Free tool

The Feelings Wheel

By Albert Wong, PhD, Clinical Psychologist

One of the challenges in learning to communicate is knowing what you feel. Here is a feelings wheel for when you don't know what to say: start at the center with a core emotion, then move outward until a word fits. Click the words that resonate — the wheel will build your "I feel…" statement below.

Private by design: everything happens on this page. Nothing you click is sent or stored anywhere.

Why this wheel is different

Many popular emotion wheels mix feelings with stories about other people. When a person says "I feel disrespected," they are not actually naming a feeling — they are telling a story that someone is disrespecting them. Their actual feeling underneath could be almost anything: anger, sadness, even steely determination. This wheel is an attempt to stay closer to words that are actually felt in the body — so that when we share them, we are sharing something real.

Lineage

This wheel is Dr. Wong's revision of an adaptation by Mike Bostock of Geoffrey Roberts's Emotion Wheel (2015), which drew on Kaitlin Robbs's vocabulary wheel (2014), which in turn traces to The Feeling Wheel published by Dr. Gloria Willcox (1982). Feel free to use and adapt with credit.

More free tools

The Sensations Wheel From The Healing Trauma Workbook: ~150 words for what you feel in your body — build your interoceptive vocabulary. Body Map of Emotions Where do you feel it in your body? Mark sensations on an interactive figure and download your somatic map. Discover Your Negative Cycle The classic couples exercise from Hold Me Tight — map your conflict pattern and get your infinity-loop cycle map.