The Feeling Wheel is the precursor data model for the emotion wheel we use in our self-assessment app. In her experience as a psychotherapist, she found that people seemed to find themselves at a loss for words when describing how they feel, usually handicapped in their ability to verbalize their emotions by learned behaviors of what is and not acceptable, when it comes to sharing feelings. Eluding to the blending nature of emotions, she painted these external sectors in decreasing shades of their corresponding inner feeling. To keep things balance between comfortable and uncomfortable emotions, she expanded 'glad' into three emotions: joyful, powerful, and peaceful.Īrmed with this balanced cohort, she matched them to the primary and secondary colors to render the inner wheel of fundamental emotions, from which the outer circles would radiate. Inspired by Joseph Zinker's ideas of conceiving the therapist as an artist (Zinker, 1978), and Robert Plutchik's comparison of emotions to colors (Plutchik's 1980), Wilcox set out to design the feelings wheel using the four basic emotions: scared, sad, mad and glad. Background story Anatomy of the feeling wheel Recommended Uses Final Thoughts References Try our feeling wheel app
