If you can't understand your emotions, try comparing them to colors
Have you ever found it difficult to identify your own emotions, especially when something unexpected happens or when you are experiencing a mix of joy and sorrow? In such moments, it might be helpful to compare them to colors.
The importance of understanding emotions
In our daily lives, there are times when we feel like we "don't know what we are feeling" or when we "bottle up our emotions." Especially in professional settings, we are often expected to "put our emotions aside for now."
On the other hand, emotions often influence our thinking, and in such cases, if you don't fully experience and process those emotions, you may find it difficult to effectively direct your thoughts toward your next goal.
Therefore, the moments when you feel you "must bottle up your emotions" are actually the times when you most need to properly grasp and understand them.
Expanding your emotional vocabulary
To grasp your own emotions, you need to expand your vocabulary for emotional expression. While the "Plutchik's Wheel" is a well-known systematic summary, here I would like to introduce the cards compiled by Love Smart Cards Japan as a comprehensive reference.
Even just recalling when you last experienced the emotions listed here can help improve your ability to identify your feelings.
It is not necessarily better to only feel positive emotions; negative emotions arise for a reason, so facing them properly rather than turning a blind eye to them is also useful for recovering from damage.
How to explore your "here and now" emotions
With that in mind, let's explore what your "here and now" emotions are. I will suggest a few methods, including the one in the article title, so you can find what works best for you.
1. Choose the closest one from an emotion list
The quickest way is to choose the closest one from an emotion list like the one shown above. It is easier to choose intuitively rather than overthinking it or trying to find the "correct" answer.
You might find that multiple emotions are mixed together. In such cases, it is fine to choose by thinking, "It's probably a combination of this and this."
2. Is it positive or negative?
If you look at the list and still can't identify your emotions, or if you aren't even sure if you are feeling anything at all right now, I recommend the following method.
I would like to share some tips for making it easier to feel your emotions. If many different types of emotions are changing rapidly, it is quite difficult to carefully track and identify each one. For those who feel this way, I recommend first classifying emotions into three types: positive emotions, negative emotions, or neutral emotions.
I often use this method at work when listening to stories that seem to involve emotions. Even people who are resistant to talking about their feelings are often willing to share at this level, so I find it very useful.
Even if you don't understand the content of your emotions, being able to see the direction they are heading can at least give you some peace of mind.
3. Try quantifying it
Once it becomes clear whether your feelings are positive or negative, quantifying them can help make them a bit more concrete. I think the following article will be helpful.
Now, in the next section, I will introduce a way to express emotions using colors.
How to express emotions using colors
I think this method is particularly effective when you have emotions but don't know how to express them (either you can't think of the vocabulary, or you haven't quite grasped the emotion yet).
Specifically, you just need to ask yourself or the other person the following questions.
If you were to express your current emotions as a color, what color would it be?
Why did you think of it that way?
Are you okay with it staying that color? What color would you like to change it to?
If it became that color, what do you think you would be feeling?
Emotional vocabulary is used frequently in school language classes, daily conversation, and in movies and dramas. Therefore, while we do have a certain amount of emotional vocabulary in our heads, I think we often don't know the one-to-one correspondence between that vocabulary and the emotions we are actually feeling.
In such situations, by interposing something easy to express like "color," it becomes easier to connect your emotions with vocabulary expressions. Also, by setting a direction in the form of "what color do you want it to be," you can lower the hurdle for talking about how you want to handle those emotions.
Summary
Precisely because we live in a digital, online age, it is important for each individual to firmly understand their own emotions and handle them well. I have introduced a method that uses color as an entry point for understanding those emotions.