Why Does Naming Your Emotions Help?
- Alyssa Rosner
- Jul 15
- 3 min read
When you’re feeling overwhelming emotions, it can feel like a tornado. You might find yourself struggling to find the words to describe what you’re feeling. It might feel as if everything is moving too quickly for you to pinpoint what’s actually happening. The wedding is starting in twenty minutes, and you’re stuck in standstill traffic. You took on way too much at work, and it’s catching up with you. Your friend is upset with you and you have no idea how to fix it. The feelings that come with experiences like these can be destabilizing, making a difficult situation so much harder. If only there was a way to recenter ourselves, a way to reach a point of greater calm and clarity amidst that storm. It turns out, there is.
When we feel an intense emotion rising, we can pause and ask ourselves: what emotion am I feeling right now? This pause, where we identify our emotions, can help us feel more understood and validated, making it easier to share our feelings with others. Additionally, naming our emotions can influence how we view our situation and, therefore, how we respond to it. These are the three main benefits to naming our emotions:
Communicating to ourselves: Understanding what we’re feeling puts us in control. It gives us a sense of clarity, and helps us make sense of the experience. This can be an opportunity for us to self-validate and understand ourselves on a deeper level.
Communicating to others: It helps others clearly understand what we need from them. This is important because when we share our pain with a friend, most often they will understand and identify with it on some level, helping us frame the issue and adding context.
Preparing us for action: Our emotions are often helpful messengers, and naming them helps us better understand what they’re trying to communicate. For example, if we’re feeling scared, we might understand that there’s something dangerous we should stay away from.
By naming our emotions, our self-awareness will continue to grow over time, helping us understand our emotions and identify those emotions that we might want to accept or change.
If you’re wondering how to identify what you’re feeling practically, DBT provides a guide for identifying the emotion we’re having in the moment. You can follow this step-by-step process:
Prompting Event: Identify the external or internal event causing you to feel the emotion.
Example: Notice you’re feeling bad because your friend isn’t responding to your text.
Identify Your Interpretation of the Event: It’s often not the event itself that causes the emotion, but rather how we interpret it. Separate the facts of the event from your interpretation.
Example: Identify the fact (your friend isn’t responding) and the interpretation (they don’t care about the friendship).
Body Response to the Event: Notice how your body is responding: Is your back slouched? Do you have a headache? Your emotions can sometimes be better understood through observing your body’s reaction.
Example: Notice that your back is slouched and you’re feeling heavy.
Action Urges: Notice if you have any urge to take a specific action. The actions we want to take often communicate which emotion is prompting them.
Example: Notice that you really want to send your friend another few texts, in order to get their attention.
Express and Name Your Emotions: Identify the specific emotions you’re feeling. Express that emotion to someone you trust.
Example: Identify that you’re feeling anxious, and convey that you’re feeling this way to someone you trust.
In moments of overwhelming emotion, pausing to identify our emotions is worthwhile. It allows us to clearly communicate what’s going on to both ourselves and others. With that clarity, we can then find the best way to respond and react to that specific emotion.
