, irrational or reactive behaviors.

What about labeling positive emotions? Vlasenko and colleagues¹ discovered that labeling your positive emotions increases the intensity of those emotions. That is interesting. This means that by labeling all of your emotions, you will have a positive impact, regardless of the nature of the emotion – pleasant or unpleasant.

How do we label our emotions? That comes back to the adjectives we know. To explore more words to describe your feelings, a simple way to familiarize yourself with more emotional words is to check out an emotional wheel or an emotional chart. Those are readily available online. There are also apps available to record your emotions. The more familiar you are with those words, the more readily you are going to recognize what they are.

After you recognize your emotion, acknowledge it and label it. “I notice that I am feeling disappointed.” “I notice that I am feeling empowered.” Be as specific as possible.

Accept how you are feeling. Then notice how you are experiencing it physically. For example, do you feel open or close? Warm or coat? Flowing or stagnant? Is there a color associated with it?

Ask yourself what is causing this particular emotion. What are you thinking? What is that main sentence in your head?

By knowing what is causing how you are feeling, you also gain the power of choice. You get to choose to continue to feel the same way, or you get to decide if you want to feel something different. You have more control and are more empowered. By labeling your emotions, you are promoting more positivity in how you feel by decreasing the intensity of negative emotions, and increasing the intensity of positive emotions.

1. Valeriia V. Vlasenko, Emma G. Rogers & Christian E. Waugh(2021) Affect labelling increases the intensity of positive emotions, Cognition and Emotion, 35:7, 1350-1364, DOI: 1080/02699931.2021.1959302