08/25/2026
If you described a forest using only one word, would “green” be enough?
Probably not.
A forest can be vibrant, quiet, mysterious, vast, dense, and beautiful. The more specific you are, the more you understand what you’re looking at.
Our emotions work the same way.
When we say, “I feel bad,” we’re using a broad description. But when we can identify what we’re actually feeling—hurt, worried, disappointed, lonely, grieving, overwhelmed—we give our brain more information to work with.
When we experience a strong emotion, the amygdala—the part of the brain involved in detecting threats and emotional significance—can become highly active. Research suggests that when we put our feelings into words, a process called affect labeling, we engage areas of the prefrontal cortex involved in thinking, language, and regulation. This can help reduce emotional reactivity and make the experience feel more manageable. In other words, naming a feeling can help the brain shift from simply reacting to beginning to understand. (Lieberman et al., 2007)
Naming a feeling doesn’t make it disappear, but it can make it feel less overwhelming and help us understand what we need next.
Sometimes the first step in processing an emotion is simply finding the right word for it.
Lieberman, M. D., Eisenberger, N. I., Crockett, M. J., Tom, S. M., Pfeifer, J. H., & Way, B. M. (2007). Putting feelings into words: Affect labeling disrupts amygdala activity in response to affective stimuli. Psychological Science, 18(5), 421–428. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2007.01916.x
