It’s an interesting exercise - give yourself 3 minutes and list off as many emotions as you can think of - write them down. I came up with 20 before I started repeating myself - only 20! Brene Brown surveyed 7000 people and they averaged 3 emotions (anger, sadness, joy). I find this so hard to believe and yet it makes sense based upon the dysfunction I see in our society today.

As humans we are not particularly good at naming emotions let alone expressing them - I most certainly am not. Some cultures are even less proficient at openly expressing emotions than others. I have spoken in the past how I come from a family that did not encourage openly showing feelings especially “bad” feelings such as sorrow, grief, frustration, etc. - you get the gist. This actually made it quite confusing for me to understand and name what I was feeling. I really appreciate that most children today are taught to verbalize what is going on for them and use words to name what they are feeling.