We've all felt it —the nagging of an unpleasant emotion that is difficult to name or explain. Maybe you chalk it up to feeling "off" or "upset."

But did you know that finding more precise labels for our emotions (and why they happen) can help us feel better? Over time, accurately labeling our emotions can enhance our overall well-being. This precise labeling of emotions is called emotional granularity (Smidt & Suva, 2015).

The Benefits of Emotional Granularity

Emotional granularity is a skill, and researchers have demonstrated its important role in psychological well-being for decades. For example, a 2015 review of the research on emotion granularity found that folks who could differentiate their emotions while experiencing intense distress were less likely to engage in potentially harmful coping strategies, such as binge drinking, lashing out at others, and hurting themselves (Kashdan, Barrett, & McKnight, 2015).

This means a person who describes feeling angry, disappointed, sad, and ashamed in the context of, let's say, a conflict with a friend is likely to cope more effectively with those feelings than a person who uses vague descriptions, such as feeling "bad" or "upset." Impressively, the benefits of emotional granularity extend beyond any specific moment of distress. That same 2015 review found that people who describe and label their emotions more specifically have less severe episodes of anxiety and depression.

How Emotional Granularity Works

How does using more specific language to describe unpleasant experiences reduce distress? A straightforward answer is this: The more accurately we can describe our emotional experience and the context in which the experience is happening, the more information we have to decide what will help. Neuroscience even suggests that labeling our emotions decreases activity in brain areas associated with negative emotions (Lieberman et al. 2007). A more nuanced answer requires us to take a step back and look at the components from which our emotions are made.

What Are Emotions?

Lisa Feldman Barrett (2017a) succinctly sums up emotion as "your brain's creation of what your bodily sensations mean about what is going on around you in the world." Imagine this: Your heart is racing, your palms are sweaty, and you're short of breath. If you are walking down a dark street alone at night, you might label your experience as fear.

Now, imagine you are experiencing those same physical sensations while enjoying a candle-lit meal with a romantic interest. In that case, you might label the experience as an attraction. The same constellation of physiologic experiences organizes us around different actions depending on the context.

In the first example, our fear functions to keep us safe and readies us to fight, flee, or freeze. In the second example, our attraction functions to focus our attention on our love interest, thus increasing our connectedness (and therefore regulation and well-being). Importantly, our personal histories determine what predictions and needs we might have in any specific context (dark street versus romantic dinner).

Throughout our lives, we collect diverse emotional experiences (first labeled by caregivers), which help us categorize and form our emotion concepts (Barrett, 2017b). Emotion concepts are the diverse collection of physical sensations, thoughts, and situations we learn to associate with a particular emotion (Hoemann, Xu, & Barrett, 2019).

Our concept of anger, for example, may include a flushed face, muscle tension, and being cut off in traffic. Our concept of anger may also have a racing heart, the urge to speak loudly, and thoughts of being taken for granted by a relationship partner. These categorizations help us to navigate our physiology in the context of the specific situation (e.g., take a breath and focus on a podcast versus use communication skills to improve our relationship).

More precise language leads to more tailored responses ("mild annoyance" cues letting it go, whereas "outrage" cues advocating for change). Not only that, more precise language can allow us to incorporate details that create a different emotion category altogether (Wilson-Mendenhall & Dunne, 2021). For example, if you hone in to notice and describe hunger during a relational conflict, you may save yourself from experiencing anger.

Strengthening Emotional Granularity

I hope by now you are convinced that precisely labeling your emotional experiences will improve your quality of life. In that case, you probably wonder how to strengthen your emotional granularity. Experts recommend creating new emotion concepts and examining our existing concepts more closely.

Lisa Feldman Barrett (2017a) suggested one of the easiest ways to build new emotion concepts is to learn new words. She also suggests we can add to our emotion concepts by being "collector(s) of experiences" through perspective taking (e.g., reading books, watching movies) and trying new things (p.180).

To start, explore the emotion words collected below. Find one or two words you don't typically use and ask yourself if they describe your recent experiences. Perhaps when you next notice that nagging, nameless emotion, you will skim this list of emotion words to find the ones that resonate.

Emotion Words

Source: Courtesy of Katrina McCoy, Ph.D., Adapted from Linehan, M. (2015) DBT Skills Training Handouts and Worksheets 2nd ed.