Emotional Granularity: The precise art of mastering your feelings

When something triggers a strong emotion within (whether positive or negative), notice it. Take a moment to sit somewhere quiet and take a few deep breaths. Tune into the internal and physiological experience of the emotion, how it impacts your thoughts, and what sensations it creates in the body. Try to name a basic emotion at this point (happy, sad, mad, etc.). 

Getting to the root of the emotion can take some internal exploration. It may not be initially apparent what is triggering such a strong emotional response, but self-reflection can help to uncover some powerful insights. 

Ask yourself a few questions:

• What event triggered how I am feeling, and why?

• Did I, or someone else, say or do something to spark this emotion?

• Is this emotional experience connected to a past event that happened to me?

• What is the more specific emotion that is behind the basic emotion I am feeling (i.e., resentful vs. mad)?

Remember those posters from childhood of kids’ facial expressions with a feeling word underneath? Practicing emotional vocab is a lot like that! It is about getting familiar with the variety of words there are to describe nuanced emotions.

For example, sometimes it is easier to say we are feeling “mad” because it is a general term that is most readily available in our brains. However, when we stop to think about the more specific emotion that is behind that, it may be transformed in a new direction. Perhaps we thought we were mad, but we are actually feeling irritated, frustrated, infuriated, or disgusted.

Getting specific and granular in this way can help us see how each of these emotions have a different tone and amplification. This is emotional granularity in action!

And describing the experience of emotions does not need to be limited to existing words or labels only – creative expression of what we’re feeling or experiencing can, through analogy or metaphor as just two examples, can facilitate greater understanding of it.  

Similarly, words for our emotions can have difference valence (positive/pleasure or negative/displeasure) and arousal (calm/low arousal or activated/high arousal). 

When you hear the words happy and euphoric, what effect do each of those evoke? With euphoric, there is a more positive valence, and higher arousal level, than the word happy.

Practice conceptualizing how words for emotions can fall on a spectrum from positive to negative, and from high to low arousal, in day-to-day experiences. 

Externalizing emotions can be cathartic. Whether through social support means—like talking through emotions with another person—or through private means—like journaling about them. It is an entirely personal choice and one that may vary depending on the specific emotion or the context around it.

The next time you experience a strong emotion, try speaking or writing about it, and see how this changes how you feel. Allow time for reflection on the experience or emotion. Give it a size, shape or color for more perspective if needed.

Did it change in any of these areas at the end of the journal expression or the next time it was experienced? 

Sometimes our emotions are not as straight-forward as we would like them to be. Having conflicting, or ‘paradoxical’ emotions is common and very normal.

For example, you may be feeling excited about an upcoming day off from work, and also anxious at the thought of all the emails stacking up while you will be away. We can, in fact, feel two opposing emotions about the same event.

A key strategy to working with our emotions as they arise, is radical acceptance.

Radical acceptance is a practice of noticing and acknowledging emotions, without attaching to them, or viewing them through a lens of judgement.

Feeling a variety of good, bad, weak, and strong emotions is healthy! Emotional granularity helps us to articulate our emotions with more accuracy, so we can accept them and work through them. 

Understanding and navigating emotions can feel like an overwhelming task to tackle alone. Getting connected with a Personify Health Coach can make this process much easier.

Through goal setting and accountability, we will work with your members on emotional intelligence skills, like emotional granularity. Our job is to support our members in all areas of health and wellness, so everyone can feel healthy and whole.

If struggling with emotions sounds familiar, now is the time to get connected for more support to not only feel better, but also feel energized, elated, and inspired about life again.