348 - Transforming Feelings Into Words
Expressing feelings
First, when and why is it important to express our feelings?
In relationships (at the beginning, during conflict, and for effective day-to-day communication).
To uphold values such as honesty, integrity, and so on.
When making decisions.
When venting or getting something off one’s chest.
When and why might it be difficult to express feelings?
Influence from family culture.
Macro culture and society.
Feeling emotional detachment.
Alexithymia.
How to do it
We have four different tools that might help when you’re trying to put your emotions into words and are struggling:
Emotion Wheel(s): There are many different emotion wheels out there, but the most common one is the Plutchik wheel. You can examine the wheel and see if any of the emotions listed on it resonate or seem to fit what you’re currently experiencing. This may give clues to what the core emotion underneath that you’re feeling is, and prompt conversation with a partner or further reflection.
Mood Journaling: Record how you are feeling and what you are thinking, which enables you to be able to track your emotions, notice triggers, and recognize warning signs. At bedtime, reflect on the biggest emotions you had that day with the following outline:
What is the emotion?
What caused it?
Behaviors or actions this emotion caused you to take.
Was this emotion appropriate for the situation?
Is this situation a distress to be tolerated or a problem to be solved?
SIFT:
Sensation: Body sensations such as throat tightening, sweating, muscles tensing.
Image: Mental imagery.
Feeling: Emotional sensation.
Thought: How you make meaning of it or explanations.
Text it out: Although it’s generally a good idea to avoid initiating heavy conversations over text, there are some people who may find that texting or emailing may help when discussing a heavy topic. A few studies have been done to suggest there may be an “online calming effect” where participants may be less emotionally aroused when communicating via text instead of face to face.
Transcript
This document may contain small transcription errors. If you find one please let us know at info@multiamory.com and we will fix it ASAP.
Jase: On this episode of the Multiamory Podcast, we're talking about transforming your feelings into words. Putting one's emotions into words seems to be this highly prized skill. It's the basis of most talk therapy and it's often fundamental to being able to effectively communicate with your partners or your friends or your family. However, there are many reasons why this might be hard to do.
Today, we'll be talking about what gets in the way of talking through our feelings, what the research says about it, and we're going to look at some concrete techniques to try the next time you're struggling to put your emotions into words.
Dedeker: Let's start out with the fundamental question. Why express our feelings? Why words? Why do words? Why feelings into words?
Jase: Longtime listeners will remember that Dedeker has stated many times she would prefer to just interpretive dance over her difficult conversation.
Dedeker: Since my early to mid-20s, I've made a very intentional effort to be better about putting my feelings into words into being a better communicator but really deep down if I had my way, it would be all ecstatic dance all the time.
Emily: I like that idea. Actually, that brought up something like a time recently in my life where I felt like I couldn't really put my feelings into words and it was during the beginning of the pandemic when I would just find myself crying for no reason or no cerebral idea in my head of this as the concrete reason as to why I am crying right now. It just voluntarily occurred. I wonder if that was probably just a travel response or something but that's interesting because sometimes you simply don't have the words for your emotions in a moment.
Dedeker: Well, can we just brainstorm about when are the most common situations where we're expected to be able to express our feelings or put our emotions into words?
Emily: When you're fighting with your partner?
Dedeker: Oh, yes.
Jase: That's a good one. I'd say also when you're getting into a relationship or maybe navigating changes in a relationship. We're talking about getting more serious, whatever that means, in your context or moving in together or getting married or whatever kind of thing or just starting a relationship at all. I guess lots of people have dedicated their lives to writing poetry trying to find ways to express with words those sorts of feelings.
Dedeker: Well, thinking about the beginning of a relationship or relationship transitions makes me think about how it's really important to be able to express mixed emotions as well because sometimes I think it's not quite as easy as I'm in love with you. I want to be in a relationship with you. Often, it can be, I'm in love with you and also I feel apprehension and fear and I'm worried you might reject me and I'm worried if I can be the kind of person that I should be in this relationship, all kinds of feelings as well that I do think that when we're able to express those things more honestly, it tends to set us up more for success in most situations.
Emily: This also reminds me of when you like to say to us Dedeker, "What do you want the audience to feel from this episode before we start recording?" I'm like, "Happy that I listened to it." That's also challenging. I think any large decision in general especially when you need to relate to someone like okay, these are my feelings around this decision, these are the reasons as to why I'm doing it, and this is my motivation for it perhaps feelings I think come up in those situations as well.
Dedeker: I know that Jase has mentioned on previous episodes the fact that from a scientific neurochemistry basis that when it comes to making decisions, actually we're very much swayed by our emotions. That people who have some brain injury where they're much more hyper logical or hyper-rational and don't have as much access to a sense of emotionality actually really struggle with making decisions.
Even really simple decisions that you would think would be easy for someone who's purely riding on their logic power. That actually being able to get in touch with our feelings about either side of a decision is very crucial. I imagine it's not even just about being able to express those feelings to someone else who may be listening but I think also getting clear on that with yourself as well. I think that's part of decision making is getting clear with yourself, what are my feelings about all the different ways that I could go here?
Jase: When it comes to something like if you were journaling, trying to help make a decision and be like, I'm going to get to the bottom of what I really feel about this. If you have a hard time putting into words what it is you're feeling, that's going to be harder. It's going to be harder to write down those feelings and work through why am I hesitating about this decision or why do I want to do this when it seems like a bad idea?
Whatever it is that having words for those can really help. I also find for myself I will sometimes just feel weird in some way. I'm sure both of you.
Dedeker: Yes, we can attest to this phenomenon all the time. I feel weird. I don't know what I feel. I feel weird. Having often I'm going to just express my experience of it. Sometimes you seem to struggle between is it positive? Is it negative? Is it low energy? Is it excitement? Is it anxiety? Is it mixed emotions? Is it not? Am I just tired? Obviously, not all the time but sometimes you will have those moments of just really being not sure about what you're feeling and in a particular moment.
