Building an Emotional Vocabulary
My experience Journaling and how building a more developed Emotional vocabulary has helped me
Follow Up from Last Week
Last week I posed some questions about reading, writing, and storytelling, with one of the questions being on the importance of storytelling in our personal lives:
How important is good storytelling in our personal lives? The most important question for most of us? Psychologists, Psychoanalysts, Psychotherapists, and Psychiatrists have long understood how the stories we tell ourselves influence our perception of our work, our relationships, and ultimately ourselves. In my journaling practice, particularly, I have noticed how the language I use and the stories I write impact my view of the world.
In this post I would like to attempt to answer this question partially (tackling it completely requires several posts) with a focus on the language we use to describe our emotions.
My Journaling Experience
First I would like to share a bit about my experience keeping a Journal and how it has helped me, over time, explore my thoughts and emotions more . A while back one of my friends shared how keeping a journal of the lessons they had learned each day had helped them keep their thoughts organized over the years. I decided to give it a try and thus started the most consistent phase of journaling in my life.
I initially started with journaling about the events of the day and my takeaways from them, but very soon found myself writing about how the events made me feel. A while later, I then found myself trying to deconstruct my feelings before trying to interpret why I felt them.
Over the years this process of trying to identify, define, and categorize what I feel has been the single biggest contributor to my self-knowledge, emotional awareness, and overall well-being. It is also one of the reasons why I decided to start this newsletter in an attempt to find a public place where I can further structure my thoughts and engage in a conversation with the online community. I therefore thought of sharing one of the key insights I picked up from journaling and how it can be useful to others as well.
The Complexity of Capturing Emotions in Words
One of the surprising observations we make when we start to journal about our feelings and past experiences is how tenuous the relationship between our words and the feelings we try to describe using them is. We realize that the emotion or feeling we are trying to capture using a single word does not capture the depth, the extent, and the variety of what we are trying to express.
For example, recently when trying to find the right words for a “happy” childhood memory, I felt that “happy” was not the right word I was looking for. What I wanted to describe felt more wholesome, serene, calmer, and more solid, robust, and enduring than happiness. I tried several words and finally landed on “contentment” and “fulfillment”. The distinction was subtle but felt important for me to make, and I felt very different after I had made it.
Similarly, when we profess our love for someone to a friend of ours to get their advice, the first question they undoubtedly ask us is “Are you sure?” What they are trying to understand when asking that question is whether you indeed know what love is and what it feels like.
Love, like most other emotions, is an incredibly complex and multifaceted emotion that defies easy definition. It encompasses feelings of affection, attraction, attachment, care, compassion, and can further arouse emotions of devotion, passion, lust, desire, longing, jealousy, and obsession. So when we say the word “Love,” we can mean any number of those different things.
The Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard once proposed the following challenge in naming things:
“If you name me, you negate me. By giving me a name, a label, you negate all the other things I could possibly be.” — Søren Kierkegaard.
While his quote is talking about putting labels on individuals, it is equally relevant when we are naming and labeling anything that is essentially complex and multifaceted. By labeling it we are recognizing one conception and understanding of it and are therefore depriving it of the opportunity of its other aspects being recognized.
This challenge exists more so for our emotions than anything else given their inherent diverse and ever-evolving nature. Giving them a name makes us see them in a singular way. But that does not mean that what underlies the name is a singular emotion.
Complexity of Trying to Capture Emotions in Words - Philosophical Groundings
The idea that our emotions are too complex to be captured by a single word is nothing new. Philosophers have understood this for a long time. Infact more than two thousand years ago, in the Western tradition of Philosophy, this is exactly what Plato was trying to get at when he explored the concept of love in his dialogue the Symposium.
In the dialogue, Plato, through Socrates, explores the various dimensions, definitions and manifestations of love through a discussion between characters from various backgrounds:
Phaedrus, the Athenian aristocrat, is the host of the symposium and initiates the discussion on love. He delivers the first speech exploring aspects of physical love and how it is the driving force for virtue and bravery, especially in the context of a warrior’s courage on the battlefield.
