Feelings Wheel, Borderline, and SI

    **mentions of suicidal ideation; also use your own judgement/speak with a supervisor for further assistance**

 

I borrowed this feelings wheel from Google and had a hard time finding the original source.

    No one ever taught me about the feelings wheel, not that I remember. It was something I ended up finding on my own, and I immediately incorporated it into my toolbox. If you're not familiar, I'll give you a very short summary of what I learned from Google. The original feelings wheel was created by Robert Plutchik in 1980. It was and still is used to help people identify their feelings and emotions and identify the intensity. Here is a link to a really well-made digital feelings wheel if you'd like to look at it. I don't have anything to do with this website, I just liked it.

    I think that being able to name your feelings is incredibly important. Being able to name your feelings helps to increase your emotional IQ and helps you better manage your behaviors in relation to them. Once a feeling has a name, you can figure out what coping skill you need to help you deal with it.

    I have worked with a few clients with borderline personality disorder (BPD). A big part of BPD is struggling to deal with and identify emotions. When someone with BPD experiences an emotion, it is often very intense. If the person is not able to identify that emotion in words, there is no way to relieve that overwhelming feeling. The person may then say that they want to hurt or kill themselves, and that can happen for a few reasons. Usually, the person with BPD is trying to express how much they are hurting to others and they impulsively say that they want to hurt or kill themselves. In my experience, it has been very common for the person to say that they felt like hurting or killing themselves in that moment, but that the moment passes.

     I have found that when a person who is very overwhelmed with emotion comes to me and says that they want to hurt or kill themselves, they want to talk. They are open to talking about how they feel, even if they cannot name the feeling itself. This is when I employ the feelings wheel. I ask them to choose one of the seven feelings in the middle of the wheel: happy, sad, disgusted, bad, angry, surprised, and fearful. Once that feeling is identified, I notice that the person often starts to calm down. I encourage them to go deeper, pointing out the second circle of feelings, then the third. If the client is not able to further specify, that's okay. We have enough information to work with just using the middle circle.

    Lots of people just want to talk about how they feel. They want someone to listen, genuinely listen to their thoughts and feelings. This is my favorite way to start to de-escalate people, because I have never had a time where it didn't work for me. From there, you can start to reassess suicidal thoughts and feelings. You've built up a good rapport with that client by this point, so they should feel comfortable with telling you the truth. Once you know what they're thinking, you can make a decision on lethality.

If you're interested in reading more about borderline personality disorder, check out my post on what no one ever teaches you about working with people who have borderline personality disorder.

(All links open in a new tab. I do not make a profit from the links in this post.)