Emily: That's almost like trying to put a name to a physiological response that's happening within your body. That's really interesting and also potentially confusing because I know we've talked about this on the show that our acting teacher Stevie Easton always would say that nervousness or butterfly feeling in your stomach, you can just turn that on its head and call that excitement instead. There are moments where that really truly is nervousness or are they just the same thing? What is that there?
Jase: The physiological responses that go with certain emotions have a lot of overlap with each other. Like you were just talking about there. Nervousness and excitement share a lot of similar properties the same as excitement or NRE and fear actually have a lot in common. The physical symptoms you'll have on a roller coaster. We talked about love being like a roller coaster.
That that fear response that your body is physically having that we do seek out because it is exciting is very similar to that becoming infatuated with someone feeling. This isn't really the subject of what we're getting into today but there have been studies done showing how you can cause people to think they're feeling one thing by just creating the physical symptoms and not actually what you would think it would come from the brain first and then it would be physical but then it's actually the other way around stuck in together.
Emily: Absolutely. I did that in acting classes that you just create the physiological response essentially or not response but you create the action physically and then it causes you to do something like cry or whatever just because physically you're doing it initially. It's strange stuff.
Jase: Emotions are wild.
Emily: They really are. Yes. Our bodies are wild but it's cool. Let's get into why and when it's difficult to express our feelings and emotions.
Dedeker: Well, you already volunteered when it's your first time going through a pandemic.
Emily: Yes, that's true.
Jase: It's a good one.
Dedeker: Perfect time. Difficult to express feelings.
Emily: Baby's first pandemic. Yes. I know but virtually. I'm sorry, the actual babies, it was their first pandemic too.
Dedeker: It was all of our first pandemic.
Emily: Yes, you're right.
Dedeker: It was all of baby's first pandemic. All babies.
Emily: All our little babies. Yes, all our little baby people out there. It's very true. Influence from family culture. If you come from a culture or a family of origin that de-emphasize or even punished expressing emotions or having emotions that can make it very difficult for you in other situations with other people like your partner, it might make it difficult for you to express feelings or express emotions or even understand really what's going on in there. I think before my partner started going to therapy that was definitely challenging for him. He was like I don't know. I'm not quite sure what I'm feeling here and stuff and then unpacking some of the family of origin stuff that helped him out a lot. Also one may have internalized meta emotional beliefs that negative or difficult emotions are just a waste of time. Things like they shouldn't be dwelled on. They're dangerous. We have those phrases in our culture. I think that boys need to not cry.
Don't cry, be a man stuff like that. I think that that's probably very challenging. I'm not a man but I'm assuming Jase that that that might be something that's really challenging to grow up with.
Jase: Yes.
Dedeker: I think that it's interesting because the fact that the way that this tends to play out is actually framed in a more positive light. I think our brains tend to go to that. Oh yes we know it's really unhealthy to repress your emotions or stuff them down or bottle them up. We all know that that's not good but the way I see this play out for instance in my relationships or with my clients, is it's often framed more in the sense of we shouldn't dwell on these little things.
Jase: Positive thinking.
Dedeker: Maybe a little bit.
Emily: Toxic positivity.
Dedeker: Not even going that far as toxic positivity but just more of the deemphasizing this sense of Ooh negative emotions. We really shouldn't give them any weight or any time or any focus. We should just ignore them because why would you just sit and be miserable? It's not worth our time to just sit and be miserable and that's how more how I see it framed is a little bit in this slightly more positive seeming light.
Of course, there's definitely some merits to that but it's interesting. The Gottman Institute have found that partners who have what they call a meta emotion mismatch. As in the way these two people feel about the importance of feelings. If that's mismatched, there's much more likely to be strife and conflict in the relationship which makes total sense. If you have one person who's like ooh this hard feeling of having let's sit and talk about it and think about it and pick it apart and one person's like no no no we need to just roll with the punches and move past it and let it go.
Jase: We don't give it more power than it than it needs to have I could see good arguments on either side so yes, makes sense.
Dedeker: That's influence from the microculture of the family that we grew up in but we can also have influences from our macro culture or our society that make it difficult to express our feelings. I think the big obvious one that many of us live with is your particular race or ethnicity or your gender may have been historically punished for expressing either the wrong emotions, or expressing them in the wrong way in particular. That can mean that maybe there's particular emotions you feel more pressure to not express or to keep a lid on or to express it as oh actually it's this other thing.
Jase: This is such a big one. It's like what Emily was getting at with boys being taught not to cry. Either taught directly by their parents or just through their peers, what they see on TV whatever and similarly girls are often punished for anger or for any aggression like that. You can lose access to those feelings by repeatedly being told to shut it down which then it diverts into other feelings but it can make it really difficult to talk about.
I'd say even another side of that is with anger that for men while expressing anger growing up you're not punished for in the same way, but people are more likely to be scared of you. You can hurt people when you're angry in a way that women are just less likely to do partly because of how we're socialized but also partly just physical size or whatever. There's good and bad reasons for being in control of those, but what we're talking about here is finding ways to access talking about them.
I think sometimes when we're told to shut down the physical responses to and we also are taught to shut down even talking about them. Even being able to express them calmly. We're not always going to be calm when we're talking about these but just the ability to talk about them at all can go away. I'd say another one that makes it hard to talk about and express your emotions is when you're just feeling detached from them.
This could be good boundaries that are keeping you safe while you're processing after a trauma or after being hurt. This could be not because of trauma necessarily but like Dedeker was getting at just being like well I'm just going to think my way around this and not I'm not going to dwell on that. I'm going to power of positive thought whatever can make it even hard to access or talk about those emotions.
This can also come up as a side effect of SSRIs of antidepressants, or of depression itself, that these can be symptoms the brief why while I was on an SSRI in college, it was like I didn't have any feelings for a few months while I was on that because I had a pretty bad reaction to it but I just had no feelings at all physically, emotionally, or otherwise and so it did make it hard to express what was going on for me because I just what wasn't feeling it. There's a lot of different factors that could be causing you to be more detached from your emotions.
