Joy
Savoring, play, achievement, and release.
How Feltwork works
A map for feelings.
A structure for reflection.
Feltwork combines an original emotion vocabulary map with a gentle CBT-style thought record. The map helps you find language for the experience; the journal helps you examine the moment without insisting that any feeling is wrong.
Name what is here.
An emotion wheel is a vocabulary aid, not a test. Related words are grouped so you can begin broadly and move toward language that feels closer. There is no required path and no objectively correct answer.
- Choose a family
Start with the broad signal that feels nearest—even if several could fit.
- Notice its shape
Choose how that signal seems to be showing up in this particular moment.
- Find a word
Select the closest felt-state word, then record its intensity from 1 to 10.
Nine ways in.
Eight families offer recognizable starting points. “Hard to name” is an equally valid route for mixed, numb, foggy, or detached experiences.
Connection
Closeness, belonging, trust, and care.
Fear
Danger, uncertainty, exposure, and too much.
Surprise
Jolt, discovery, disorientation, and disbelief.
Sadness
Loss, distance, letdown, and depletion.
Disgust
Physical recoil, distrust, value conflict, and self-directed discomfort.
Anger
Being blocked, wronged, intruded upon, or mobilized.
Interest
Exploring, preparing, hoping, and becoming absorbed.
Hard to name
Mixed, numb, foggy, and detached are not failures of emotional awareness. Sometimes uncertainty is the most accurate description available.
Then examine the story.
Feltwork’s reflection follows the familiar logic of a CBT thought record: separate the observable situation from the automatic interpretation, notice its effects, examine evidence, and form a more balanced response.
The moment
Describe what happened in observable terms.
Thoughts
Capture the automatic thought and what it seemed to mean.
Impact
Notice body sensations and what you did or wanted to do.
Reframe
Consider evidence for and against the thought without forced positivity.
Next step
Write a believable balanced thought and one supportive action.
Sources and boundaries.
Emotion models are useful lenses, not universally agreed maps of the mind. Language, culture, context, and the body all affect how a feeling is understood.
What informed it
The broad ideas of emotion families and intensity were informed by Robert Plutchik’s psychoevolutionary model. The wider history of vocabulary wheels includes Gloria Willcox’s 1982 Feeling Wheel. The Feltwork vocabulary, groupings, and navigation are a newly constructed selection and arrangement rather than a reproduction of either wheel or their later adaptations.
The journaling sequence is informed by commonly used CBT thought-record exercises.
Development status
The Feltwork Emotion Map is currently version 1. It is a vocabulary and reflection aid—not a diagnostic instrument or clinical assessment—and it has not yet undergone independent clinical validation.
- A clinician review is planned before claims beyond self-reflection are made.
- Language will be revised with tester and accessibility feedback.
- Feltwork does not monitor journal entries for emergencies.
- Robert Plutchik, “A psychoevolutionary theory of emotions”
- Gloria Willcox, “The Feeling Wheel” — historical context
- NHS Every Mind Matters, “Thought record”
- Public-domain diagram of Plutchik’s model on Wikimedia Commons