Pausanias, the legal expert, follows Phaedrus and presents his own speech on love, distinguishing between a lower form of love that is purely physical and a higher form that transcends physicality.
Eryximachus, a physician, gives a speech that emphasizes the balance and harmony of love and its effects on both the individual and society. He extends the concept of love to the wider cosmos, interpreting it as a harmonizing force present in music, medicine, and the natural world, underscoring the balance love brings to all things.
Aristophanes, the famous comic playwright, presents a mythological view of love, describing humans as originally being double beings split apart by the gods. According to this view, love is the eternal search for our other half, a pursuit for completeness and unity.
Agathon, the tragic poet, delivers a poetic speech portraying love as the embodiment of beauty, youth, and tenderness, idealizing love as a divine and perfect form that guides humans towards virtue and goodness.
Socrates, the philosopher, recounting a conversation with the prophetess Diotima, presents a more philosophical and transcendent dimension of love. He describes it as a ladder of ascent, starting from physical attraction, moving towards the love of all physical beauty, then to the beauty of souls, laws, knowledge, and ultimately reaching the love of the Form of Beauty itself – an eternal, unchanging ideal.
Alcibiades, the politician, enters drunkenly and provides a contrast to the previous speeches. He praises Socrates, metaphorically describing his love and admiration for him. Alcibiades' speech turns the discussion from the nature of love to the character of Socrates himself.
Through the dialogue Plato explores not just what love is but what it means, what it signifies and what its effects are on the wider world. The dialogue itself ends abruptly when the conversation is interrupted by revellers leaving the readers to contemplate the ideas presented and draw their own conclusions.
The inconclusive end is intentional, typical of Plato’s other dialogues as well, for it clearly shows that Plato does not want to make a summarizing and concluding statement about the emotion we associate with the word “Love”. He wants us to realize that the emotion defies being categorized and doing so would be a grave mistake leading one to incorrect and incomplete knowledge about oneself.
Emotional Vocabulary = Self-Knowledge = Emotional Intelligence
What applies to Love essentially applies to all other emotions we feel. Labeling them, classifying them, and categorizing them essentially impacts not only how we understand ourselves but also how we see the world around us.
Psychologists have long understood that repressed memories and emotions can have a significant impact on our mental and emotional well-being. When we suppress or ignore our emotions, they can manifest in various ways, such as pervasive, undirected anxiety.
Emotional Intelligence in general is the catch-all term to describe our understanding and awareness of our emotions and our ability to influence them. Emotional Intelligence, in my experience, can only be developed by developing the ability to recognize and label our emotions appropriately before we can proceed to understand their causes and triggers, and being able to express and manage them in a healthy way.
What I have found through my journaling experience is that having an emotional vocabulary for what we feel is essentially the cornerstone for deeper self-knowledge on which Emotional Intelligence can then be built. By expanding our emotional vocabulary, we can better articulate and understand our own emotions, as well as communicate them effectively to others. Below are some examples which others might find helpful:
Happiness: Joy, Delight, Pleasure, Contentment, Satisfaction, Fulfillment, Bliss, Elation, Excitement, Jubilation, Euphoria, Enthusiasm.
Contentment: Satisfaction, Fulfillment, Happiness, Peace, Serenity, Ease, Tranquility, Harmony, Bliss, Calm, Relaxation, Gratitude, Acceptance, Appreciation, Joy, Delight, Pleasure.
Gratitude: Thankfulness, Appreciation, Recognition, Acknowledgment, Gratefulness.
Pride: Self-Esteem, Self-Worth, Self-Respect, Dignity, Self-Confidence, Self-Assurance, Self-Regard, Self-Love, Self-Admiration, Self-Contentment, Self-Satisfaction, Self-Possession, Self-Conceit, Self-Glory, Self-Importance, Self-Sufficiency.
Sadness: Sad, Unhappy, Melancholy, Gloomy, Sorrowful, Distressed, Downcast, Dejected, Downhearted, Despondent, Forlorn, Disheartened, Miserable, Somber.