Dedeker: I think some emotional detachment can be the result of spiritual bypassing which is something that I've gone through many periods of in my life. Particularly since I started meditating a decade ago that sometimes a little bit that could be a maladaptive coping mechanism when upsetting things come up or upsetting feelings. I'm just going to meditate it out then just wait for the feeling to pass and then I'm good.
Some of that is good. It's I the way that I often think about it is it's better for me to sit and meditate it out rather than snap at someone or just totally fly off the handle at someone. However often what would happen is I would meditate it out, let it go and then not bring it up again. Unfortunately, that was a weird way of boast attaching and stuffing because of course it came out eventually much later down the road.
I think that can be another thing that's maybe even pressure or perceived pressure to be more chill, or be more Buddhist, or be more meditative, or more mindful can sometimes cause some emotional detachment. All of these things are related to this phenomenon let's say known as alexithymia. Now alexithymia it's this word that basically refers to this phenomenon of having difficulty experiencing, identifying, or expressing emotions.
It's not an illness, it's not a disorder. You can't get a clinical diagnosis of alexithymia. Basically this is one of the symptoms that can occur and co-occur with certain mental health conditions. It could be anything from genetics, to environmental factors, to brain injury. It could occur as a result of trauma or PTSD. There was a really tiny study of 22 war veterans of PTSD found that 41% had alexithymia.
There are some theories floating around out there that the way that our brain works as far as survival mechanisms goes there's a section in our brain called the Broca's area. Broca's area is responsible for processing our thoughts into speech essentially and when we're under threat and when our survival techniques our fight or flight response is activated, Broca's area is one of the first areas of our brain to go quiet.
Jase: That explains that so much. I feel like that happens a lot to me.
Dedeker: From a survival response. If we've gotten to the point where we know we're not talking our way out of this one, then it's less important to be able to talk and it's more important to be able to run or to fight physically. Now the studies that look at Broca's area so far have been small and there's- our researcher for this episode also was skeptical that maybe this could be applied generally across the board, but I do think it is interesting to think about.
I think it does make a lot of sense and tracks for a lot of people that I know including myself with PTSD symptoms that often you can have feelings that come up, or memories that come up, or flashbacks that come up and you're not able to actually articulate what you're feeling and thinking. You're not able to actually speak the words but you know what's going on inside of you.
It's important just to express that for everyone listening who does have PTSD to know that's a pretty normal thing. We can sometimes judge that as oh gosh you're clamming up, or oh gosh you don't have any emotional intelligence. You're not able to talk about these things but it may be linked to literally a physiological basis. Speaking of that alexithymia could occur as a result of neuro divergence.
There was a 2018 study that suggested that possibly up to half of people on the autism spectrum may experience some form of alexithymia, and then also like Jase mentioned it could also occur as a result of mental illness or other mental health issues such as depression. I'm wondering do the two of you have a sense of other times when it's just straight up difficult to put your feelings into words or to express them to somebody?
Jase: All the time. I'm really hoping to learn something from this episode because I do struggle with this and I think, like, we talked about earlier, you've both witnessed me struggling with, like, I don't know how to describe what it is that I'm feeling but I'm feeling something and I am having a hard time telling what it is. It's something I'm still working on years later.
Emily: Yes, I guess in conflict just when you and your partner talking at cross purposes and when they have a story about what's going on, you have a story about what's going on, and it feels as though you're trying to convey exactly what's happening within you and what your feelings and emotions are but they're not getting it.
Dedeker: I think going through all of this, I'm getting the impression that both being in situations that require us to express our feelings and also being in situations where it's really, really, really hard to express our feelings seems to happen all the time. It seems like it's part of the human experience and part of the life experience as something that we all go through.
Emily: Thank goodness because, yes, as you said it is very universal. Now we're going to move on to what the research has to say about all of this. There are several studies that support the notion that being able to put a name to an emotion is beneficial for our well-being. I suppose that would be nice if all of us could just sy like, "Yes, this is what I'm feeling. Here you go, it's on a nice platter." But a 2007 study by a UCLA professor of psychology, Michael Lieberman found that putting feelings into words makes sadness, anger, and pain less intense.
There was this study that was conducted using brain imaging for participants. Essentially, they were just shown images of individuals making different emotional expressions, and then below the picture of the face, they saw either two words, like, angry, or fearful, something along those lines and the participants had to choose which emotion described the face. Or, they saw two names, like, Kerry and Sally, and then they had to choose the gender-appropriate name that matched the face.
When participants attached the word angry, there was a decreased response in the amygdala. They were basically seeing the emotion and then choosing a word for the emotion, and then there was a decreased response in their amygdala, but when they attached a name, there was no reduction in the amygdala response.
Jase: So, they were feeling whatever kind of physiological and mental brain chemical response to someone making that face, is that what we're getting at I think?
Emily: I think it even decreases that. It just is essentially saying
Jase: They have it first, they have the reaction first, their amygdala fires up going like, "I see someone being angry," or, "I see someone looking sad," or whatever it is, and that by naming the person, they were still experiencing that, but by naming the emotion- but naming someone else's emotions, that's interesting, but I guess we feel an emotion when we see someone else's feelings it.
Dedeker: Right, because we also have the mirror neurons that show up even if we don't necessarily in our conscious brain notice that.
Jase: Yes.
Emily: Yes, absolutely. According to Lieberman, when we feel angry, we have increased activity in the part of the brain called the amygdala which we just talked about. The amygdala is responsible for detecting fear and setting off a series of biological alarms and responses to protect the body from danger. We've talked about that in our fight, flight, and fear episode.
When the angry feeling is labeled, Lieberman and researchers noted a decreased response in the amygdala and increased activity and the right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex. This part of the brain is involved with inhibiting behavior and processing emotions. Interesting?
Jase: Yes, okay, so, it turns you from just reacting to processing? That's interesting.
