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Coaching approaches

Emotional-granularity coaching

Emotional-granularity coaching helps you name what you feel more precisely, on the idea that a finer word gives you more to work with. Its evidence comes from laboratory, clinical and survey studies of affect labelling and emotion differentiation. The studies cited here do not test a coaching programme built on this idea.

The principles underneath

Finer words give you more to work with

Kashdan, Feldman Barrett and McKnight (2015) review research linking finer distinctions between feelings to less reliance on harmful ways of coping, such as binge drinking or self-injury. In a session the aim is a word that fits, not a longer list of words.

Naming a feeling can quiet it

In a brain-imaging study, Lieberman and colleagues (2007) found that putting a feeling into words reduced the amygdala's response to negative images. Kircanski and colleagues (2012) found that people who labelled their feelings during exposure to a spider showed less skin conductance at follow-up than other groups, although their self-reported fear did not differ.

Feelings are partly predictions from the body

On Feldman Barrett's account (2006), the experience of an emotion is shaped by how it is categorised. With Simmons (2015), she describes the brain predicting what the body will need from signals arising inside it. A feeling can therefore be treated as a best estimate, which can be checked.

Predict before you react

If a feeling is a prediction, it can be tested against what happens next. The coach asks what you expected and whether the situation was likely to give you what the feeling was anticipating, so the feeling is looked at before it sets your next move.

What it is

Emotional-granularity coaching works on how precisely you can name what you feel. Instead of settling for a broad word such as bad, stressed or fine, you and the coach look for a finer one, such as disappointed, left out or tired of waiting, and check which one fits. The working idea is that finer names give you more to work with.

The approach draws on research showing that putting a feeling into words can change how strongly it registers, and on the view that emotion is partly the brain's prediction about what the body needs. The coach's job is to help you tell those predictions apart. It is not to diagnose a feeling or to explain where it came from.

Where it comes from

The research behind the approach is on emotion differentiation, the ability to tell emotional experiences apart. Lisa Feldman Barrett and colleagues mapped how differentiation relates to regulation in 2001 and linked positive emotional granularity to resilience and coping in 2004 (Feldman Barrett et al., 2001; Tugade et al., 2004). Todd Kashdan, Feldman Barrett and McKnight later reviewed the findings for clinical and everyday use (Kashdan et al., 2015). The coaching application is an adaptation of that work.

How a session runs

  1. You bring a moment when a feeling was hard to name, and describe what happened in the room and in your body.
  2. The coach asks you to try two or three finer words for the feeling and to check which one fits best.
  3. Together you look at what the feeling seemed to be predicting: what you expected to need, and whether the situation was likely to provide it.
  4. You notice whether naming the feeling more exactly changed how strong it felt, and the coach keeps a note of what you said.
  5. You agree one small response that fits the more exact word, and you bring the same moment back next time if it still matters.

When it tends to fit

  • You describe a day as bad or off and cannot get any closer to what is going on.
  • A strong reaction arrives in a meeting or a conversation, and you respond before you know what you feel.
  • You keep having the same argument with yourself about a feeling and cannot tell what sits underneath it.

What the research shows

Evidence: Some peer-reviewed studies

Studies of affect labelling, the act of putting a feeling into words, report several effects. In a brain-imaging study, Lieberman and colleagues (2007) found that labelling a feeling reduced amygdala and limbic response to negative images. Kircanski and colleagues (2012) studied spider-fearful people in exposure therapy: those who labelled their feelings showed reduced skin conductance at a one-week follow-up relative to the other groups, but did not differ in self-reported fear. A review by Kashdan, Feldman Barrett and McKnight (2015) reports that people who experience emotions with more granularity are less likely to use maladaptive strategies such as binge drinking, aggression or self-injury, and that interventions designed to improve emotion differentiation can reduce psychological problems. Feldman Barrett and colleagues (2001) mapped how emotion differentiation relates to emotion regulation, and Tugade and colleagues (2004) examined positive emotional granularity alongside resilience, coping and health. Feldman Barrett (2006) and Feldman Barrett and Simmons (2015) set out the theoretical account the approach rests on.

Where the evidence is thin: Most of this research is laboratory, clinical-exposure or survey work, and several studies use fearful or distressed participants. None of the cited studies tests a coaching programme built on emotional granularity, so whether the approach helps coaching clients is untested. The affect-labelling findings are not uniform: one study found a physiological difference without a difference in self-reported fear.

Sources

  1. Feldman Barrett, L. F., Gross, J., Christensen, T. C., & Benvenuto, M. (2001). Knowing what you're feeling and knowing what to do about it: Mapping the relation between emotion differentiation and emotion regulation. Cognition & Emotion, 15(6), 713–724.
  2. Tugade, M. M., Fredrickson, B. L., & Feldman Barrett, L. (2004). Psychological resilience and positive emotional granularity: Examining the benefits of positive emotions on coping and health. Journal of Personality, 72(6), 1161–1190.
  3. Lieberman, M. D., Eisenberger, N. I., Crockett, M. J., Tom, S. M., Pfeifer, J. H., & Way, B. M. (2007). Putting feelings into words: Affect labeling disrupts amygdala activity in response to affective stimuli. Psychological Science, 18(5), 421–428.
  4. Kircanski, K., Lieberman, M. D., & Craske, M. G. (2012). Feelings into words: Contributions of language to exposure therapy. Psychological Science, 23(10), 1086–1091.
  5. Kashdan, T. B., Feldman Barrett, L., & McKnight, P. E. (2015). Unpacking emotion differentiation. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 24(1), 10–16.
  6. Feldman Barrett, L. F. (2006). Solving the emotion paradox: Categorization and the experience of emotion. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 10(1), 20–46.
  7. Feldman Barrett, L. F., & Simmons, W. K. (2015). Interoceptive predictions in the brain. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 16(7), 419–429.

Where it stops

Naming feelings more precisely does not resolve trauma, grief that does not ease, or low mood or anxiety that persists. Those are better worked with a qualified professional.

When a feeling is tied to a memory of harm, or to the body's alarm response such as panic or freezing, the coach keeps the work to naming and refers memory-level work to a trained therapist.

The cited research does not show that a coaching programme built on emotional granularity improves outcomes.

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