Anger: Angry, Irate, Furious, Enraged, Incensed, Livid, Wrathful, Irked, Annoyed, Vexed, Outraged.
Anxiety: Nervousness, Unease, Worry, Apprehension, Distress, Fear, Concern, Stress.
Fear: Fearful, Apprehensive, Scared, Afraid, Anxious, Nervous, Terrified, Panicky, Timid, Petrified, Jittery, Uneasy, Alarmed, Intimidated, Daunted, Unnerved.
Jealousy: Jealousy, Envy, Resentment, Covetousness, Spite, Rivalry, Distrust, Suspicion, Insecurity, Possessiveness.
Shame: Embarrassment, Guilt, Humiliation, Disgrace, Regret, Remorse.
Referencing and returning to the list above when I am struggling to find the right word or phrase to encapsulate the emotion I am trying to express has helped me tremendously in processing some of my past experiences and the emotions they provoked. This deeper understanding of my emotions in the past has in turn better helped me recognize my emotions in the present (helping me understand myself better) and predict them in future situations (helping me plan better).
As the famous philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, who intensely studied the nature and philosophy of language, once said:
"The limits of my language mean the limits of my world." — Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
In this particular case, the limits of our emotional vocabulary set the limits of our self-knowledge, which determines how emotionally intelligent we are, which in turn determines how we react to the world around us.
Further explorations
I would love to hear what you guys think about this topic. Do any of you journal? What do you journal about? Have you found the process useful?
I would also love to hear how useful you found this topic. Are there similar topics you are interested in? What would you want to hear about next?
I would like to end this edition with some resources you can use to further explore this and adjacent topics:
Plato has many other dialogues where he explores similar concepts such as virtue, beauty, temperance, justice, courage, friendship, and ambition. Reading each of these is not just an invitation to find out the true nature of these concepts but also the realization that the concepts that underlie each of these words are far more complex, varied, and diverse to be described by a single word. Reading and re-reading the dialogues present an opportunity for us to continue to explore our ideas and notions with an open mind.
Given the foundational nature of Plato’s dialogues to the field of philosophy, there is an endless amount of secondary literature consisting of commentary on his dialogues and his oeuvre. One particular one which I have enjoyed over the years is Emerson’s PLATO; OR, THE PHILOSOPHER in which he succinctly discusses how to approach Plato’s work and highlights his strengths and weaknesses.
I really enjoy content from School of Life. I think that the books, the website, and the YouTube channel do a great job of blending philosophy, psychology, and psychotherapy and are a great way to provoke questions we can ask ourselves about our own identity, emotions, and personality. I haven’t read many of the publisher’s books end-to-end and generally like to randomly pick one up at a bookshop or a library. My personal favourites thus far are How to Overcome your childhood and Quotes to Live By. I have been wanting to try their Emotional Barometer cards, which I think are really relevant to the topic above but haven’t gotten around to it. If anyone of you out there has tried it, let me know.
Marginalian is a great website maintained by Maria Popova and contains a great many writings, especially from the works of famous fiction and non-fiction writers, on topics such as writing, creativity, poetry, love, philosophy, psychology and other topics which I have found useful over the years in provoking prompts for journaling. I enjoy the website for its unique and useful insights which cannot be found anywhere else in the online landscape. Maria shared her process of finding these in her podcast with Tim Ferriss a while back.
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Really interesting! I like the Plato Socrates insights, the stoics play a part here too. To build on the Emotional Intelligence piece - My understanding and experience is that i t was psychologist Daniel Goleman who compared EQ with IQ, and (1995) https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26329.Emotional_Intelligence
Until this point the focus was on intelligence quotient. 2000 onwards more research was undertaken and psychologists like Dr Brené Brown and Dr Susan David and others have translated Emotional intelligence into actionable values-framed skills. There are various concepts and tools some of which I've shared here: https://www.carermentor.com/t/emotional-agility
There are many ways we navigate our emotions, it's personal preference. What I've shared resonates most closely to what works for me. You may enjoy reading the 'decoding emotions' article.