Emily: Yes, essentially, one part of the brain is having the emotional response and maybe going into this fear-based or action-based response, and the other one is processing the emotions and inhibiting behavior. Lieberman explained it this way, and this is a quote, "When you put feelings into words, you're activating this prefrontal region and seeing a reduced response in the amygdala in the same way that you'd hit the brakes when you're driving when you see a yellow light, when you put feelings into words, you seem to be hitting the brakes on your emotional responses. As a result, a person may feel less angry or less sad." It's interesting.
Dedeker: What if you're someone who sees a yellow and then you smash the gas?
Emily: That's a really good point. Perhaps he's written work as well on them.
Dedeker: Like most of Los Angeles.
Jase: Right, yes.
Emily: Yes, I try to be opposite, but yes.
Jase: Yes, maybe they saw the picture and they're like, "I label this as angry," and smash the picture in half.
Emily: Exactly.
Dedeker: I like thinking about that though, this idea that something as "Simple" as I'm just going to say the word angry, when I feel angry, that just forces your brain to function in a slightly different way, it's like a brain hack.
Jase: It is really interesting.
Emily: Yes, wow, because you're just like putting what a name to a response, and then, therefore, maybe your brain is able to process it better in some way. I don't even know.
Emily: It's literally by forcing that part of the brain to work, right?
Emily: To work, yes, it's true.
Dedeker: The part where I process the information inhibits the amygdala, I don't know, it's wild.
Jase: Yes.
Emily: Yes, it's cool.
Dedeker: I have a slightly more upsetting study to tell you about. This is a 2016 study that was also conducted at UCLA by Dr. Michelle Craske. It was published in the journal, Psychology Science. They took a group of 88 participants and it was all people who had a fear of spiders
Jase: Okay, all normal people, great.
Dedeker: All normal people. I should have put in a content warning, "If you have very intense arachnophobia, maybe skip past this part. Skip a few minutes ahead." Got these normal people with a fear of spiders, gathered them outside, and put them in front of an open container that had a live tarantula in it.
Emily: Just don't live in Arizona, people, because they're everywhere.
Dedeker: The participants, first, they were instructed, "Okay, just get as close as you can to the spider. Whether that's two inches, a two-inch step forward, or if you can get as far as to even touching it, just see how far you can go." Then they took the group and they divided them randomly into four groups and they brought them indoors. They all had to sit in front of yet another live tarantula that was sitting behind a screen and also--
Emily: So you couldn't see it but you know it was there?
Dedeker: No, you could see it.
Emily: Oh, okay.
Dedeker: You could see it, it was there but there was a screen. There was a glass screen-
Jase: Protecting.
Dedeker: -protecting, yes.
Jase: Yes, bullet-proof glass to protect you from it.
Emily: This' the strange loved small jar and, like, "What's happening?"
Jase: Yes.
Dedeker: Also, in case you're wondering, the study paper itself included photos of the tarantula. I thought it was adorable and fuzzy and also specifically made it clear anytime they mention the tarantula in the text in parentheses, they would have to include what their leg span was, which was six inches, I think just to drive home, yes, it was a scary spider.
Jase: It's a big spider, yes.
Dedeker: It's a scary very big spider.
Emily: Yes, a tarantula.
Dedeker: Let me talk about these four groups. One group was asked to do what's known as affect labeling. As in while sitting in front of the spider that was behind the screen, they were asked to verbally describe the experience of being around the spider and to label what they were feeling. For example saying, "I'm really scared of this huge tarantula that's sitting three inches away from me and I hate it.
Emily: Got it, all right.
Dedeker: Yes. The second group was instructed to do what's known as reappraisal. They were instructed to express a more neutral sentiment both about the spider and about their feelings. They were instructed to say something like, "Yes, looking at the spider isn't dangerous for me," or. "I know that I'm safe because the spider is behind a screen and also it's a tiny spider that can't actually hurt me," so reappraising what their feelings were.
Jase: It's not tiny but yes.
Dedeker: Relatively tiny compared to the humans, yes.
Emily: Relative to a human, yes.
Dedeker: The third group was told to express a certain that had something to do with a piece of furniture in their home. In other words, something that had nothing to do with the spider. This is a technique known as distraction. They had to say, like, "I have a desk in the corner of my room at home," something like that.
The fourth group was instructed not to say anything. They were just told to just sit in front of the spider. This is known as exposure which I think we're pretty
Emily: Exposure therapy?
Dedeker: Yes, exposure therapy. These four groups did this. How are you doing, Jase? Do you need a break? You're good? You could handle it?
Jase: No, this is great, loving it. No, I'm loving it. This is so much fun.
Dedeker: Okay, I hear some breathing over there and it's just
Emily: You look visibly
Dedeker: Do you want to put your emotions into words here?
Jase: Well, I want to hear the rest of the study and then I'll decide which coins I want to take.
Dedeker: Decide which ones, okay. Then they brought all the participants back one week later and they again took them outside, they were re-exposed to the live tarantula in the open container. They were told to get as close as they possibly could, even touch it with a bare finger if they could. Dr. Craske and her colleagues measured how close all the participants were able to get to the spider, how distressed they were, they tracked their physiological responses.
Specifically, they were measuring how much their hands sweated, which is a pretty good standard measure of fear and adrenaline. Are you feeling some hand sweats right now, Jase?
Jase: A little bit but that might be from recording the podcast.
Dedeker: They found that the group that did the affect labeling, that labeled their fear of the spider performed better than the other groups. They were able to get closer, they were less emotionally aroused and our hands were sweating significantly less. They come to the conclusion that compared to all the other approaches like reappraising or distracting or just exposure of the group that was able to just verbally say out loud and acknowledge their feelings were able to "conquer" them a little bit easier.
Jase: That's surprising, actually. I would not have expected that to be the one with the most significant results in terms of less fear next time around.
Dedeker: Yes, what would you have expected?
Jase: I guess I thought that the reappraisal group, the one that described how the spider was not actually dangerous to them, I guess my brain went, "That one would have been the most successful." The idea of trying to write a sentence about a piece of furniture in my home while a spider is there staring at me, that's just an upsetting situation right there.
Emily: Or simply just having to be silent.
