Name the feeling
A short exercise in which you give a feeling a name, a place in the body and an addressee.
Naming an emotion looks trivial until you try it in the middle of being upset. That is when it turns out most of us have three words available: good, bad, strange. This exercise pushes you towards a more precise one: is this anger or disappointment, fear or shame, sadness or loneliness. It helps to build the whole sentence — »right now I feel shame, and my chest is tight«. If you cannot find the word, describe the bodily sensation; the word often follows it. Precision here is not aesthetic but functional: the more precisely an emotion is named, the more it settles.
When to use it
In the middle of agitation, before a difficult conversation, or when you know something is there but not what.
How it goes
- Stop and ask: where in the body do I feel this? Chest, throat, belly, jaw?
- Find a name: anger, fear, sadness, shame, relief. If it doesn’t fit exactly, take the closest one.
- Say the whole sentence to yourself: Right now I feel anger in my chest, because …
- Check whether the addressee really is the first one that offers itself. Often it isn’t.
Why it works
Naming a feeling lowers the response in the amygdala and strengthens the prefrontal region — so it isn’t just a description of a state, it is an intervention in it. That is exactly why it is the first step in regulation.
