How to Use ‘Wheel of Emotions’ to Express Better Emotions
A simple chart that can help you to express emotions in your daily life
When I was 10 years old, I remember my therapist saying to my parents that I had Alexithymia — an inability to express emotions or to understand other’s emotions.
I could not respond to things as they were happening around me. I could mentally process whether it is bad news, an unusual assignment, or a tough situation. But often had a hard time feeling or verbalizing it.
Expressing emotions is complicated and challenging — sometimes annoying — a task that leaves countless people overwhelmed and more confused than the feelings. I remember it was troublesome for me to feel things that were happening in real-time around me.
During my school days, once I lost in the swimming competition. I remember my mom asking me to tell her how I was feeling.
“Nothing” I answered. And I meant it. “I feel nothing.”
Later, while we were going home, I yelled at her.
My mother then took me to an amazing and wonderful therapist. The therapist made me narrate stories and analyzed different cases by avoiding discussions about how things made me feel.
In the first session with her, she handed me a printed chart titled — the Wheel of Emotions. It is a simple chart that offers a visual representation of primary emotions, revealing the different degrees and complexities of varied feelings. It is meant to help individuals to identify how they are feeling.
I stared at it and was hooked immediately. My therapist started with a conversation about the swimming competition.
Me: “My mother motivated me every day to practice swimming, and I used to give my best and improve my skills and speed. I wanted to win the medal for her. I tried harder but I finished fourth position.”
Therapist: “How did you lose? What were you feeling?”. The therapist pointed into the center sections of the wheel asked me to show how I felt. I chose “angry”.
Therapist: “Angry. I understand that you would be angry, but what led you to be full of anger.” The therapist rolled her eyes down on the chart to indicate to select another emotion from the second ring of the wheel.
Me: “I guess I was both mad and let down.”
Therapist: “Add more details and express your feelings. Use the wheel.”
Me: “Honestly, ‘furious’ describes it best. After all, I wanted to finish the race in the top three.” clenching my fist tighter, “I had practiced a lot on jumps and flip-turns. Because of a bad jump start and a slower flip-turn made me 0.3 seconds late and costing me the third position.”
Therapist: “You also said you were let down.”
Me: “‘Betrayed’ describes it best. How could I betray all my friends and mom’s trust by not getting a medal? I know all were confident that I can get a medal with the experience and practice I did. Before the race, I told my mom that I’ll win a medal for her and she trusted my words. But, I felt like I betrayed her.” Again shaking my head in disappointment.
Mom: “That’s fine son, failure does not come from losing, but from not trying. At least, you tried your best. I hope you will win the upcoming races.”
Using the Wheel of Emotions in the above story, my therapist made me understand the emotions and experiences leading up to that reaction. The chart gave me a language to talk about how I feel. It is better than “nothing.” The Wheel of Emotion helped me a lot in expressing feelings of any character in writing a story as well as having verbal communication with my family, friends, and colleagues.
As a writer, we must behave like the therapist, but seldom on the contrary. As a writer, you get to choose emotions. As a therapist, you totally need to discover solutions.
Dictate the actions and emotions of your character in your writing. Most of the time, your protagonist character is described completely, but your secondary character or short-term characters are half-baked. In this story, I could have expressed my mom’s feelings in greater detail to further enhance the story.
Excellent writers understand all characters of their stories. They often cover up all the subplots and cover their secondary characters by adding twists-and-turns. However, the writer needs to resolve how much or how little a character’s emotions are needed in the story.
As a writer, we need to understand that the characters can feel different emotions — sad, happy, angry, disgusted, fearful, bad, or surprised. That is the part of the emotions we all go through in our daily lives — so do our characters in the stories.
Let your characters spin the wheel daily and you will have to make judgments about their actions, reactions, dialogue, and inner voice. Add dramatic changes in your story by playing around the Wheel of Emotions. The more intensely and precisely you can express core emotions, the better you will be as a writer.
The magical and wonderful thing about processing and identifying emotions using this tool can help you to express your feelings to anybody. Moreover, this chart has helped me express my emotions and it also promotes greater self-awareness and understanding of human emotions.
