Emotional Vocabulary

When I began my own counseling in my mid-twenties my therapist asked me ‘how do you feel?’ and my reply was “bad”. She told me ‘bad is not a feeling’ to which I replied “lady that’s all I’ve got!’ I simply did not have the emotional vocabulary to describe what was going on with me internally. All I knew was that for as long as I could remember there had been a feeling of dis-ease.

As a clinician I encounter this all the time in my clients. We can’t know what we don’t know. This is a simple concept, but often seems elusive to grasp. One problem is that of reference points. Many of us received conditioning of feelings in our family of origin. Certain feelings may not have been allowed or frowned upon (i.e. anger or sadness). Cultural norms also play a factor in this conditioning. For example, many boys receive the message that crying is not ok. This sets up what Transactional Analysis calls “feeling rackets”. A disowned feeling manifests as something else.  In the example of a boy who learns ‘boys don’t cry’ sadness begins to manifest as anger.  I have observed the opposite with girls. Many girls receive the message that anger isn’t appropriate or ‘ladylike’, but crying is ok.  Thus anger begins to manifest as sadness.

Another challenge is the limitation of language itself. Take the word ‘love’ for instance. Many cultures have unique words for different types of love (in Greek there is Eros, Agape, Philia and Storge), but the English language has just one. I love my wife, my children and our dogs, however the love that I have for each is very different. Having to use context to determine meaning can be confusing. Complicating this even further are contradictions between what is said and the action behind it. I remember being spanked as a child and told ‘I’m doing this because I love you’. This incongruence is very confusing, especially to children.

As a recovering individual and clinician, I have become a student of semantics (the meaning of words). I believe the words we use to describe ourselves and lives reveals a lot about what we believe. Due to the aforementioned challenges, words can also be limiting or even misleading. Often when I ask someone how they are feeling the response is “good, bad or fine” What do these words even mean? They reveal very little about a person’s emotional state. There are over 3000 words available in the English language used to describe emotions. Expanding emotional vocabulary opens us up to nuances in our feelings previously unknown or unrecognized.

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