Emotional vocabulary: Language helps to classify our feelings correctly

This text first appeared here brigitte.de.

Language is so commonplace and ubiquitous in our lives that we rarely think about it. And even less often make it clear to us how important it is to us. It is well known that language shapes our perception and our relationship to the world to a large extent. For example, research has shown that speakers of Berinmo, a language of Papua New Guinea, cannot tell the difference between a blue square and a green square (if the hues are not too far apart physically, i.e. measured by their wavelengths), while English speakers can beautiful. How come? One suspects that this is because there are no different names for blue and green in Berinmo. Both are summarized under the term “nol”.

What we cannot name at least causes us difficulties

“In order to perceive anything in our environment, we have to perceive it as different,” writes psychologist Kevin Dutton in his book Black. White. Thinking!, “The object of our perception has to stand out. But then we need a way of making the Being able to define and identify difference; to narrow down and pinpoint what makes it unique and distinctive.” And this possibility gives us language.

With the help of our language we organize and process what we experience. If we can’t grasp something verbally, it either causes us difficulties – or simply doesn’t exist for us. Therefore, it can be of great benefit to us in some areas and make considerable progress to deal with our language. For example when it comes to feeling.

Why language helps us to feel

“Our emotional vocabulary is our tool kit for dealing with emotional distress,” writes psychologist William Hwang of Psychology Today. Research has shown that being able to identify and precisely name feelings appears to make us less overwhelmed in stressful situations and better able to manage our (negative) emotions. For example, in a 2012 study, people with arachnophobia who, as part of the experiment, expanded their emotional vocabulary to describe what evoked in them when confronted with a spider made more progress in managing their fear (and spiders) than subjects, who tried other approaches (e.g. distraction or reframing).

By naming our feelings, we recognize, identify and classify them. This, in turn, is the basis for understanding them and responding to them appropriately. But for this we need a certain selection of terms in our emotional vocabulary, a certain repertoire of tools. And that usually doesn’t develop on its own.

“The Gottman Feeling Wheel”: How big is your emotional vocabulary?

Most people have a basic emotional vocabulary and regularly use terms such as “sad,” “angry,” “happy,” or “anxious” to describe their own or other people’s feelings. There is nothing wrong with these designations. However, they describe rather emotional spectrums and can actually stand for completely different emotions and situations. For example, “sad” might apply when we…

“Anxious” may mean that we…

Psychologists at the Gottman Institute have illustrated how many shades and nuances there are in our large emotional spectrum in their so-called “Feeling Wheel”. In it, they assign six emotion spectrums (angry, fearful, happy, strong, sad, relaxed) to twelve other emotions that fall within this spectrum. Which of these terms, which according to this approach can be associated with the generic term “angry”, do you use, for example, to describe your emotional state? And: would you have put them all on the anger spectrum at all or rather on another?

How diverse terms can enrich and organize our emotional world

While it tends to be easier for us to differentiate between pleasant emotions and to be able to say quite quickly whether we are happy, cheerful, satisfied or balanced, we usually find it more difficult to differentiate between negative emotions. It would be an advantage, especially with such emotions, if we did it more often. Because with basic emotional terms such as “sad”, “angry” or “anxious”, the background, such as the trigger, initially remains completely open. They exist, of course, and we may know them, but we don’t explicitly name them. Above all, however, the background is important when we want to react to a feeling. So why don’t we name them at the same time – or at least make an effort to do so?

According to William Hwang, we can actively build and expand our emotional vocabulary if we just want to. After all, we can just as easily learn a whole new language at any time, so why shouldn’t we? At first, it may take a lot of attention and practice to track down and find a more appropriate label each time we feel “sad”. But over time we get better at it, perceive the differences and details more quickly, come to the right term more directly. We learn and train our brains and have the same experience as with a foreign language, which we become more proficient the more we use it. And paradoxically, once we have managed to expand our active emotional vocabulary, our emotional world will not only be richer and more colorful – but also simpler and better sorted.

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