The limits of your emotional vocabulary become the limits of your emotional life

How many emotions can you name?

Happy. Sad. Angry. Anxious. Excited. Frustrated. Stressed.

This is something I regularly ask people to do in my workshops, and most people can get to ten or fifteen if they really think about it. Perhaps even more.

Now imagine trying to describe the full range of emotions we experience in life using only a handful of words.

I was thinking about this a lot recently. I’ve been preparing to stand on the TEDxBukit Bintang stage in Malaysia and talk about emotional vocabulary: an idea that sounds ridiculously simple at first

The more I've researched emotional vocabulary, though, the more I’ve realised how incredibly powerful it is as a tool. 

What I believe, and what the research shows, is the size of our emotional vocabulary has a profound influence on our experience of emotions and the way we deal with challenge, stress and change. 

The problem is most people have a huge gap in their emotional vocabulary, and I don't talk think we’re talking about this gap anywhere near enough.

We have thousands of specific words for emotions, yet most people only use a few general words 

Think about how specific our language can be when describing things. We know the difference between a drizzle, a downpour, a storm and a monsoon. We can distinguish between a sedan, a hatchback, and an SUV. We have very particular and specific words for coffee orders, which has almost become a whole language of its own.

Yet when it comes to our emotions, we often reach for the same handful of words.

"I'm stressed."

"I'm anxious."

"I'm fine."

"I'm angry."

"I'm overwhelmed."

Those words can be useful, but when they are the sum total of our emotional vocabulary, that limited emotional vocabulary becomes a problem.

There’s a difference between feeling disappointed, betrayed or humiliated. 

There’s a difference between feeling apprehensive, frightened or terrified. 

Feeling lonely is distinctively different from feeling sad.

Feeling resentful is different to irritation.

There are shades, nuance and combinations of emotions. 

Without the language to distinguish between specific emotions, we can end up labelling a very large and messy knot of emotions as one large knot, rather than pulling out the separate threads of each emotion. 

The words we have give us more clarity about our experience. 

This is where my thinking about emotional capacity comes in. Emotional vocabulary is foundational for emotional capacity.

If I can't identify what I'm experiencing, it becomes much harder to understand it. If I can't describe it, it becomes harder to communicate it to someone else. If everything gets bundled under "stressed" or "overwhelmed", I have fewer clues about what is actually going on.

That affects what I do or think or say next. Imagine telling someone, "I'm angry." That gives you a general starting point. Instead, imagine saying, "I'm disappointed, and underneath that I'm actually feeling a little insignificant and undervalued."

That's a different description, which leads to a different conversation. Already, there is more information about what’s really going on.The second statement gives you much more clarity to work with, and it can open a conversation (or a reflection) that may never have happened if you stopped at the first statement.

This is why I became so interested in the relationship between emotional vocabulary and emotional capacity.

The good news is we can expand our emotional vocabulary AND emotional capacity 

For a long time, different models of emotional intelligence have taken the stance that either emotional intelligence is a capability (that you have it or you don't) or it is a competency which you can develop and build. 

My own research supports the idea that emotional intelligence is a competency which can be built. In my doctoral research, I explored what happens when we deliberately expand people's emotional vocabulary. 

The intervention was pretty simple. My students completed eight 15-minute independent activities (two hours in total). Four months later, when I measured their emotional vocabulary, there was a 338% increase.

Let me say that again: 338 per cent.

What's more, they used that vocabulary across a range of contexts correctly. That finding fascinated me, that a relatively small investment of time could produce such a significant and lasting increase in the language people had available to describe their emotional experiences.

Today, I still use those same activities in my corporate work. People often scoff at the idea of emotional vocabulary. They think it's so simple and it's such a basic little skill. I totally agree that it is! But it's a skill that most people don't have, and that causes issues for people in their communication, their thinking, and their attention.

What happens when your emotional vocabulary gets bigger?

What happens when someone who has always said "I'm stressed" suddenly has a more precise way of describing what's happening? Maybe they're disappointed, maybe they're frustrated because they feel unheard, or maybe they're excited and nervous at the same time.

People often assume emotions arrive one at a time, but human beings are considerably messier than that. We can feel multiple and conflicting emotions at the same time. .

Expanding your emotional vocabulary brings more clarity and more calm. It gives us more ways to notice the nuances of what we feel. When we can name something more precisely, we can begin to understand it more precisely.

When we understand it more precisely, we may have more options for how we respond.

That is where emotional vocabulary connects with Emotional Capacity. Noticing and naming your emotions is a vital first step for building self-awareness and Emotional Capacity. 

The research tells us that naming difficult emotions calms those emotions, helps you deal with stress better and even links to better heart health. For my clients, what this looks like in the office is clearer communication, lower stress, and being more able to stay focused under pressure. 

This is the idea I recently took to the TEDxBukit Bintang stage in Malaysia. I shared a simple simple idea: the limits of our emotional vocabulary become the limits of our emotional life.

In my experience, expanding our emotional vocabulary is one of the simplest and most efficient ways to begin expanding our emotional capacity.

The best part is that building your emotional vocabulary is a learnable skill you can very quickly develop at any age. 

Perhaps the next time you say, "I'm stressed," it's worth pausing for a moment and getting more specific with your emotional language. 

You might just need a few more words.