How to Identify Your Feelings: A Guide to Emotional Clarity
- Traci Freeman
- Aug 1
- 5 min read
Why Emotional Awareness Matters
We all feel feelings, many of them on a daily basis. But do you know how to slow down and identify them? When you’re able to do this - whether they are good, bad, or indifferent- it can really help you in making decisions, understanding yourself and others.
It’s not unusual to experience emotional discomfort daily — stress, irritation, frustration, or sadness — but struggle to identify the source. With a lack of clarity and understanding, these emotions can lead to impulsive reactions, poor decisions, and even long-term mental health challenges. Understanding what the feeling is, what it’s connected to, and how it’s affecting you can really alter things.
Research shows that emotional clarity is closely linked to better emotional regulation, stronger relationships, and improved well-being (Kashdan et al., 2015). When you can clearly identify what you're feeling and why, you create space for control and conscious decision-making.
What It Means to Identify Your Feelings
A simple rule to follow is a quick three-step Emotional identification process that helps you become more aware of your emotional experiences:
1. Noticing Emotional and Physical Signals
Emotions typically begin as physical sensations in the body before they become conscious feelings (Smith & Lane, 2015). You might feel tension in your shoulders, a racing heart, or heaviness in your chest — signals your nervous system sends before you fully understand what’s going on. One of the most common somatic sensations is stomach aches, because stress hormones also originate here, not just in your brain. If you are feeling positive or happy thoughts, you can also feel the same bodily sensations like a racing heart, butterflies in your stomach, or smiling a lot!
2. Understanding the Cause or Trigger
Once you recognize something’s off, the next step is to identify what prompted the emotion. This involves examining the situation or thought pattern that led to your internal reaction. Emotional awareness means recognizing not only what you feel, but also why you feel it.
3. Labeling the Emotion Accurately
The final step is affect labeling — putting your emotion into words. This process activates the brain’s prefrontal cortex and reduces activity in the amygdala, which helps regulate the emotional experience (Lieberman et al., 2007). The more specific you can be with the accurate feeling, the more effectively you can manage the feeling.
3 Proven Ways to Identify Emotions
There is a feeling that is occurring in the body and in the emotional realm. There are the signals and signs we are feeling something, but now you need to accurately identify what the emotions are. The average person uses 7-10 feeling words to describe a broad range of feelings. Often, this may not capture the nuanced or specific feeling. Broadening your language and understanding is incredibly helpful.
1. Try out an Emotion Wheel
Emotion wheels organize core emotions and their nuanced variations, helping you move from vague terms like “bad” or “off” to more precise emotions, such as “overwhelmed,” “resentful,” or “guilty.” It can explain “happy” as “content,” “hopeful,” or “encouraged.” These tools expand your emotional vocabulary and improve clarity. By identifying specific emotions, you're better equipped to regulate them, communicate your needs, and reduce confusion in your thoughts and behavior.
2. Practice Affect Labeling
Affect labeling — the act of naming your emotions — is supported by neuroscience. A study by Lieberman et al. (2007) found that people who labeled their emotions had lower amygdala activity and greater regulation of stress responses. Affect labeling goes beyond the emotion and describes the context in which the emotion exists.
For example, saying “I feel anxious about tomorrow’s meeting” reduces emotional intensity and promotes clarity. This technique is now used in therapy, mindfulness practices, and even military resilience training.
If you are excited about something, it can be more powerful to say, “I am excited about the dinner tonight because I’m happy to see all my friends.”
3. Learn to Pause and Listen
The key to understanding yourself is to pause and be curious. With most emotions that are insignificant, we breeze through them daily without much concern. However, when there’s a trigger or activator that causes you to feel differently, pause and listen. This could be 10 seconds or 10 minutes. A quick way to check in is with these questions:
What do I notice about how my body is feeling?
What is going on right now that’s causing these emotions?
Can I identify clearly what the feeling is?
Once you do this, and if you can identify the feelings, then you have a choice about what to do next. If it’s harder to understand what’s going on, either take more time or return to it later and reflect. You are creating more self-awareness by taking these steps, and the more you practice, the easier it becomes.
Tools That Support Emotional Identification
Developing emotional awareness can be easier with the aid of structured tools and guidance. Here are four evidence-based resources:
1. Emotion Wheels and Charts
These visuals help organize feelings into categories and intensity levels. They’re effective in identifying layered or complex emotional states, especially when emotions are difficult to name. There are a lot of options with over 30 feelings on a wheel.
2. Journaling
Writing about emotions encourages reflection and pattern recognition. Prompts like “What am I feeling?” or “What caused this reaction?” help build clarity over time. Journaling also provides space to label emotions privately, which increases emotional fluency and self-regulation.
3. Therapy or Coaching
Professional support can help uncover blind spots and build a consistent emotional vocabulary. Therapeutic frameworks, such as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and Emotion-Focused Therapy (EFT), integrate emotional identification as part of the healing and growth process. Therapy is a unique space that encourages emotional intelligence and self-awareness by exploring life events, behaviors, decisions, and family of origin more closely.
Real-Life Applications
At Work
Emotionally aware professionals potentially handle pressure more effectively. They remain calm during conflict, express concerns constructively, and make more informed decisions in high-stress situations.
For example, instead of reacting with frustration, someone may pause and say, “I’m feeling overwhelmed and need help reprioritizing.”
In Relationships
Naming your emotions allows for honest, non-defensive communication. You can say, “I felt hurt when I was excluded,” rather than lashing out or withdrawing. This builds trust and strengthens connection. Emotionally aware individuals also tend to recognize and respond to others’ feelings with empathy.
For Mental Health
Identifying feelings early can reduce emotional buildup and prevent unhelpful coping strategies, such as avoidance, overthinking, or self-isolation. It helps you spot signs of stress, burnout, or sadness and take action before problems escalate.
References
Kashdan, T. B., Barrett, L. F., & McKnight, P. E. (2015). Unpacking emotion differentiation: Transforming unpleasant experience by perceiving distinctions in negativity. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 24(1), 10–16. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721414550708
Lane, R. D., Quinlan, D. M., Schwartz, G. E., Walker, P. A., & Zeitlin, S. B. (1990). The Levels of Emotional Awareness Scale: A cognitive-developmental measure of emotion. Journal of Personality Assessment, 55(1–2), 124–134. https://doi.org/10.1080/00223891.1990.9674052
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