How to identify emotions when you can’t find the words

Being able to identify emotions can be tricky, especially for neurodivergent people. It’s not that we don’t feel emotions—we do, often, and they can be really intense—but naming them can be a challenge. This difficulty isn’t limited to specific neurodivergent identities like autism, ADHD, AuDHD and dyslexia, neurotypical people can struggle with this too. However, it is something many neurodivergent people report as part of their life experiences.

Common reasons people struggle to name emotions include:

• Alexithymia and processing differences
  Many experience alexithymia, making it hard to identify and describe emotions. Emotional responses can also be processed more intensely or slowly, creating confusion in naming feelings.
• Sensory overload and communication challenges
  Sensory processing differences and social communication challenges can blur emotional awareness and make it difficult to distinguish between physical sensations and emotions or to read emotional cues from others.
• Abstract thinking and masking
  Emotions, being abstract, can be hard to interpret, especially for those who think more literally. Additionally, masking emotions to fit social norms can create a disconnect from one’s emotional experience.

So, how do we do it? How do we name the thing we cannot name??

Three ways to identify emotions

Here are three ways forward informed by my experiences of working with neurodivergent people and my own lived experience.

1. Using metaphors or analogies
   Comparing what’s happening for you to familiar experiences or sensations can help capture their essence. For example: It feels like I’m floating and disconnected, like a balloon drifting.
2. Describing physical sensations
   Emotions are often felt in the body, so focusing on physical sensations can give clues to what you’re feeling. For example: My muscles are tense, and my throat feels blocked.
3. Using colours, imagery or sounds
   Sometimes, associating emotions with colours, weather, or abstract visuals can help convey what you’re feeling. For example: It’s like a heavy, flat greyness.

How I’ve used physical sensations to identify my emotions

This is an example of how it works in practice, as applied to me. A number of years ago, I’d noticed in interactions with some people that I was feeling tightness across my upper body, upper arm to upper arm. It felt achey, like my shoulders and upper arms were being pulled in on themselves. I simultaneously had the urge to scrunch myself up and make myself smaller, and fling my arms open wide and shake out the feeling.

With my therapist, I explored other times I’ve felt like this. We looked at who was there, where we were, what was happening around me, to me, and to others there at the same time.

Essentially we were looking for situational triggers, and any patterns across the different events I recalled, narrowing down what each had in common.

Next, we mapped words to those experiences, using a feelings wheel to connect my physical sensations with language to describe my emotions. This tool provided a helpful starting point, offering words I could explore to see if they truly resonated with what I was feeling.

Building vocabulary to talk about emotions

The words I ended up with were frozen, tense, gut-churning, needing to move, nauseous, and curling up. In turn these mapped onto the emotions of fear, sadness, disgust and anger.

Suddenly, I had a way to link my physical experiences to my emotional world, and the vocabulary to talk about it!

And from there, my therapist and I were then able to start unpicking those emotions, exploring where they came from, determining whether or not they were even mine, and looking at what I might do differently in the future.

Now when I get that feeling, I know it’s because I am not being heard. It might be that I am being dismissed, invalidated, devalued, minimised or gaslit. Regardless of the words, I know that in some way I am being treated poorly, and this is my body’s way of warning me.

The exploration I did in therapy means I am now much better at cutting through the ickyness of the sensations, working out what’s really going on for me, and sharing my experiences with others.

Identifying emotions without the right words can feel challenging, but it’s possible with alternative approaches. You can focus on physical sensations, use metaphors or imagery, or rely on visual aids like emotion charts. Tuning into your body or expressing emotions through colours, shapes, or sensations can give you more insight into your feelings when words fail.

Working with a trusted professional can make the whole process feel easier too, and provide you with the validation, compassion and empathy you might have lacked to date. If this resonates and you want to explore how this might work for you, get in touch for a free 15-min phone or video consultation.