In last week’s DT Podcast, we drew Emotional Fruit. Drawing Proud Pears and Emo Eggplats are about making silly fruit faces, yes. But we’re also learning to visually represent BIG FEELINGS through drawing, which can help us understand our own feelings better, and gives us tools to manage them in the future.

I have zero doubt that every single one of us at one time or another has felt overwhelmed with a Big Feeling (BF) and we’ve been unable to put that BF into words. Maybe that’s because it’s not just one feeling! BFs are often a tangle of 7 primary feelings: Anger, Fear, Disgust, Happiness, Sadness, Surprise, Contempt. When we’re in a BF, it’s almost impossible to identify what’s going on. But with some deep breaths and some simple tools we can figure out what our feelings are, and decide how we want to respond. (I’m working on this myself, as Art Assistant Caroline can attest to!)

For us visual people, one of the most wonderful tools I know of is the Feelings Chart. The one above by Abby Vanmuijen is one of my favorites. Feelings Charts are a creative, visual tool we can both use and create for ourselves.

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