A question that has been used to mock therapy for decades, all while failing to acknowledge how effective emotional labeling can be! Emotional labeling or affect labeling is the process of identifying a certain feeling word that coincides with your inner experience. Through the years affect labeling has proved to be effective in emotional regulation, basically decreasing our internal distress. This is shown not only in self-reports but also in various types of brain scans that can detect activation in the emotional centers of our brain, so cool! While we have research and evidence to show that affect labeling is effective, we often still doubt its impact (check out the Liberman article for a deeper dive on this finding). Can't fight the facts, identifying your feelings works! So grab that feelings wheel and get to decreasing distress.
