Managing and coping with the wide spectrum of human emotion is tough. Therefore, it urges the need for emotional literacy to identify and communicate feelings. People with better emotional literacy hold good relations with others.
Nobody is born with emotional literacy – one needs to develop it with meaningful interactions. However, in today’s world, where people dwell on their cell phones more, there is less opportunity for engagement. Also, the societal gender norms that boys and men shouldn’t express their emotions are holding people from experiencing the rainbow of emotions.
Therefore, individuals must grind their emotional skills to develop emotional literacy. However, the emotion wheel is great to help you along the way. The emotional wheel offers humans a practical snapshot to view and understand the feelings in people’s everyday life. The wheel contains the core human emotions – happiness, sadness, disgust, fear, surprise, and anger.
Emotional Wheel – Meaning
An emotional wheel is a circular graph that depicts a wide range of human emotions and their interrelation. Psychologist Robert Plutchik developed the emotional wheel. Plutchik’s tool simplifies complex emotional concepts and resolves any dilemma.
Identifying and verbalizing our needs can be challenging since our emotions remain subconscious – but this tool is gonna be your savior! It enables the user to visualize their feelings and comprehend what emotional combinations led to this result.
Six Core Emotions On The Wheel
Emotions can be confusing! But when you can explore them on an emotion wheel – you can dig deeper into the physiological purpose of each. Also, with its proper understanding – you can use the emotional wheel to develop your relationship with yourself and those around you.
And therefore, this tool is so valuable. Here is a detailed look at the six core emotions on the wheel:
➡ Happiness
Happiness is the thing humans strive for most, associated with a smile, laughter, or a pleasant way of talking. It is linked with joy, curiosity, pride, satisfaction, courage, peace, imitation, and optimism.
➡ Sadness
Sadness is a critical condition whose longevity can lead to depression. It comes from negative feelings and includes guilt, abandonment, despair, depression, loneliness, and apathy.
➡ Disgust
Disgust is another emotion people feel when something they don’t like happens. The subcategories of disgust on the emotional wheel include disapproval, disappointment, awfulness, and aversion.
➡ Fear
Fear is another dynamic emotion that badly influences mental health and includes the risk of danger. The subcategories of fear are embarrassment, unwantedness, inferiority, insecurity, anxiousness, and scarceness.
➡ Surprise
Surprise is the exact opposite of anticipation and is linked with degrees of distraction and amazement. It includes shock, confusion, awe, and excitement.
➡ Anger
It is a very intense emotion that has hidden sadness and inner grief. It includes hurt, insecurity, harness, madness, aggressiveness, irritation, distancing, and criticism.
Emotion Wheel For Kids
Children of all ages with trouble recognizing and expressing their feelings can benefit from this wheel. The emotional wheel is proven to assist kids in understanding the shifting nature of emotions. The emotional wheel generally includes six primary emotions, also broken into numerous subcategories. However, children’s emotion wheels only have ten emotions with no subcategories. Therefore, it is easier to help children understand the wide spectrum of emotions at the very core level with ten basic emotions.
However, Plutchick found that people could experience a wide spectrum of emotions as he developed this emotion wheel. We learn to accept our responses as part of the feeling process. Sometimes, feelings can be too hard to handle – therefore, emotions wheel charts help children comprehend things. It can be used to investigate the causes of their feelings and how to express them.
This emotional wheel has 9 emotions with subcategories grouped in color-coordinated spokes. By looking at the animal and human figures and seeing the expressions, children can find ease in communicating their internal state and how they feel at a particular time. Doing so will help the parents/guardians take appropriate measures. Download our emotional wheel PDF now.
This tool can prove to be a savior in times when children are irritated but can’t express their feeling to you.
How Can A Child Recognise Their Emotions?
Kids deal with mixed emotions and feelings just like adults since they, too, get frustrated, anxious, nervous, excited, or embarrassed. However, young kids need emotional literacy and vocabulary to talk about their feelings. So instead, they communicate their feelings in other ways, including facial expressions, body language, and much more.
As a parent or guardian, you must help a child describe and verbalize different shades of emotions. Besides this, parents must also help them understand the connection between the intensity of feelings. Children can link and recognize emotions using the emotion wheel. As a result, people can recognize their emotions, accept them, make thoughtful decisions, look for solutions, find closure, and feel more secure and stable overall.
The Bottom Line
You shouldn’t hide your feelings or emotions; instead, you should learn to listen to them and become more emotionally aware of comprehending your inner self better. We gain several benefits when we learn to identify and express our emotions. For example, we might become more adept in managing stress, relating to others, and developing self-compassion.
You must work harder with children because they require more assistance managing their emotions. Parents significantly impact how your child is skilled at managing a wide range of emotions. Please make the most of this as an opportunity to show your children how to express their emotions positively.
References:
https://www.theraplatform.com/blog/486/what-is-emotional-literacy
https://www.betterup.com/blog/emotion-wheel
https://kidshelpline.com.au/parents/issues/helping-kids-identify-and-express-feelings#:~:text=From%20the%20moment%20kids%20are,as%20parents%2C%20grandparents%20and%20carers.
https://www.vedantu.com/blog/emotion-wheel-for-kids
Craig Selinger
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