Why naming feelings matters: helping young people build self-awareness with 'emotions wheels'

Free downloadable resource at the bottom

“I’m fine.” “I'm good.” “I'm feeling bad.” "I'm ok"

If you’ve ever tried to check in with your child or teen and been met with these responses, you’re not alone. Many young people struggle to name what they’re feeling; in fact, most adults do too. It's not because we don’t have feelings. It’s because we don’t have the self-awareness and language to describe them.

According to research by Travis Bradberry, author of Emotional Intelligence 2.0, only 36% of the population can accurately name how they are feeling.

At a time in life when emotions are running high, identity is still forming, and mental health challenges can quietly emerge, being able to name feelings is more important than ever.

Self-awareness starts with language

Self-awareness is the cornerstone of emotional intelligence, and this is what I work on with all my clients. It’s the ability to recognise what’s going on inside us and understand how it affects our thoughts, behaviours, and decisions. For young people, self-awareness builds confidence, supports healthy relationships, and improves performance at school, college, university and on into their working lives.

But here’s the catch: self-awareness starts with being able to name what we feel. And words like “good,” “bad,” “fine,” or “okay” don’t really count. They’re vague placeholders—convenient when someone’s not ready to talk, but ultimately not helpful for understanding or processing emotions.

As author Brené Brown puts it:

“Language shows us that naming an experience doesn’t give the experience more power, it gives us more power."

All emotions are valuable - even the hard ones

It’s common for young people to think in terms of “good” and “bad” emotions. Happiness - Good. Sadness or anger - Bad. But the truth is: there’s no such thing as a bad emotion. Every feeling has a purpose, it’s sending us a message about what we need, what matters to us, or how we’re experiencing a situation.

Rather than labelling emotions as good or bad, it’s more helpful to think of them as:

• Positive emotions: These tend to support us, uplift us, and help us build connections (e.g. excitement, love, hope).

• Negative emotions: These can feel uncomfortable or heavy, but they hold valuable information (e.g. fear, sadness, jealousy).

It’s what we do with these emotions that really counts. When a young person learns to pause, name what they feel, and choose how to respond, they’re developing emotional resilience—and that’s a life skill they’ll carry forever.

Anger: The most powerful emotion we have, it our easy, go-to emotion when things are hard.

One of the most common emotions you’ll see, especially in young people, is anger. It’s loud. It’s explosive. And it often seems to appear out of nowhere. But here’s something important to know: anger is usually just the tip of the iceberg.

Underneath anger, there’s often a whole collection of more vulnerable emotions hiding just out of sight: hurt, embarrassment, rejection, guilt, shame, fear

This is known as the anger iceberg analogy. What we see and react to is anger, but what’s driving it is often much deeper. Helping young people learn to look below the surface and ask, 'What’s really going on for me right now?', can transform how they handle strong emotions.

Nothing good will come out of attempting to have a conversation when one or both parties are angry. Take a time out, let everyone calm down, and then talk about it. You might ask one of the following questions:

• Is there something underneath the anger?

• What were you feeling before you got angry?”

The above questions invite reflection rather than defensiveness. Avoid 'WHY' questions, as they often come across as accusatory or judgmental and can trigger defensiveness.

Remember to print out the free resource so you have an emotions wheel ready BEFORE you have any conversation about feelings.

The power of naming emotions

Naming emotions does three things:

1. It calms the nervous system. Research shows that simply naming a feeling, like “I’m feeling anxious” or “I’m frustrated”, can reduce the intensity of that emotion.

2. It builds emotional vocabulary. Like any skill, emotional intelligence improves with practice. The more words we have to describe how we feel, the more precisely we can communicate.

3. It makes us better problem solvers. If your teen can identify that they’re feeling overwhelmed rather than just “bad,” they’re much more likely to figure out what they need to do next, whether it’s taking a break, asking for help, or changing their approach.

How emotions wheels Help

Emotion wheels are fantastic tools for building emotional vocabulary and practising self-awareness. They typically start with basic feelings in the centre—like happy, sad, angry, scared—and then fan out into more specific emotions.

For example:

• Instead of just “angry,” a young person might learn they’re actually frustrated, resentful, or irritated.

• Rather than “good,” they might realise they feel proud, grateful, or peaceful.

This clarity helps them connect the dots between what’s happening outside (like a stressful exam or a fight with a friend) and what’s happening inside.

I use these with most of my clients, they are especially powerful for my autistic clients, who can sometimes find naming emotions particularly hard. At the beginning, they rely on their wheels heavily, but by the end, they find that they no longer need them and can express themselves easily. Before you have any conversation about feelings, print a wheel out so it can be used as you talk things through. I have included a couple of options in the free resource.

If there are any emotions they don't understand the meaning of, this is a great opportunity to talk about what they mean and find examples of when you might feel this 'new' emotion.

You can download or print an emotion wheel and keep it somewhere visible, on the fridge, on a bedroom wall, or even saved in a phone’s photo album. The goal isn’t to force your child to “do feelings” every day but to slowly build up comfort with identifying and naming them.

What you can do as a parent

• Model it. Use emotional language in everyday moments. “I’m feeling disappointed that dinner didn’t go as planned.” “When the sun shines, I feel joyful.” "I'm feeling really optimistic today."

• Be curious, not pushy. Instead of “What’s wrong with you?” try “You seem a bit off—can you tell what you’re feeling right now?”

• Validate the feeling, don't ignore, reject or dismiss it. “It makes sense that you feel that way,” goes a lot further than “You don’t need to feel like that.”

• Practice together. Use the emotion wheel as a family check-in at dinner or before bed. You might be surprised what comes up.

Helping your child become more self-aware isn’t about turning them into an open book overnight. It’s about giving them the tools, time, and space to understand themselves better and to feel empowered by that understanding.

When we stop settling for 'fine' or its companions, 'good', 'bad' and 'ok', and start exploring the real feelings underneath, we give young people something incredibly valuable: the ability to navigate life with resilience, clarity, and confidence. As a parent, you can work on this too, don't settle for being one of the 36%!

Because the truth is, our emotions don’t need to be fixed—they just need to be felt, named, and understood.

Download this month's free resources below:

Talking about emotions.pdf

Download PDF • 753KB

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