Dedeker: I can see how maybe it would be effective.
Jase: Yes.
Emily: Silently stare at the stranded spider. Yes.
Jase: Boy oh boy.
Dedeker: That is interesting. Now, there are many, many, many studies like this. There's a lot of research out there that really supports this conclusion that naming our emotions or affect labeling is good for us, that it helps us to reduce the intensity of that emotion and just helps us to have better well-being. However, surprise. We have a contender. A contender enters the ring. I did find a study that essentially says that's all bullshit. Naming your emotions may actually get in the way of you being able to regulate and process them.
Jase: Yes, this is a 2021 study.
Dedeker: Brand new.
Jase: Brand spanking new.
Dedeker: New study smell.
Jase: Yes. Published in affective science suggests, like Dedeker said, that maybe that's not so effective. This particular study had 81 participants also broken up into four groups. Apparently, that's the hot way to handle this kind of research. That's the hot number of groups for emotion naming therapy tests. They were exposed to several rounds of negative or upsetting images.
Dedeker: Those did include images of spiders.
Emily: Really?
Jase: Of course. They're basically the same study--
Dedeker: The low-hanging fruit of the upsetting things.
Jase: Okay, negative or upsetting images. These four groups were split up. One that simply did reexposure, just like we talked about before, just saw the things again, the next one would name the emotion they were feeling. The third group was told to regulate their emotions through reappraisal, but to do it silently, so just thinking through reasons, more neutral explanations for what's going on.
Then the fourth group did both naming and then also trying to regulate their emotions through reappraisal. What's interesting here is that-- The way that they analyzed this was looking at the self-reported negative effects of how they were feeling. They found that those who named their emotion before trying to reappraise were less effective at reappraising and regulating their emotions than people who didn't name their feelings beforehand.
Essentially, the researchers said that it seemed to indicate that naming the feelings almost solidified them or locked them in, and that then it was harder to get out of that feeling. Now, before you all throw up your hands and just close your podcast machine and say, "Forget it." One thing to take into account here is that the authors of the study themselves did mention that it's weird that there's so many other studies showing essentially the opposite thing.
Realizing it's possible that they're missing something or that there's something just different about the methodology of this study that's causing the result. This is brand new, so there hasn't been a lot of time for people to replicate it or to go through other studies based on this one to see what factors might change those results. They talked about things to take into account, like differences between hearing those negative things versus seeing them, or whether people are generating the labels for the emotions themselves, or they're picking from a list. There's lots of different factors that might be affecting this.
We don't want to say like, "Oh, this one study means it's all bullshit." That's not how science works, but it is interesting that there are some other findings as well.
Emily: I find that interesting because we talk a lot on the show about self-soothing tactics and how to emotionally regulate. Perhaps what they found is that by saying the emotion again, it just perpetuates it as opposed to lessen it or dampen it. I don't know. I'm just theorizing here, but yes.
Dedeker: My takeaway is maybe just different strokes for different folks. I'm thinking about how it seems like the takeaways from this particular study was that if you're someone who wants to use-- Maybe you use reframing and reappraising as a tactic. There's a lot of therapy that's based on reframing and reframing situations and reframing the thoughts and the things that we tell ourselves about situations.
If that's what works for you, then maybe putting an emphasis on, "No, I need to label my emotions," might get in the way with that. They also said in the study that naming the emotions got in the way of what they call mindful acceptance. Which is being aware of the body sensations coming up, and then trying to move to a place of acceptance and letting the feeling go, that if that's what tends to work for you and help you feel good, then yes, maybe sitting and "dwelling" on the emotion by speaking it out loud, make it in the way with that.
If you're someone where you know that when you are able to pinpoint your emotion and label it and express it to someone that does make you feel better, then maybe that's the way to go. Again, of course, there still needs to be more studies. There probably needs to be more studies seeing if this phenomenon is repeatable before we can make any hard and fast conclusions, but just based on this information, I think that's the conclusion I would come to.
Jase: Yes. With this whole first part that we've gone through, I think it's also worth noting that all of these studies are just looking at how naming emotions affects your ability to regulate those, which can be very powerful and it can be really useful to give those labels, but none of them are looking at a lot of things we talked about, which is when I need to communicate this to someone else.
Even if that last study, it's like, "Yes, that's the way it is," when it comes to communicating with someone close to you, then you do need those words. That's a different situation. In either case, I think that's a really powerful skill to have and one that I'm hoping to improve through this episode for myself personally.
Dedeker: Okay, well, we are going to get to specifically different approaches, different techniques that you can use for putting your feelings into words. First, we're going to take a break to talk about the sponsors for this week's episode and ways that you can help support the show so that we can keep this information coming out there for free. We're back. We have here for your listening pleasure and life pleasure, communication pleasure? Anyway, we have four different approaches for putting your feelings into words.
Again, we recommend getting creative, get experimental, the way that your partner or your best friend is able to put their feelings into words may not be what works best for you, so like we like to say on the show, be a scientist. Be a scientist of yourself. Get that data. Play around with stuff. Put yourself out there.
Jase: I believe the term we usually like to use is put on your scientist hat?
Dedeker: Yes.
Jase: Because apparently, scientists all wear hats.
Dedeker: Find your scientist costume.
Emily: Oh, yes.
Jase: Oh, yes, that's good.
Emily: Halloween just happened.
Jase: All right. Actually, I could probably get a scientist costume real cheap right now, right?
Emily: Definitely. Go do that.
Jase: Anyway, the first technique that we're going to talk about is using an emotion wheel. The reason why I say an emotion wheel instead of the emotion wheel is because there's a bunch of them out there, there's a whole bunch of different emotion wheels that people have made. Essentially, it's just a list of different emotions arranged in a circular shape of some sort.
Emily: There you go. With pretty colors.
Jase: Often grouped and categorized together so that similar emotions are near each other around the circle. There's things like the Geneva wheel, the you know wheel, and there's a bunch of others, but the one that probably most people are familiar with is the Plutchik wheel. He was actually American, so they probably call him Plutchik, but Plutchik is probably how his ancestors pronounced the name.
