Affective Sciences. (2017, September 27). The Geneva Emotion Wheel – CISA – UNIGE. Retrieved from http://www.affective-sciences.org/gew

For example, let’s say I mention, “I had pizza yesterday for dinner.” If I just say the word ‘pizza,’ I’m feeling a bunch of things. I’m tasting things, I’m seeing things in my mind’s eye, and when I say the word ‘pizza,’ the word conjures some of those features in your mind too. So we can communicate easily. I have some features in my mind, I say a word, and then your brain conjures some of those features. Very efficient. Similarly, we both speak English, so if I say I’m ‘sad,’ – if I say, ‘I was really sad yesterday when a friend of mine told me he was moving away’ –­ that word in that context allows your brain to conjure a bunch of features in your mind that might also be in mine. It’s like a guess. You’re guessing at how I’m feeling. Your guess might be not identical, but if it’s pretty close, then we are communicating.Exploring a wide range of emotions and reasons they can differ vastly even within the same day, this is a great book to read with early primary/elementary aged children. For example, suppose you’d like to better understand your client’s baseline emotional state on an average day. In that case, you could ask them to complete an emotion wheel as part of a standardized set of intake materials. This reminds me of the debate over colour perception. The key question there is: if a culture does not have a name for a colour, do they perceive it in the same way? So, if we don’t have a name for an emotion, does that affect the way we emote? People make the mistake of essentialism when they misunderstand Darwin’s ideas about natural selection, or they make mistakes about understanding evolution or genetics more generally. This is discussed in a terrific book by Ernst Mayr, called What Makes Biology Unique? If you assume that a single set of genes are like little essences that cause the same characteristic in everybody, like brown hair, and that everyone who has brown hair has the same set of genes, that’s essentialism. And it’s not true. Most characteristics (not all, but most) are created by combinations of different genes – so more than one set of features can create a characteristic. This was Darwin’s great insight: a biological category is highly variable in its features. Natural selection works only because there is this variation within a category. A biological category like sex works the same way. People assume that there is a single set of characteristics that make you male or female, and that the boundary between male and female is firm in nature – that all the men are similar in some physical ways, and that men are never similar to women in those ways.

Once the emotion is identified, the body moves into action. Emotions bestow certain actions instead of others, which means that while some are beyond our control (and thankfully so), like pulling your hand away from a hot iron, others are within our control, facing the fear to continue with a speech or a presentation. 3. Appraisal Component The Feeling Wheel was designed by Gloria Willcox (1982) and is a great starting point for those who find it challenging to identify their emotions. With so many emotions, how can one navigate the turbulent waters of feelings, without getting lost? Kircanski, K., Lieberman, M. D., & Craske, M. G. (2012). Feelings into words: Contributions of language to exposure therapy. Psychological Science, 23(10), 1086-1091. A lovely ABC of feelings book that is fabulous for starting conversations about emotions. While some of the letter words are less obviously representations of feelings, they offer a great opportunity to talking about what each means and represents.

For example, hearing words like: “I am afraid,” “I feel jittery,” “I don’t want to be here,” or “I just don’t have enough time to prepare for the final,” are all part of the different components of an emotion. By having an intersex protagonist, Eugenides takes on the assumption that categories cut nature at its joints” The adding up of these various primary emotions will produce new ones such as: love = (joy+ trust), guilt = (joy + fear), and delight = (joy + surprise). If you curate your experiences, eventually your brain will automatically make those emotions with ease”

The two parameters are valence (describing a situation as unpleasant or enjoyable), and control/power (looking at whether or not the individual has high or low control over the situation, and it’s outcomes). Among the various items you can include in your activities is a ‘wheel,’ which can be labeled with emotions according to one of the frameworks we have explored. Vivid, expressive illustrations are paired with clever rhymes to describe a wide range of emotions (silly, disappointed, bored, angry, etc). A beautiful book that describes a range of emotions and how they make you feel physically, with simple language that children will relate to.

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Grinnell, R. (2016, June 17). Internal Locus of Control. Retrieved from https://psychcentral.com/encyclopedia/internal-locus-of-control/’

Siblings Sam and Kate know what makes them happy, but they can’t be happy all the time! Follow them (with their parents and dog, Fuzzy Bean) on a journey through emotions and the everyday situations that can impact upon the way we feel.When a crisis enters our lives (or another intense event), we start asking more questions about the role we play in the world. We start paying attention to the emotions and the messages they send to themselves and others. Ogelk. (2017). Emotion Cognition Motivation. Retrieved from http://www.ogelk.net/dersnot/tip/Emotion_cognition_motivation.pdf Those wishing to expand their knowledge of emotions can take a look at these further resources, including a video explaining why suppressing emotions is a bad idea. Worksheets for Children