Most of us learned a small vocabulary for what we feel. Happy. Sad. Angry. Scared. Fine.
That vocabulary keeps you stuck.
When the only words you have are “I feel bad” there is nothing to act on. Bad about what. Bad in what way. Bad about who.
Look at the wheel. In the middle are the family names. Around the outside are the specific feelings that live inside each family.
What you might call “bad” could be disappointment. Or rejection. Or shame. Or grief. Or loneliness. Or resentment.
Each one points somewhere different. Each one asks for something different from you.
The work is to name it precisely.
When you say what you feel with the right word you have something to act on. “I feel resentment toward my sister” is something you can work with. “I feel bad about my family” is not.
Your body already knows. It has been giving you the signal in the felt sense long before the words arrive. Tightness in the chest. Heaviness in the stomach. Heat in the throat.
The body names the emotion through sensation. The wheel gives you the language to meet it.
Last Sunday was about learned helplessness. About the patterns that keep us stuck. This is the tool that gets you unstuck.
Naming what you feel precisely is the first step in being able to change it.
Underneath all of this is one truth I have shared with you before.
There is only one emotion. LOVE.
Everything else is degrees of a lack of love or no love at all.
The wheel is the map back.
What feeling have you been calling something simpler than it actually is?
Happy to listen if you want to reach out privately. Or, if you feel safe to share it, come and tell me in the Perth Spiritual Learning group on Facebook.