You will be able to describe an emotion with a specific word and explain why naming it helps.
Ask a colleague how their week is going and you will probably hear "stressed", "tired" or "a bit sian". Ask how they felt when the client cancelled the launch at the last minute and you might get "upset". Those words are fine for small talk. They are not much use when you are trying to work out what to do about a feeling, because they cover too many different states.
Arif's trigger list from lesson 2.2 had a feeling next to each item, and every one of them said "annoyed" or "stressed". When he went back and tried to be more exact, the list started telling him things he had missed.
"Stressed" could mean you are anxious about a deadline, resentful about extra work, embarrassed about a mistake, or overwhelmed by too many things at once. Each of those calls for something different. Anxiety about a deadline might need a conversation about scope. Resentment might need a boundary. Embarrassment might need you to own the mistake quickly and move on. If all you know is that you are stressed, you cannot choose between them.
The psychologist Lisa Feldman Barrett uses the term emotional granularity for the ability to tell feelings apart in fine detail. Some people naturally describe their emotions in broad strokes, good or bad, fine or not fine. Others make finer distinctions. Like most of the skills in this course, it can be practised, and the practice is mostly a matter of reaching for a better word.
Here is a short set of words to start from. Each line takes one of the broad words people usually reach for and offers sharper ones.
Angry can be irritated, frustrated, resentful, indignant or betrayed. Sad covers disappointed, hurt, discouraged, lonely and regretful. Anxious might really be uneasy, worried, apprehensive or overwhelmed. Ashamed splits into embarrassed, exposed, inadequate, guilty and humiliated.
When Arif replayed the Friday evening when Grace moved the priorities around, "annoyed" became "resentful". That was more accurate, and it pointed at fairness, the value from lesson 2.2.
There is research on why naming helps. Matthew Lieberman's lab at UCLA has run a series of studies on what they call affect labelling, which simply means putting feelings into words. In a typical design, people see emotional images such as angry or frightened faces and either choose a word for the emotion or do some other task with the same picture. Choosing the word tended to dampen the reaction, both in brain activity linked to alarm and, in some studies, in how distressed people said they felt.
Keep the finding in proportion. The reaction got less intense in these studies, which is a long way from vanishing, and nearly all of the work took place in laboratories rather than in a tense meeting with your manager. It does fit what many people notice for themselves, though. Saying "I'm feeling humiliated" quietly in your head puts a little distance between you and the feeling. You are now the one observing it, as well as the one having it.
Many emotions arrive mixed. Anger is often the loud one on top, because anger feels active and in control. Underneath there is often something quieter, such as worry, hurt or embarrassment.
When Arif looked again at the Monday call with Jason, the top layer was clearly anger. But when he asked himself what else was there, he found worry. The client had been on the call, and he was afraid that being talked over made him look like he did not know his own project. That worry was the feeling that had kept him rehearsing for twenty minutes.
The quieter feeling is usually the one worth addressing. Arif could have spent his energy on being angry with Jason. The worry pointed somewhere more useful: making sure the client heard his update properly, which he could fix with a short follow-up email the same day. You will see the same idea in the preview lesson, where the manager reading a Friday email named her feeling as anger mixed with worry about her own boss.
To find the second layer, ask yourself a plain question once you have named the first feeling: and what else? If nothing comes, that is fine. Often something does.
Naming a feeling to yourself is enough. You do not need to tell the room you feel resentful, and in most workplaces you should think carefully before you do. Telling a senior colleague "I feel humiliated by what you just said" in a team meeting will change the meeting, and probably not in the direction you want.
The value of the name is mostly private. It helps you choose your next move. Later in the course there are moments where saying how you feel out loud does help, such as in the Nonviolent Communication model in lesson 4.3, Listen for feelings and needs under the words, but even there you choose when and with whom.
In the activity below you take three moments from your past week and find the precise word for each, then ask "and what else?" to see whether a second feeling sits underneath.
Take three moments from your past week and write a precise emotion word for each, adding a second word for any feeling hidden underneath.
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