Volume 2, Issue 4, April 2024
If you served in the military no matter what branch of service you were in, you learned at some point the importance of having space to maneuver. Whether you were maneuvering pairs of boots, a tank, a ship, or a fighter jet, having adequate physical space was essential to executing maneuver smoothly and safely. Likewise, when we encounter challenges in life, our minds need maneuver space to mentally negotiate difficult moments. This series will highlight each month a different brief cognitive tool that you can use in your daily life to potentially create more maneuver space. Remember having maneuver space, or space to think, is a gift in life. Once you create it, use it to your advantage!
Achieving High Emotional Intelligence
Emotion typology is a way that psychology defines the systemic classification of emotions according to their differences and similarities.[1] Emotions and feelings have many different nuances and awareness of these can help prevent reactivity and false rigid beliefs. Therefore, a person with high emotional intelligence can be seen as an individual with plenty of mental maneuver space to navigate life’s challenges. Let’s first understand the difference between an emotion and a feeling and then look at a tool that can help us become more emotionally intelligent.
Emotion or a Feeling?
“Despite the words often being used interchangeably, emotions and feelings are two different but connected phenomena. Emotions originate as sensations in the body. Feelings are influenced by our emotions but are generated from our mental thoughts.”[2] In military terms, emotions are the turbine engine. The feelings are the weapon system, the tank, helicopter, aircraft, or ship the engine powers. The engine, or our body, controls the system.
When something happens, first we want to be aware of the messages our body is sending us and where we are experiencing the emotion. It is different for each person, but emotions are often experienced in the chest, stomach, or the abdomen. Many may notice emotions impact on their heartrate and breathing, either slowing them down or speeding them up. Others may notice a tension, pain, discomfort, or muscular constriction in their body. Sometimes emotions can also be felt as physically hot or cold in the body. Noticing and being aware of these sensations in your body is the first step to achieving improved emotional intelligence.
Labeling a Feeling
Feelings are the thoughts and descriptions we associate with emotions experienced in our body. Feelings then become words in a language for others to understand. A challenge with feelings is that they have many different flavors. The ‘Feeling Wheel’ is a nice tool that highlights the many nuances that can be associated with six basic mental states: sad, mad, scared, joyful, powerful, and peaceful. Feelings have many flavors just like ice cream. Mad jealous is very different than mad distant. So, after we identify an emotion in our body, capturing the right feeling nuance to label the thought and describe it to others is important. How we label our feelings can be impacted by our own biases and are often altered by mental misconceptions.[3] However, remember that emotions are the turbine engine powerplant in the weapon system. You can’t do proper maintenance on a system by skipping over the engine. Don’t label a feeling you are thinking before you are aware of how the emotion is impacting your body.
[4]
Achieving Emotional Granularity
Emotional granularity has been described as an ability to precisely label emotions.[5] A person with high emotional granularity has strong emotional intelligence. They have an ability to sense the impact of an emotion on their body and an awareness of the many feeling nuances they can use to describe their thoughts. They know the difference between a turbine engine and an entire weapon system so they can accurately label and communicate to others their experience.
People who have experienced trauma can sometimes be more emotionally numb. This can create challenges in their ability to identify what their body is telling them and potentially even more difficulty in picking the right nuance of feeling to accurately communicate their thoughts.
Thankfully, we can all cultivate the skill of emotion granularity by learning and using different words (feelings) to describe our emotions. Simply saying the turbine engine is broken is not enough. Once we know how the body is experiencing an emotion, we can label it more effectively and say what specifically is broken. Sad, mad, scared, joyful, powerful, and peaceful all have many flavor nuances and understanding this can give you the maneuver space to navigate challenges in life more successfully.
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About the Author: Mr. Bongioanni is a licensed mental health counselor who also works for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. He is also a senior leader in the U.S. Army Reserve. His professional interests include human behavior, applied psychology, and military cultural competence. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, the U.S. Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.
[1] Fokkinga, S.F., & Desmet, P.M.A. (2022). Emotion Typology. Delft, Delft University of Technology. Retrieved from https://emotiontypology.com/
[2] Allyn, R. The Important Difference Between Emotions and Feelings. Psychology Today. Posted 23 FEB 2022. Access at: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-pleasure-is-all-yours/202202/the-important-difference-between-emotions-and-feelings
[3] Allyn, R. The Important Difference Between Emotions and Feelings. Psychology Today. Posted 23 FEB 2022. Access at: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-pleasure-is-all-yours/202202/the-important-difference-between-emotions-and-feelings
[4] Willcox, G. (1982). The Feeling Wheel A Tool for Expanding Awareness of Emotions and Increasing Spontaneity and Intimacy. Transactional Analysis Journal, 12(4), 274-276
[5] McCoy, K. Calling Emotions by Name. Psychology Today. Posted 10 OCT 2023. Access at: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/finding-the-right-words/202310/calling-emotions-by-name
As the Voice of the Veteran Community, The Havok Journal seeks to publish a variety of perspectives on a number of sensitive subjects. Unless specifically noted otherwise, nothing we publish is an official point of view of The Havok Journal or any part of the U.S. government.
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