The Wheel Is How I Feel

Sometimes we are taught to manage emotions, but not to understand or express them."The Wheel Is How I Feel" is a spoken word piece about the difference between emotional intelligence and emotional literacy, and how learning the language of feelings can become an act of healing. Inspired by Dr. Gloria Willcox’s Feeling Wheel, this poem explores how naming our emotions can help us reclaim our voices, stories, and ourselves.

Spoken Word Performance Piece

I was told to be smart about feelings.

To tuck them in clean lines behind my teeth.

To nod with wisdom,

while my insides screamed silently.

They called it intelligence.

Emotional intelligence

like I was a walking equation of self-regulation,

problem-solving my way through grief,

parsing sadness into strategic silence,

compartmentalizing shame into a smile.

But no one taught me to speak it.

No one handed me the words.

No one said,

"Here—here’s a language to live your inside world out loud."

Until

a circle found me.

Simple, but seismic.

I found a wheel.

Not of time.

Not of fate.

But of feeling.

Dr. Gloria Willcox’s Feeling Wheel

a revolution in concentric circles.

Six cores at the center,

tired archetypes of human ache:

Sad. Mad. Scared. Joyful. Powerful. Peaceful.

But the magic

the medicine

lived on the edges.

Where sadness becomes guilt,

and guilt names itself "ashamed."

Where anger fractures into "bitter,"

and fear dissolves into "insecure."

Do you know what it means

to find the exact word for what hurts?

To say:

"I am not just sad.

I am abandoned. I am grieving."

That is not just intelligence.

That is literacy.

That is therapy, reading myself back into my own native tongue.

See—

emotional intelligence is knowing when to step back.

Emotional literacy is knowing how to step in.

To cradle a word like "betrayed"

until it softens in your mouth

and becomes a prayer you whisper to your mirror.

I used to be fluent in faking fine.

Now I am fluent in feeling full.

Now I teach my heart to spell itself.

I write my rage in complete sentences.

I journal joy in lowercase tenderness.

I ask my wounds for their names,

and I answer with the Wheel.

I use it like scripture.

Like strategy.

Like sanctuary.

Because this is not about mastering emotion.

This is about making emotion human again,

messy, alive, articulate, true.

So no,

I do not want to be emotionally intelligent

if it means forgetting how to cry.

I want to be emotionally literate,

a poet of my pain,

a witness to your sorrow,

a translator of silence.

And this wheel?

It is not just a tool.

It is a turning.

It is a map.

It is a becoming.

The Feeling Wheel is how I feel,

not just what I feel.

It is how I heal.