It was developed by a psychologist Robert Plutchik in 1980. If you, at home, if you just do a search for this, you should be able to find it. It's P-L-U-T-C-H-I-K. Plutchik. I'm sure if you just get close, the search engines will figure out what you're going for. The Plutchik wheel, it looks like a flower. Each petal of the flower is a different color. It goes from darker, more saturated colors in the middle, which are more intense emotions, and then each one goes out toward less saturated, more pastel-ish colors for the outside that are the less intense versions of those.
As a quick example, on one side of the circle, the innermost one is rage, and then outside of that is anger and outside of that is annoyance. You see, it's stepping down in intensity. Another one is ecstasy is in the middle and joy is a little farther out, and then serenity a little farther out from that. Then he's also got outside of that some other feelings that are blends of different feelings that are again more detached from the outside.
Emily: Mixed emotions.
Jase: Mixed emotions. Yes. Definitely check it out. It's interesting but effectively there's no wrong way to use an emotion wheel. Basically, the idea is just, rather than just having a list of trying to figure out, and this is something I actually am interested to try. Next time, Dedeker and Emily, I'm struggling to express how I'm feeling-
Emily: Whip out the emotion wheel?
Jase: pull up one of these, yes.
Dedeker: I know we have some listeners who have an emotional wheel that's laminated and put on their fridge, so that it's there at all times and maybe that's something we can arrange for you, Jase. Just whip out your emotion wheel.
Jase: Yes, okay I like that, I'll give it a try. Yes, just basically looking at it and what's helpful about the way that the different words are grouped together, is that if you find something that's even close to what you're feeling, or you think might be close to it, you can look at what's around it and go, well, it's like this, but it's like fear, but it's a little more towards surprise, maybe. Then when you're looking at the wheel, and you've picked out a word, or maybe a few words that describe what you think might be going on.
This can then be a conversation prompt with your partner, or someone else close to you to then start exploring it and saying, "Well, what might have been the trigger for this feeling? What might have set that off?" If there's a mix of emotions, maybe talking about each of them because maybe they had different instigating things, different triggers for each of them, or maybe the same thing caused multiple feelings, just as a starting point for exploring it. Also, things like, does this emotion feel old and familiar? Like, "Oh yes, this I have this often. Let me try to find a word for it," or it's like, "Oh no, this is weird. I feel different. Let me try to come up with a word for it."
That all these are just starting points for conversation for communicating about how it is that you're feeling or trying to evaluate even for yourself. I'm reacting a certain way to something. Like you're trying to make a decision. What is this reaction I'm having, going through the same process even by yourself? If you're a spewer going through it with someone else, just to work through it for yourself can be a great starting place.
Emily: Another tactic you can use is a mood journal. We've got the five-minute journal, we've got the dream journal. Now we got a mood journal.
Dedeker: Oh, we also had the stoics journal. Don't you have a stoic journal?
Emily: Yes, I have that.
Jase: The bullet Journal. We have all kinds of journals.
Dedeker: Stacks of journals on top of journals.
Emily: You can record how you're feeling and what you're thinking in this mood journal because when you do that, you can track your emotions, you can notice people or places that are triggers, you can recognize things like warning signs, or strong emotions. Just doing a little outline of how you're feeling throughout the day, at the end of the day. I like that idea you do that with any type of journaling, but this specifically is talking about your moods.
At bedtime, or whenever you have a few quiet moments, outline the following columns to help you reflect on a few of your biggest emotions from the day. In column one, write the emotion name and then write what caused the emotion and then the behaviors or the actions that this emotion caused me to take. If you were super pissed off for some reason, what happened as the cause of that? Did you snap at your partner? Did you want to hit a pillow or something? Throw a candy cane across the room? I don't know why I thought of a candy cane.
Jase: Did you make a bad decision because you were--
Dedeker: I was about to say that sounds very specific and you have a very real memory attached to that.
Emily: I was caroling last night. We are talking about candy cane. Then next, ask yourself, was this emotion appropriate to the situation? That's really interesting and, I think, a nice thing to ask yourself in the moment. Then finally, is this situation a distress to be tolerated or a problem to be solved? I like that. That's really interesting because yes, sometimes you're just going to have an emotion or an annoyance or whatever but you have to ask yourself, am I going to die on this mountain? Am I going to get pissed off about it? Am I going to try to solve this problem or not, or is it simply just something to be tolerated? I like that. I think I'm going to try this mood journal.
Jase: Yes, I think the power of the mood journal comes from doing it regularly, not just when you're trying to process something, but doing it more regularly so that you have this context.
Emily: You can identify patterns.
Jase: Exactly. Yes, that you started to see those because I could definitely see a situation where something comes up and you say, Well, I think this is just a distress to be tolerated. If you notice, this is in my journal, like every other day, for months. Maybe this is moving into the category of a problem to be solved. Yes, maybe this is a problem in my relationship or my workplace or whatever that I need to fix or maybe it's not, but it gives you that context, whereas if you just thought about each one of those in isolation, you wouldn't know that.
Dedeker: Approach number three is SIFT. I love this one and I use it all the time. This was originated--
Jase: Is it just because it's an acronym, is that why you love it so much?
Dedeker: It is an acronym.
Emily: That sounds like something you'd love, Jase.
Jase: That's true.
Dedeker: Well, the thing I love about acronyms is acronyms are a wonderful thing.
Emily: They are.
Jase: I love acronyms because they're wonderful.
Dedeker: I was trying to do a Tigger reference but--
Jase: Oh, that's good.
Dedeker: Yes. No, really, though, what I love about acronyms is I appreciate that in moments when I am very emotionally activated, or have a bunch of confusing, chaotic emotions going on, that I can remember it. Most of the time, if it's a short acronym.
Emily: It's shifting through your emotion?
