Learning to name feelings: how mentalizing turns vague unease into clarity

“Somehow uneasy.” “Weird.” “Not great.” Many people know this: something is off, but you cannot put your finger on it. That is not a flaw, it is human. Feelings are often diffuse at first, a pressure in the stomach, a restlessness without a name. The good news: putting feelings into words is a skill you can practise. And it helps you understand inner patterns better.

How inner conflicts arise is described in our article Inner conflicts. Mentalizing already plays a role there; here it takes centre stage.

What mentalizing means

The term was introduced in 1991 by the psychoanalyst and developmental psychologist Peter Fonagy¹. Mentalizing means understanding your own behaviour and that of others in terms of inner states: feelings, wishes, beliefs and reasons. This often happens automatically, but sometimes also consciously and deliberately¹. The Anna Freud Centre in London describes it briefly as the ability to attend to mental states in ourselves and in others².

Fonagy and Anthony Bateman developed Mentalization-Based Treatment (MBT) from this¹. In Germany, the Institute for Psychosocial Prevention in Heidelberg, directed by Svenja Taubner, is among those researching the role of mentalization and attachment and developing mentalization-based prevention programmes³. It is fair to mention criticism too: experts note that the concept is very broad and hard to measure¹.

Mentalizing feelings: identifying, processing, expressing

The New York psychologist Elliot Jurist has focused the concept on feelings and speaks of mentalized affectivity. His team distinguishes three abilities: identifying feelings, processing and finely distinguishing them, and expressing them⁴. In a study of almost 3,000 adults, the ability to process feelings in particular predicted well-being, over and above personality and demographic factors⁴.

In everyday life this means: it is not enough to “have” a feeling. It helps to recognise it, place it and then decide whether and how to show it.

Why precise words help

The American psychologist Lisa Feldman Barrett and colleagues have studied what is called emotional granularity: the ability to name feelings very precisely. People who distinguish finely do not just say “bad”, but “irritated”, “disappointed” or “ashamed”⁵.

The differences are striking. In diary studies, people with high granularity used around 30 per cent more strategies to regulate distressing feelings. Under stress they drank about 40 per cent less alcohol, and they were less likely to react aggressively towards someone who had hurt them⁵. Importantly, the skill can be trained. A short weekly vocabulary programme for schoolchildren improved their social behaviour and academic performance⁵.

An experiment by the UCLA neuroscientist Matthew Lieberman shows why this works. People who named the feeling shown in a picture, such as “angry” or “fearful”, showed a weaker response in the amygdala, a brain region involved in alarm responses. At the same time, an area in the prefrontal cortex became more active⁶. Putting feelings into words works like gently pressing the brakes.

From a rough word to a precise one

Emotion wheels are a proven aid. The best-known scientific example is the Geneva Emotion Wheel, developed by the German emotion psychologist Klaus R. Scherer and his team at the University of Geneva. It arranges 20 emotion families in a circle according to how pleasant a feeling is and how much control you experience in it. Intensity increases from the centre outward⁷.

A simple path follows from this:

• Where do I feel it? Tightness in the chest, pressure in the stomach, restless legs. The body often comes first.
• Place it roughly. More pleasant or unpleasant? More strong or weak?
• Find the family. Is it more like fear, anger, sadness, shame or something else?
• Look for the precise word. “Anger” might become “overlooked”, “hurt” or “impatient”.
• Ask what it is telling me. Which wish or worry lies behind it?

An example: before an appointment there is a vague sense of unease. On closer inspection it is not nervousness but the worry of being overlooked again. That is already very close to an inner pattern, and it offers a starting point for doing something differently.

Our ideas for MindMotion

MindMotion is not therapy and does not offer it. The app is a tool for psychological self-reflection, closer to coaching. From the findings above we derive ideas that are planned and will be tested with users.

• The emotion wheel. In two or three taps from a rough word to a precise one: from “unpleasant” via “anger” to “overlooked”. No pressure to find the perfect word.
• The body check. If you do not have a word yet, start with the body: where do you feel it, and what does it feel like?
• Several feelings at once. Relieved and sad, angry and guilty: the app allows mixtures, because real feelings rarely come alone.
• What is the feeling telling you? After naming it, the app asks about the wish or worry behind it and links this to your patterns from the Mind-Check.
• Your vocabulary grows. Over time you see how much more precisely you name your feelings week by week. Progress you would otherwise hardly notice.
• The other side. A small exercise in mentalizing others: what might the other person have felt in this situation?

Why change takes time and regular check-ins help is covered in Change takes time. And if you want to see which patterns may lie behind your feelings, try the Mind-Check.