Coaching practices for Feelings Words List

Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Feelings Words List, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.

Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?

• Something is really getting to me right now and it’s running the show, but if you asked me what the feeling actually is I couldn’t tell you
• Every feeling I have collapses into the same three words
• I’m realizing my whole emotional vocabulary is about five words, so everything that isn’t happy just gets dumped into "bad"
• When they ask what’s wrong, all that comes out is “you ignored me” or “you don’t care”
• All I can ever say is that I feel "bad" or "off" or "stressed," and it just stays this big undifferentiated blob

Practices that may help

1. Name the emotion in plain words
   Say what you feel as a simple statement: "I am feeling anxious right now."
   Affect Labeling: Name It to Tame It
2. Expand your feelings vocabulary
   Deliberately learn and use a wider range of emotion words than "good" and "bad".
   Emotional Granularity: Precision as a Regulation Skill
3. The Feeling Wheel: Building Emotional Vocabulary
   The Feeling Wheel, developed by counselor Gloria Willcox in 1982, is a visual tool that organizes emotions in concentric rings from six core emotions (glad, mad, sad, scared, disgusted, powerful) outward to increasingly specific nuanced feelings. It helps people name their emotional experience more precisely — a capacity research calls emotional granularity — which is associated with better emotional regulation and reduced distress.
4. Expand your emotional range by studying the outer rings
   Spend 5 minutes with the outer ring of the Feeling Wheel weekly, learning the names of emotions you do not yet use.
   The Feeling Wheel: Building Emotional Vocabulary
5. Identifying and expressing feelings
   Name the actual emotion underneath, distinct from thoughts disguised as feelings.
   Nonviolent Communication (NVC), Made Practical
6. Get specific, not just "bad"
   Trade "I feel bad" for the precise word: disappointed, resentful, lonely, overwhelmed.
   Affect Labeling: Name It to Tame It
7. Daily emotion naming with the Feeling Wheel
   Each day, use the Feeling Wheel to name your emotional state with at least one layer of precision beyond the core word.
   The Feeling Wheel: Building Emotional Vocabulary
8. Pair the word with a body location
   Name the feeling and where you sense it: "tight in the chest", "heavy in the gut".
   Affect Labeling: Name It to Tame It
9. Find a handle word or image
   Let a word, phrase, or image arise from the felt sense — not the other way around.
   Focusing and the Felt Sense, Made Practical
10. Name what the emotion is doing in your body
    Track the physical signs of the emotion as they move through — this alone reduces their intensity.
    The 90-Second Rule, Made Practical

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