Wheel of Emotions

In December of 2019, I had my first experience with group therapy with strangers.  How did I arrive at that juncture in life?  I’m happy to tell you.  My first experience with individual therapy occurred when I was nineteen.  I was finding my place in the world and making choices that my mom thought was not in my best interest.  In her mind, I needed to speak to a professional to sort through my feelings.  She found me a therapist and work began.

Over the course of a year, I saw the therapist once a month.  He was a nice man.  However, I didn’t spend my time talking about my personal issues.  I used the sessions as a chance to vent about what was wrong with everyone else in my life.  After a year, I felt that I had served my time.  I moved on with life and decided that therapy was not for me.

Fast forward to years later.  Life continued to press on me.  My relationship with my mom and brother was not great.  We needed to find a healthy way to live life together.  Our new family therapist was so helpful that I started to see him individually.  For the next five years, we discussed my family dynamics as well as issues that I needed to address in my personal life.  My therapist was helpful and provided great resources to help me live a healthier life.

Therapy was so helpful that I began to seek out more ways to enhance my personal development.  When I was told about Haven, a retreat for adult women who survived childhood sexual abuse, I knew that I needed to go.  But one of the many doubts that nagged in my mind was the thought of participating in group therapy with strangers.  It took me over a decade to reach the point that I could talk about my personal struggles with a therapist.  Exactly how beneficial was group therapy going to be for me?

The day of our first group therapy session at retreat arrived, and I was a bundle of nerves.  I didn’t know these people.  What was I expected to say?  Our therapists began the session by pulling out the wheel of emotions.  Before we did anything else, we had to identify how we were feeling.  It was essentially an exercise of being fully present in the moment.  The wonderful thing about this wheel is that it takes an emotion and breaks into various descriptive terms that might more accurately describe your feelings.  For example, anger is broken into critical, frustrated, bitter.  There are more words used in the anger spot but that’s just a tiny sample.  The wheel of emotions alone gave me more than I ever expected out of group therapy with strangers.

In that space, I was given the opportunity to really analyze exactly what I felt in a more precise way.  I was asked to take in how I felt physically as well.  Did any part of my body hurt?  Was I tired?  Other people may slow down and take time to fully analyze their entire self (physical, emotional, spiritual) in one instance, but I hadn’t before that moment.  I would tackle them in pieces but never analyze them at the same time.  It was much needed and long overdue.  The wheel of emotions had me letting out lots of emotion.  But after the release, I felt lighter.  I felt freer.

I dusted off the old wheel of emotions to check my current state of being.  To really get in tune with where I am spiritually, emotionally, and physically.  I needed to face my emotions head on.  I needed to center myself.  You may be in the same space as me, so I’m attaching the wheel of emotions in hopes that it helps you give voice to the emotions that you’re experiencing.  I’m hopeful that the wheel will turn to brighter days.  #wepreach