Feelings wheel: how to use it, plus 70+ emotion words to name what you feel

A feelings wheel arranges emotions in rings around a center. A few broad feelings sit in the middle. The further out you go, the more specific the words get: outside “angry” you might find “irritated”, “frustrated” and “resentful”. Reading the wheel means moving from a rough “good” or “bad” to a description that is closer to the truth.

The idea goes back at least to 1982, when Gloria Willcox published an article called “The Feeling Wheel” in the Transactional Analysis Journal. Its subtitle states the purpose: a tool for expanding awareness of emotions and increasing spontaneity and intimacy. Many variations have appeared since, and the core feelings and ring words change from one version to the next. There is no single “official” feelings wheel.

1. 1Start in the center. Pick the broad feeling closest to how you feel right now: happy, calm, sad, anxious, angry or tired.
2. 2Move one ring out. Read the words under that feeling and choose the one that fits better. Is it “anxious”, or is it more “overwhelmed”?
3. 3Try the word on. Say to yourself “Right now I feel ...”. If it does not sit right, try the next one. If two words fit, keep both; mixed feelings are normal.
4. 4Write one sentence. “I feel ... because ...”. If you cannot find a reason, the word on its own is enough.

The table below is our own grouping, not a copy of anyone's wheel. The words are a starting point, not a test. If the word that fits you is not on the list, use your own.

Strictly speaking, “tired” is an energy state rather than an emotion. We included it on purpose: it is often the first word that comes when you ask yourself how you feel, and there is often another feeling underneath it.

The research term is affect labeling. In an fMRI study published in Psychological Science in 2007, participants looked at negative emotional images. When they put the emotion in the image into words, the response of the amygdala and other limbic regions was smaller than when they processed the images in other ways, and activity rose in a region at the front right of the brain. The authors suggest that labeling may open a pathway that calms emotional reactivity.

The second line of research is emotion differentiation, also called emotional granularity. According to a 2015 review, people who tell their negative emotions apart in fine detail are less likely to turn to harmful strategies such as binge drinking, aggression or self-injury when they are very distressed, and they tend to experience less severe anxiety and depression. The review adds that interventions designed to build this skill look promising. Most of these findings are correlational, so they do not show that learning words alone produces these effects.

There is also a caveat. A 2020 study in Nature Communications analyzed stream of consciousness essays by 1,567 college students and public blogs by more than 35,000 people. Those who used a wider range of negative emotion words reported more distress and poorer physical health, while a wider range of positive words went along with higher well-being. So more words is not automatically better. The goal is to find the word that fits the moment, and a short list is enough for that.

• At the end of the day, when you want to sum it up in one word.
• When you feel “off” but cannot say why.
• During or after an argument, to pause before you reply.
• Before a difficult conversation, to get clear on what you want to say.
• With kids: the same idea works with fewer and simpler words.

We also explain how naming the feeling works as a short pause on a stressful day in our guide to journaling for stress relief.

The simplest way is to write one precise word every day. At the end of the week, look back: which words repeat, and which days or situations do they cluster around? A few example entries:

• Tuesday: frustrated (the meeting ran an hour over), later relieved (a walk).
• Thursday: on edge (tomorrow's presentation).
• Saturday: close (a long breakfast with an old friend).

Pairing the word with an event makes the pattern easier to see weeks later. The full method is in our guide on how to keep a mood journal, and if you want to turn the word into a sentence, our journal prompts can help.

In Pixmood you mark the day by tapping one of five moods: Great, Good, Calm, Low and Rough. Those five levels work like the center of the wheel. You add the precise word as a one word tag of up to 20 characters: “Low” plus “lonely”, or “Good” plus “proud”. You can also write a note of up to 1,000 characters. Weeks later, the week and month mosaic shows which days were heavy, and Pixmood Pro's insights also show which tags tend to come with lighter or heavier days.

The limits: Pixmood has no built-in feelings wheel or emotion word list, and a tag is a single word. Saving or printing the table above makes choosing the word easier.

A feelings wheel is a vocabulary tool. It does not diagnose anything and it does not tell you whether a feeling is “right” or “wrong”. Word meanings also shift between languages and between people, and some feelings do not translate neatly. If difficult feelings last for weeks or get in the way of daily life, talk to a doctor or a mental health professional. If you are thinking about harming yourself or you are in danger, call your local emergency number now (911 in the US and Canada, 999 in the UK, 000 in Australia, 112 in the EU). In the US and Canada you can also call or text 988, any time. In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans answer free on 116 123, day or night. In Australia, call Lifeline on 13 11 14.