Finding the Right Emotion Word

Over and over, men hear some version of the same question: “What are you feeling?” It’s a question many men finding annoying, unnecessary, even accusatory. From boyhood on, many men (especially older men) have been socialized to not pay attention to their emotions. Their rationale: if they express an emotion like sadness, anxiety, or failure, then someone else may take advantage of them. This pattern seems more common in older men who were raised before the more recent media focus on expanding the definition of traditional masculinity, but it can be a problem for a man at any age.

A man’s inability to name an emotion may create problems for him, of course, in his interactions with a female partner. In my clinical practice I once heard this exchange between spouses:

She:     Why can’t you just talk to me? Tell me what you’re feeling.

He:      I don’t understand why you say that.

She:     It’s how I know that you care about me, love me. You know?

He:     How can you say that? I painted the trim around the outside of the entire house last weekend.

She:    That’s maintenance. I want to know how you are feeling.

He:      Look! I feel fine. Okay?

Generally, emotions can be named with a single word. When a man has a list of emotion words, I’ve found he can more readily find a word that best captures his experience. Explaining what he is feeling, then, becomes more of an exercise or task. Not a dive into vulnerability, risk, or even panic.

I developed the following chart over the course of ten years in facilitating a men’s group for 2 ½ hours a day, five days a week. We put this chart up on the wall, so that when a man was asked what he was feeling, his eyes would drift up to this chart until he found just the right word.

Notice that the words in the chart appear as continuums. For example, when I am responding emotionally to an event, am I more Reflective or more Reactive? Then under those headings, each horizontal word pair is connected in the same way: Am I more calm or more angry? More accepting or more frustrated? And so on.

EMOTIONS CHART

(from Tough Guys and True Believers, Robertson, 2012)

Free to copy. Just include this credit line: “Developed by John M. Robertson, 2012”

John Robertson