The Triangle Therapist Guide
The Feelings Wheel
A Triangle Therapist tool
Naming a feeling precisely is the first step of every point on the map. Start at the center: which of the seven is closest? Then follow your feeling outward, ring by ring, until you find its exact name. Tap any feeling to trace its path.
Why naming a feeling helps
Psychologists call it affect labeling — and brain-imaging research suggests that putting a precise word to an emotion measurably calms the brain’s alarm response. “Name it to tame it,” as the shorthand goes. The catch is that most of us work from a vocabulary of about four words: fine, stressed, tired, and mad. The wheel exists to fix that. “Angry” is a weather report; “humiliated” is a map coordinate — and you can only work with what you can locate.
How to use the feelings wheel
Start at the center and ask which of the seven core emotions is closest — even roughly. Follow it outward one ring at a time, and notice which words make something in you say that one. There are no wrong answers and often more than one right one. Couples working through our Gottman Method guide use it in the Repair Path’s first step; on your own, try it once a day for a week and watch your default four words become twenty.
Feelings are Point 3 on our map of all therapies — if emotions arrive at full volume for you, or numbness is the problem, the emotion-focused family of therapies enters exactly there.
Naming the feeling is a beginning. Talking about it is a next step.
Find a therapist in the TriangleAdapted from the feelings-wheel tradition (Willcox, 1982). Tap the center to reset.
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