Lenten Journey: Emotional Exploration - Introduction

If you Google “Circle of Emotions,” you will get a plethora of images that offer a perspective on the interconnectedness of emotions. There are so many varieties that range from circles presented in a scientific journal to circles presented as an object of art on Etsy. My own personal favorite was one I found at DrAlbertWong.com/feelings-wheel/. I cannot speak to the quality of Dr. Wong’s education or credentials. I can just tell you that I appreciated a) the construction of this wheel relative to the many others that I saw and b) the acknowledgements Dr. Wong gave to the history of his particular interpretation of the wheel.

He writes, “This is an adaptation of Mike Bostock’s adaptation of Geoffrey Robert’s Emotion Wheel using D3’s partition layout. Robert’s 2015 work appears to be based on a vocabulary wheel by Kaitlin Robbs from 2014, which in turn appears to be based on The Feeling Wheel published by Gloria Willcox in 1982.”

THAT is both a testament to the lineage of his particular wheel as well as to the ways that this concept has been interpreted and adapted based on the particular circumstances of each author. And none of these are a crocheted Etsy variation of the wheel. That said, I also appreciate Wilcox' original wheel as a good point of reference. ( https://www.gnyha.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/The-Feeling-Wheel-Positive-Psycology-Program.pdf )

In any case, I recommend that you take a look at any one of these wheels as a way to understand the origin and connectedness of your own emotions. My plan for these last several days of Lent is to explore a different emotion with each entry as I feel called to do. So, these last several entries are going to be less of an exposition and more of a personal and organic exploration of my own emotions and how they move in me. I don’t know where this is going to go. I’m a little anxious at the vulnerability of this closing action of this Lenten Journey. I encourage you to either reflect on your own experiences of each of these emotions or choose a different emotion on the wheel and explore that emotion for yourself.

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You are welcome to take this journey in solitude in your own personal journal or share your reflections. If anything that you do makes you think you might want to continue a journey using Spiritual Direction, now or in the future, you can make an appointment with me through my website: 

www.RedRocksSDC.com 

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