About

I feel something. Where do I look?

What this is

Feelings is a field guide to feelings, built for the question above. It holds 256 feelings in 16 families and 98 faux feelings.

The project draws inspiration from Nonviolent Communication (NVC), a framework developed by Marshall Rosenberg that emphasises understanding universal human needs as a foundation for compassionate connection.

It is the companion to the needs catalogue: feelings point to the needs behind them, and needs point back to the feelings that signal them.

No feeling is positive or negative

Families follow the nervous system, from warm and open, through settled and playful, to revved up, frozen and shut down:

Why these bands?

The bands follow how the nervous system shifts between states, an idea from polyvagal theory. There are three basic states: safe and connected, mobilised to act, and shut down. They also blend. Feeling safe while energised is play; feeling safe while still is rest. Being charged but unable to act is freeze.

Warm and open is the safe, connected state. Settled is safety with stillness. Playful is safety with energy. Revved up is the mobilised state: fight or flight. Frozen is mobilised and shut down at once. Shut down is the state of withdrawal and conservation.

None of these states is good or bad. Each is the body doing its job, and knowing which one you are in helps you find the word.

Families, strands and strength

Within a family, strands separate feelings that differ in kind. Within a strand, feelings run from softer to stronger: calm, then peaceful, then serene.

Faux feelings

Faux feelings are words that sound like feelings but describe what we think someone did to us, what we think of ourselves or a need we think is met or missing. Some ways to spot them:

  • There are no positive or negative faux feelings. ‘Appreciated’ is as much an interpretation as ‘abandoned’; whether a need is met or unmet belongs to the link to that need, not to the word.
  • Most faux feelings mind-read the other person: they claim to know what someone meant, felt or intended towards you. Self-judgements do the same to yourself, reading your own worth instead of your feeling.
  • Swap ‘I feel’ for ‘I think’. If the sentence still makes sense, it is a thought, not a feeling.
  • ‘I feel that…’, ‘I feel like…’, ‘I feel as if…’ and ‘I feel as though…’ introduce a thought or a picture, not a feeling.
  • If ‘I feel’ is followed by a person, a name, a noun or a pronoun (I, you, he, she, it, we, they), what comes next is an opinion about someone.
  • Watch words ending in -ed (ignored, included, rejected, respected): they usually describe something someone else is supposed to have done.
  • The ‘you ___ed me’ test: if the word fits ‘you ___ed me’ (you abandoned me, you appreciated me), it is a reading of what someone did. A real feeling does not fit (you lonelied me, you gratefulled me).
  • A need said as missing (‘un-’ or ‘not’: unheard, not accepted) or as had (heard, accepted) names the need, not the feeling. Say both: the feeling, and the need that is met or unmet.
  • Words about what I am (stupid, worthless, smart, worthy) are judgements of myself. Ask what I feel when I think that about myself.
  • To translate a faux feeling, ask: when I think this, what do I feel in my body, and which need does it tell me is met or unmet?
  • The same word can work both ways (isolated, threatened, guilty). It is a feeling when it describes my inner state; it is faux when it describes what someone did or what I am.

Each entry includes

For feelings: a definition, where it shows up in the body, the needs behind it, softer and stronger feelings, related feelings and the faux feelings that can hide it.

For faux feelings: the interpretation, why it is not a feeling, the feelings underneath, the needs involved and a translation.

Who maintains this

Feelings is maintained by Gianluca Campanella.