#PositiveVibes - Feelings Wheel

By John R. Nocero

 The VIBE: The feelings wheel is an amazing tool that you can utilize every day to determine how you are feeling in any given moment

How am I feeling right now? I don’t know. Consult the wheel. Okay the wheel says that I I feel conscientious. I accept it. I feel it. Got it. Back to work. Is it that easy? Yes. If you have difficulty identifying your feelings or even dealing with your feelings, spin the feelings wheel. No need to buy a vowel.

The feelings wheel is an amazing tool that you can utilize every day to determine how you are feeling in any given moment. It was developed by Dr. Gloria Willcox to identify the original main emotion you are experiencing and connects this with other linked groups of emotions, which branch off from the central circle. This helps you to identify the root of your feelings by tracing back to one of the main emotions in the center of the chart (Showers, 2013) In the center of the wheel are the main feelings: sad, mad, scared, joyful, powerful and peaceful. From these you can branch out into a more specific feeling. So you can either work from the inner circle outwards e.g: Mad – Hurt – Distant, or from the outer circle towards the centre e.g: Relaxed – Content – Peaceful.

 The wheel displays the full range of human feelings, both positive and negative ones. So often we suppress our negative feelings and pretend to display only the positive ones. However, these are not to be shamed, but to be fully experienced, listened to, and understood. We don’t need to share them with anyone. We just need to understand them. According to Martin (2010), all feelings not just the “positive” ones, are valid and what make us human; to deny our negative feelings, is to deny our very nature. Feelings are messengers that communicate our beliefs, limiting or otherwise, to us. So if we experience the negative feeling of being mad, it is letting us know that we are feeling powerless, since the feeling of being powerful is the opposite of feeling mad. At the root of every negative feeling is a childhood trauma, and the story that we created about our trauma to cope with it, prior to the age of eight.

 Listen to the negative feelings, heal their associated trauma and limiting beliefs, and then we are able to shift into the positive feeling in that aspect of our life. The positive and negative feelings work much like a yin-yang symbol. Each feeling has an opposite feeling to match it. In any given aspect of your life, if you are feeling sadness, you are not feeling joy, if you are feeling powerful you are not feeling mad, and if you are feeling peace you are not feeling fear. Conversely, if you are feeling joy you are not feeling sadness, if you are feeling mad you are not feeling powerful, and if you are feeling fear, you are not feeling peaceful.

Have fun identifying your feelings at different times, whenever your mood changes. Here’s a link to the wheel: https://med.emory.edu/excel/documents/Feeling%20Wheel.pdf

References:

Martin, N (2010). Increase the Effectiveness of EFT with a Feelings Wheel. Retrieved November 12, 2017

From https://freewitheft.com/increase-the-effectiveness-of-eft-with-a-feelings-wheel/#.WghQxY9SyJA

Showers, A (2013). The Feelings Wheel Developed by Dr. Gloria Willcox. Retrieved November 12, 2017

From https://msaprilshowers.com/emotions/the-feelings-wheel-developed-by-dr-gloria-willcox/

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