Dedeker: Yes, it's, it's something to sink my teeth into. It's something to just do, again, that maybe helps facilitate some of that similar process of lowering the response in the amygdala and activating the prefrontal cortex that's doing more processing. It's something to do that I can remember in the moment if I feel like I'm going to pop out of my skin or something like that. That's why I love this. This was originated by psychiatrist Dan Siegel, specifically in a book that he wrote about teenagers. I figured if it's good enough for the teenage emotions, it's good enough for me.
Emily: That's a lot of chaotic emotions right there.
Dedeker: Yes, and this approach works in many different scenarios, whether you're journaling just for yourself, whether you're talking to a partner, or maybe if you're just having a moment of self-examination. SIFT stands for sensation, image, feeling, thought. You just go through those four things. First is sensation. What sensations are occurring in my body at this moment, and maybe that's throat tightening, heart beating, my muscles getting tense in a particular area, or relaxing in a particular area. Then image. What kind of imagery is running through my mind, and not everybody experiences visuals in their brain, but if you do, then taking note of them can really offer insight.
It could be a flashback to a particular memory, or it's an image of a weird imagined future or it could be little snippets of sound or touch or familiar faces, or I suddenly got this flash of an image of my mom rolling her eyes at me when I was a child and everything that carries with it. Then you move on to feeling. Just what feelings are inside you. Again, this can be difficult to separate from physical sensation like we talked about earlier in the episode, but it's getting curious about what sort of feeling tone that sensation has. This fluttery feeling in my chest is it excitement? Is it dread? Could it be anxiety? Could it be surprise?
Jase: This is the word portion?
Dedeker: Yes, the word portion.
Jase: This is where maybe you pull out your emotion wheel to try to
Dedeker: Exactly and then cross-reference with your mood journal.
Emily: Yes, correct.
Dedeker: Then lastly, thoughts. What thoughts are running through your head and so that could be your own inner voice, it could be hearing somebody else's voice generating explanations, rationalizations, making meaning, catastrophizing, laying down criticism of yourself for the other person, and I just find it really helps to not only separate these things out, but then also I can see oh gosh, that's so interesting that when I have this physical sensation of my chest tightening that I also have this thought of, Oh God, I'm worried that I'm going to die, or whatever it is, that's happening in that particular moment.
I think this is a really good exercise just for generating more awareness of yourself, and it can be a good place to start as well. Either you can just write this out and have that information or you could say this to a partner. You could really break down and describe to your partner, "These are the physical sensations, this is the image that I have, this is my feeling, these are my thoughts and it gives you just more prompts and more, I suppose more fertilizer for a conversation.
Jase: I'm having these vague memories right now of Dedeker, of you potentially SIFTing me while I've been expressing that I didn't know what was going on and these stuff from earlier where you're like, "What are you feeling physically? What the sensation?" Then going through the image. What are you seeing? Is there something attached to this? Then what are you feeling, you're trying to label it, which is what I was struggling with at first. Then that thought is like, does it mean anything? Is there something you want to do with it? The lesson here is you can also use it when trying to support someone else through something, you can SIFT them?
Dedeker: Yes, you can SIFT them and I think what I've learned from sifting Jase is just see Jase is like a nugget of gold that you're sifting.
Dedeker: Yes, you're my little flake-
Jase: Oh, I see.
Dedeker: -of gold.
Emily: Exactly.
Dedeker: -in my pan full of mud that I-
Emily: Full of-
Dedeker: -picked out of the river.
Emily: -rocks, yes.
Dedeker: Yes.
Emily: You're sifting that through.
Dedecker: What I was going to say is what I've learned from SIFTing Jase is I think if you are going to use these on a partner, use these as questions to ask a partner, also be open to the fact that not everybody experiences their feelings all in the same ways necessarily. For some people, when you ask them, "What's your body sensation?" they may be like, "I don't know. Really, I don't know." If you ask them what images do you have in your brain, they may say, "I don't have any," and that's okay because we all experience emotions in many, many different ways and so some people may have answers that they can readily access for all of these or only for one of these.
Jase: Now, I'm just curious because I feel like, for me, physical sensation is very much a part of it for me, but imagery not as much. Does that track with your scientific analysis of me in the past that I wasn't aware of?
Dedeker:
Emily: Dedeker's putting her therapy hat on when she's talking you through this.
Dedeker: Yes, I suppose that tracks although, I don't know. I feel like in the past I've tended to be more curious about physical sensation because often that's what I get curious about the most with myself. I haven't been as curious asking you about imagery. Is your experience that you just tend to not get very much imagery when a feeling comes up or when a thought comes up?
Jase: Yes, well, I'm actually curious about this. Where when looking at this term 'image' if this maybe could be broadened to include other things that's maybe more talking about what's that voice in your head saying about it or something like that?
Dedeker: See, I would categorize that under a thought.
Jase: That's interesting because I feel like the thought is more like the conclusions I'm making from it are more intentional versus what I think of in that image category is more like "These are the voices that are just going that I feel like are more out of my control that they're just part of the feeling," versus leading to a thought. I don't know. I wonder which way they're thinking about having this go?
Dedeker: I don't think that this is necessarily an airtight empirically designed tool. I think the point with all of these tools is just a starting point. Just something to grab onto when you're not sure what your feelings are or you're struggling to put your feelings into words.
Emily: The last one, the last thing that we have to give you is an actionable tool and this is an interesting one, it's to maybe text it out as opposed to saying it out loud to maybe your partner if you're having mixed emotions or you don't know what the heck is going on or you're upset about something. Maybe just use a little text message instead. This is a thing that we've all been socialized to feel shitty about initiating a big or a heavy conversation over text. There's nothing worse than getting a text message from your partner saying, "We need to talk after work. When you get home, we need to talk," then not knowing what the heck is going to happen there.
This isn't necessarily a bad thing in certain situations, so using text or an email for a heavy topic, it may make things exponentially easier. There are studies on online text therapy and they've suggested that there might be an online calming effect where participants were less emotionally aroused when communicating via text compared to face to face.
This does need further research. It's debatable that sometimes feeling emotionally aroused during therapy could be a good thing in certain situations, but it might be something to try out.
