9/7 - The Power of Naming Your Emotions: How Emotional Literacy Helps with Relationships & Inner Peace
The Power of Naming Your Emotions:
How Emotional Literacy Helps with Relationships and Inner Peace
Have you ever felt overwhelmed, irritable, or anxious—without knowing exactly why? You’re not alone. In fact, just the other day, I was feeling a little down and out of sorts, and almost felt like crying at the drop of a hat, but could not quite identify why.
Many of us experience a swirl of emotions throughout the day without stopping to identify them. But here’s the truth: learning to name what you feel is one of the most powerful tools for building stronger relationships and cultivating inner peace.
Why Naming Emotions Matters
Our emotions are like internal signals—they tell us when something matters, when we need to act, or when we need comfort. But when we ignore or mislabel these signals, we can’t respond to them effectively. Naming your emotions is the first step toward processing them in a healthy way. Once you know what the emotion is, then you can more appropriately determine the best response.
This process, known as emotional literacy, is the ability to recognize, name, and understand your feelings. It may sound simple, but it’s deeply transformative. It allows you to respond or react with a healthy, emotion appropriate solution or response.
What Happens When You Don’t Name Your Emotions
When emotions go unnamed, they often come out sideways. Instead of saying “I feel hurt,” we might lash out in anger. Instead of saying “I’m anxious,” we might try to control everything around us. This emotional miscommunication can damage relationships, fuel misunderstandings, and create inner turmoil.
Think of it like this: if you have a strange light blinking on your car dashboard but never bother to check what it means, the problem won’t go away. It may even get worse. The same is true for your emotional life.
By slowing down to determine the emotion we're feeling, we are also giving our body and our mind, a chance to catch up with each other and re-regulate. Just like with many other things in life, simply taking a pause can be incredibly helpful - not only in determining the best response, but in being able to accurately identify the emotion you're feeling. The more often you practice this, the better you'll get at it.
The Science Behind Naming Emotions
Research shows that simply labeling what you’re feeling can reduce the intensity of that emotion. This is known as affect labeling. In brain scans, people who labeled their emotions showed less activity in the amygdala (the part of the brain responsible for emotional reactivity) and more activity in the prefrontal cortex (the part responsible for rational thinking and decision-making). In other words, naming emotions helps your brain calm down and respond wisely. I mean, think about it. When you're sick, but you don't know what's wrong, you mind is going a mile a minute to determine its emotional reactivity. But once you have a diagnosis (you have a label), the part of your brain that's responsible for rational thinking takes over.
How Emotional Literacy Strengthens Relationships
When you can accurately identify and express your emotions, you improve communication and connection with others. Here’s how:
-
Reduces conflict: You’re more likely to express vulnerability (“I feel overwhelmed”) instead of blame (“You never help me!”).
-
Builds empathy: Naming your own feelings helps you recognize and validate emotions in others.
-
Creates intimacy: Honest emotional expression allows for deeper connection and trust.
In couples therapy, I often see breakthroughs happen not when someone "wins" an argument—but when someone finally puts words to what they’re truly feeling. It shifts the conversation from blame to understanding. This is the goal of Reflective Listening, which I've discussed in multiple previous blog posts.
Naming Emotions Brings Inner Peace
Inner peace isn’t about never feeling negative emotions—it’s about knowing what to do with them. When you can say to yourself, “I feel disappointed,” or “I feel scared,” you create space to respond with self-compassion rather than judgment or avoidance. I know when I am more aware of how I'm feeling or maybe even why, then I am better able to respond well, than to continue with the inner turmoil. Peace comes from knowing what you're dealing with. A doctor can't help a patient or prescribe any type of treatment unless he knows what he's treating. And I used to tell my children, when they were much younger, "If you tell me what's wrong, or what you're feeling, then I can help you. But if you don't tell me what's wrong, there's no way for me to help."
This simple act of naming keeps you grounded. It keeps emotions from growing into shame, resentment, or emotional outbursts. It allows you to be present with what’s real, instead of spinning in confusion or denial. They key here is identifying what is real, nothing more.
Practical Ways to Build Emotional Literacy
If this idea resonates with you, here are a few ways to start naming your emotions more regularly:
-
Use a feelings wheel. Tools like the Feelings Wheel or Mood Meter help expand your emotional vocabulary beyond "happy," "sad," and "angry." These tools can be found online by simply searching for the Feelings Wheel or Emotions Wheel. For children, they have charts with facial expressions corresponding with the feeling, to help them best identify their emotions. Sometimes this even helps the adults too. These tools help expand your emotional vocabulary, as well.
-
Pause and check in. Set a few moments each day to ask yourself, “What am I feeling right now?” Go beyond surface-level answers. In fact, check-in with yourself each morning, before you start your day. Go deep. Having an awareness of your mood for the day can help you better interact with others or "warn" them of what they might encounter with you. It's a helpful thing to communicate to those around you.
-
Journal. Writing down your feelings helps you process them and see patterns over time. This can be helpful over the long term, because you can begin to see a pattern emerging and may be able to better determine why you're in the mood you're in.
-
Practice with others. In your conversations, try using more emotion-based language: “I felt nervous about that,” or “That really hurt my feelings.” Feelings help us understand each other better. I have used this practice in countless counseling sessions with couples as well as in my prior work as a Social Work Supervisor. When expressing your emotions to your spouse, they usually can get a better understanding of what you're really thinking and then they can relate to what you're saying or why you're acting the way you're acting.
-
Model it for your kids. If you’re a parent, naming your own emotions helps children build their own emotional awareness. This is significant. It helps your children develop a stronger Emotional IQ early in life so they don't struggle later, trying to identify and understand their own feelings.
Final Thoughts
The world tells us to ignore, dismiss, or distract ourselves from our emotions. There’s nothing weak or wrong about having big feelings. The key is learning what to do with them and how to appropriately and productively express them.
Naming your emotions is a small but powerful habit that can transform the way you relate to yourself and others. It’s one of the first steps to creating a life of emotional clarity, deeper connection, and lasting peace.
So the next time you feel something stir in your chest or your gut—pause. Get curious. Ask: “What am I really feeling right now?”
Your soul will thank you.
If you're interested in receiving therapy to help you learn how to better identify and express your emotions, please visit my website to schedule a free 15 minute consultation - www.brittaniedmillslmft.com.
I provide online individual and couples counseling throughout California, Tennessee, South Carolina, and Florida.
Comments
Post a Comment