Humans Have 34,000 Feelings

According to Plutchik’s Wheel of Emotions

When I was grieving, I found it is mind-blowing [and upsetting] that so many people equate grief with just a handful of feelings like anger, sadness, loneliness, guilt and regret. But for me and for the other grieving hearts I have met, grief is a huge, heavy, messy, scary, frustrating, never-ending second chapter of life we didn’t ask for that is filled with so many feelings, including sadness. Then I learned that humans have the capacity to feel 34,000 emotions, according to Plutchik’s Wheel of Emotions, and in grief, we can feel them all.

Created by the renowned American psychologist Robert Plutchik in 1980, Plutchik’s Wheel of Emotions illustrates how different emotions are interconnected. After many years of exploring human feelings, Dr. Plutchik identified eight primary emotions that form the basis for countless other kinds of emotions: joy, sadness, acceptance, disgust, fear, anger, surprise, and anticipation. I think of it as the primary colours – red, blue, and yellow, which can be mixed together to create secondary colours – red + blue = green.

Plutchik grouped the original eight primary emotions into pairs of polar opposites, based on the physiological reaction each emotion created in animals:
• Joy is the opposite of Sadness.
Physiology: Connect vs. withdraw
• Fear is the opposite of Anger.
Physiology: Get small and hide vs. get big and loud
• Anticipation is the opposite of Surprise.
Physiology: Examine closely vs. jump back
• Disgust is the opposite of Trust.
Physiology: Reject vs. Embrace

So, if we understand and accept Plutchik’s Feelings Wheel and apply it to grief, we can begin to understand the complexity of grief and that it is a very messy and complicated web of many more emotions than just sadness, anger, and longing.

Here are just some of the feelings I felt, that I heard people in my grief groups I attend after Dad died, from my clients, and from people in the grief groups I facilitated. Of course, this is not a complete list – how could it be? It is just meant to show you the buffet of feelings that can come with grief, in the hopes you can feel OK-ish about your feelings when you recognize them here.

1. Abandonment
2. Absent-minded behaviour
3. Anger
4. Anxious
5. Anguish
6. Apathy
7. Bitterness
8. Blaming
9. Confusion
10. Dismay
11. Distrust
12. Denial
13. Depression [grief, not clinical]
14. Deserted
15. Detachment
16. Disappointment
17. Disbelief
18. Disorganization
19. Distrust
20. Doing grief wrong
21. Empty
22. Embarrassed
23. Envy
24. Failure for not saving my father
25. Fatigue
26. Fear of life without Dad
27. Fearful of sleep – nightmares
28. Fearful of my thoughts
29. Fearful of the outside due to PTSD
30. Feeling overwhelmed
31. Feelings of avoidance and self-isolation
32. Forgetfulness
33. Frustration
34. Guilt
35. Gratitude
36. Grief Depression
37. Hate
38. Helplessness
39. Hope
40. Hopelessness
41. Inappropriate emotional responses
42. Inadequate
43. Irritability
44. Jealousy
45. Loneliness
46. Lost
47. Moody
48. Negativity
49. Numbness
50. Over-sensitivity
51. Panic
52. Pain
53. Powerlessness
54. Preoccupation
55. PTSD
56. Rage
57. Regret
58. Religious questioning
59. Rejection
60. Resentment
61. Searching
62. Sadness
63. Shock
64. Sorrow
65. Social anxiety
66. Spiritual questioning
67. Suicidal
68. Terror
69. Unsure
70. Unsafe