Jase: That's interesting because I feel like I've also heard from some people and other studies on this, that people are sometimes more able to express maybe controversial feelings over text than they are in person, which I could see that being helpful. Either in a therapeutic sense like you were just talking about or even with your partner if you're trying to say something that you keep holding yourself back from. I could see an argument for that and I do know people who employ this in their relationship, who just learned this is what I have to do.
Emily: Yes, I absolutely have done this in my relationship.
Jase: Oh really?
Emily: Oh, yes because I have had moments where both of us are not communicating clearly and effectively and it tends to heighten emotions to a point where it's not beneficial to continue talking about it in that moment. We call a halt and then I'll go write a letter or an email or something and then send it to my partner because, to me, sometimes, I'm able to express myself much better via an email or via written word as opposed to verbal word because, especially, you just talked about this, Dedeker, much earlier on the episode. I think that fear response comes into play in trying to convey emotions through verbiage and through words.
When you're able to shut that down and just do it via writing, I think that that can be really helpful in certain scenarios. I don't know. Text is different because there's this idea that you have to be quick about it and getting to sit down and read an email or write out an email and maybe take a little bit more time with it, I find that to be super beneficial and helpful in certain situations.
Jase: Yes, that's interesting to see the different media for sending a text-based message can affect also how you feel about it and how you do it, yes.
Emily: Yes.
Dedeker: Yes, I think I just encourage people to just be intentional about it. Even intentional if you're not sure if this will work for you, but you're open to trying it. If you can intentionally express that to your partner, if the two of you can better communicate about like, "Hey, let's try this thing,' or, "Hey, I know we have to cover this uncomfortable topic in our radar. What if we tried sitting in separate rooms and exchanging instant messages or emails or texts or stuff like that and just see how that goes. Maybe we can agree on if it seems like it's going horribly, then we'll try something else."
Emily: I do think that sometimes taking non-verbal communication out of it is sometimes helpful if your partner is triggered by a look that you're giving or a subtle eye roll or maybe angry or heightened, raised voice. All of those things can be cut out if you are at a computer writing something down. On the flip side, that sometimes is difficult for people as well because that emotionality get's lost.
Jase: You're missing all those cues.
Emily: Exactly, but I think if you find that you or your partner are getting very triggered by the non-verbal cues that you're giving off, especially when you're super heightened emotionally, then maybe this is a good alternative. There are some tips from Emma Austin, writing on Medium about this texting-it-out thing. Use emojis. We actually talked about this in episode 335 on non-verbal communication. There was a study where people were using emojis and using their little avatars in order to convey non-verbal cues and that that made people feel like, "Oh, yes, they like me or they don't like me more." It allows more--
Jase: Yes, it helps.
Emily: Exactly.
Jase: You're adding back in some of those non-verbal cues into a purely verbal medium.
Emily: Yes.
Jase: That's interesting.
Emily: I know. I do like that, but maybe they are a little bit more benign because they're not actually happening in real-time on your face perhaps. I don't know. You can also pay attention to punctuation, so exclamation points, lots of full capitalization, things like that.
Jase: I do want to add just a note about this that I think that this is actually really important is to take that time to pay attention to your punctuation, capitalizing letters, spelling things right, especially on our phones or if you're just bad at typing on a computer, it's easy to make a lot of mistakes that can make the communication worse where it's like "Wait, you're-"
Emily: "What are you saying?"
Jase: "What was your coffee?" "No, actually, I was trying to say my car," or whatever other thing it was that ended up there. Just I do want to stress that that is-
Emily: Take your time.
Jase: -important. Don't let the need for speed make you not look at these things. I also think it gives you that moment to make sure you're communicating what you actually want to be communicating and not potentially making a situation worse unintentionally.
Emily: Yes. Also, you can do things like ask for clarification. I like this one because, again, especially if you feel as though you need to be speedy about it in a text conversation, and you're not getting the whole message or getting it in perhaps the way that was intended, asking for clarification is really beneficial in these moments. Then, also, you can write more than you think you need to.
That's also going back to writing the email out. For me, it just being able to go through, "This is what I heard from you. This is what I meant and can you clarify what it is that you meant in that moment and perhaps where I'm going wrong in my interpretation of what it is that you're saying?" Things like that.
Yes, just read a little bit more if you want to drag it out a bit, but also, you know, and try to clarify as much as you possibly can.
Jase: Right, because, again, you're missing all those nonverbal cues and so you might need to say a little more to clarify what it is you're trying to say and ask for clarification. Be like, "Wait, so when you say this, are you meaning--
Emily: Is that what you mean?
Jase: -that you're angry about that, or are you saying that to mean that's more like where you want to get to and you're upset that you're not there?" Those sorts of questions of like, "What do you really mean by this?"
Emily: Yes.
Dedeker: Just a quick recap of our four approaches. First is find an emotion wheel, second is to do some mood journaling, third is to sift it out, then four is to turn it into text. I hope that you enjoy experimenting with some of these and let us know which ones work the best for you. Stick around, we're going to be doing our bonus episode this week on emotional intelligence, which is a little bit related to this topic, and specifically looking at some controversial opinions about whether emotional intelligence is actually a real thing.
On our Instagram Stories this week, we're going to be asking, "When do you struggle to put your feelings into words?" Again, you can go to our Instagram multiamory_podcast to answer that question. The best place to share your thoughts with other listeners on this episode is on this episode's discussion thread in our private Facebook group or Discord chat. You can get access to these groups and join our exclusive community by going to patreon.com/multiamory.
In addition, you can share with us publicly on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram. Multiamory is created and produced by Jase Lindgren, Emily Matlack, and me, Dedeker Winston. Our episodes are edited by Mauricio Balvanera. Our social media wizard is Will McMillan. Our researcher for this episode is Em Mais. Our production assistants are Rachel Schenewerk and Carson Collins. Our theme song is Forms I Know I Did by Josh and Anand from the Fractal Cave EP. The full transcript is available on this episode's page on multiamory.com.