Understanding and managing our emotions is crucial for mental well-being. The Feelings Wheel, developed by Dr. Gloria Wilcox, aids in labeling feelings, a practice backed by research to improve mental health. Labeling emotions, like rating anger or identifying sadness, can reduce distress and increase courage. Embrace self-compassion and better understand your emotions with this tool.

Most of us were not taught how to understand and manage our feelings. You don’t have to control your feelings. You don’t have to feel shame for them. Your feelings are something to learn from and work with.

One of the most helpful tools for doing this is called The Feelings Wheel, a tool developed by Dr. Gloria Wilcox to help people to understand and label their feelings.

Extensive research has found that labeling your emotions is one of the best things you can do to improve your mental health. Studies from UCLA and other institutions have found that putting your feelings into words makes them easier to cope with. For example:

Rating your anger on a scale of 1-5 reduces your heart rate, a measure of distress.

Describing your emotions when dealing with a phobia increases your courage in facing it.

Adding a label to an emotion (like "that's sadness" or "this is fear") decreases the activity in your amygdala, which is where your fight-or-flight response comes from.

The next time that you’re feeling overwhelmed by your emotions, try using our version of the feelings wheel, which you can download here, where you'll also find a full guide on how to use it and helpful tips for understanding and managing your emotions. Learning how to treat yourself with greater compassion — no matter what you're feeling — is one of the most important happiness skills there is.