Feeling Wheel created by Dr. Willcox in 1982

FW 2.0 would be impossible without the work of the late Dr. Gloria Willcox. The original Feeling Wheel was created by Gloria Willcox, Ph.D. in the 1982 article The Feeling Wheel: A Tool for Expanding Awareness of Emotions and Increasing Spontaneity and Intimacy.

Here is the original Feeling Wheel (Willcox, 1982, p. 276):

The Feeling Wheel
A Tool for Expanding Awareness ofEmotions
and Increasing Spontaneity and Intimacy
Gloria Willcox
Abstract
The Feeling Wheel is designed to aid
people in learning to recognize and com
municate about their feelings. It consists of
an inner circle with 5 sectors and two outer
concentric circles. The sectors are each
labeled with the name of a primary feeling,
viz., mad, sad, scared, joyful, powerful,
and peaceful. The outer rings contain names
of secondary feelings related to the primary
ones. The wheel has proven useful in assis
ting clients to learn how to identify, to ex
press, to generate, and to change feelings.
Suggestions for employment of the Feeling
Wheel are provided.

The Feelings Wheel 2.0 hopes to continue the great legacy of the original Feeling Wheel. We hope the same for FW 2.0 as Dr. Willcox in her conclusion from the original Feeling Wheel article (Willcox, 1982, p. 275):

” My hope is that you will find this a helpful tool to creatively develop new ways for expressing feelings and enhancing your ability to find new options in feeling level communication. The Feeling Wheel can be a resource through which people can expand their vocabularly [sic] to express feelings. With increased vocabulary comes more spontaneity and creativity in sharing emotions. With increased vocabulary about emotions also comes the potential for greater power to interact intimately with other people.”