Using The Emotions Wheel To Transform Financial Help

I recently launched a peer financial coaching center at my university, providing students with a place to receive financial coaching help. While the center primarily relies on trained peer financial coaches to assist fellow students, I occasionally step in as a financial coach. During one of my sessions, a young college student arrived with a big smile, radiating confidence and maturity. She seemed poised and self-assured, and I assumed our session would likely cover advanced financial topics, like stocks or Roth IRAs.

Still, I decided to start by asking her how she was feeling.

She gave me a sideways glance and replied, “OK.”

Seeing her hesitation, I decided to ask a follow-up question: “Would you mind looking at this emotion wheel and letting me know which emotion best matches how you’re feeling?”

She studied the colorful wheel for a moment, then handed it back and said, “‘Powerless’ and ‘bleak.’”

Her serious tone caught me off guard—I hadn’t expected that response.

“Let’s start there,” I said. “Tell me more about why you’re feeling that way.”

Financial Facilitator, Not Advice Giver

In my article, The Path to Financial Health Goes Deeper Than Advice, I argued that most people are not ready to change, which is why traditional financial advice often falls short. Instead, the key to improving financial health is having someone come alongside as a financial facilitator—not simply an advice giver. Rather than looking down from the metaphorical mountain-top of financial expertise, a financial facilitator walks alongside the individual, helping them move toward a place where they are ready to make meaningful changes.

The book, Facilitating Financial Health, emphasizes that the most important characteristic of a financial facilitator is empathy. Empathy involves warmth, genuineness, and positive regard. It involves feeling another person’s emotions alongside them. However, empathy is only possible once you truly understand how someone is feeling.

Reflecting on my encounter with the student who described feeling “powerless” and “bleak,” imagine how the meeting might have unfolded if, after she initially replied that she was “OK,” I had simply launched into a discussion about stocks and Roth IRAs.

Given her kind nature, I suspect she would have smiled politely and even thanked me for my efforts. However, beneath the surface, she would have left the session feeling just as unsupported—if not worse—than before. While I might have walked away feeling accomplished, she would have gained nothing meaningful from our conversation, and the opportunity to truly help her would have been lost.

Magnify Your Empathy Powers With Emotional Wheels

One way to improve your ability to express empathy is by helping someone discover and articulate their emotions. Simply asking, “How are you feeling?” may not yield a clear response, as the person might not be ready to answer or may struggle to put their emotions into words. An emotion wheel is a powerful tool that assists individuals in identifying their feelings. The most effective emotion wheels provide enough granularity to ensure that everyone, regardless of their emotional state, can find the precise word(s) to describe how they are feeling.

Over the past 50 years, psychologists and researchers have significantly advanced the development of emotion wheels to better understand and categorize human emotions. Robert Plutchik’s influential “Wheel of Emotions” (1980) was one of the earliest models, highlighting eight core emotions—joy, trust, fear, surprise, sadness, disgust, anger, and anticipation—arranged in a circular structure to illustrate their intensities, combinations, and opposites.

More recent emotion wheels distinguish between comfortable and uncomfortable emotions, reflecting findings that these types of emotions are processed in different parts of the body (Enete et al., 2020). This distinction helps explain why individuals can simultaneously experience seemingly contradictory emotions, such as being “thrilled” and “scared.”

Using Emotion Wheels

The emotion wheel I use comes from Human Systems, which provides two emotion wheels: one for comfortable emotions and another for uncomfortable emotions. Each wheel identifies five or six broad emotions and breaks them down into up to nine sub-emotions.” Each sub-emotion is further refined into two sub-sub emotions for greater specificity.

For instance, the uncomfortable emotion wheel by Human Systems includes six broad emotions: Angry, Embarrassed, Afraid, Sad, Dislike, and Alone. Under “Angry,” there are nine sub-emotions such as Offended, Indignant, Dismayed, Bitter, Frustrated, Aggressive, Harassed, Bored, and Rushed. Each sub-emotion is further detailed, like “Insulted” or “Mocked” under “Offended,” and “Pushed” or “Pressured” under “Rushed.”

I often use these emotion wheels with my two children as part of teaching them to identify their emotions. My wife and I believe this helps them develop better coping and communication skills. When our kids are overwhelmed by their emotions, asking them to pinpoint how they’re feeling can be incredibly effective. (Although, one time my son humorously thwarted this approach by circling the entire uncomfortable emotions wheel and walking away!)

Conclusion

When providing financial help to others, it’s essential to first help them identify their emotions. Emotion wheels are powerful tools for assisting individuals in recognizing and naming their feelings. The understanding that you gain from an emotion wheel enables you to express genuine empathy with others, which is crucial for effectively “walking with them” on their journey toward greater financial health.