Emotional granularity is the ability to specify the exact emotion you are feeling. Lisa Feldman Barrett, who has been researching the science of human emotion for years, says in her TED Talk that when you specify your emotions, you “issue predictions and construct instances of emotion that are finely tailored to fit each situation.” Are you angry, or do you feel betrayed, persecuted, or harassed? Are you happy, or do you feel proud, overjoyed, or content? Our emotions serve many purposes, one of which is to help us figure out how to solve problems, especially in the case of uncomfortable, or negative, emotions. The way you approach a situation when you feel harassed would be much different than how you approach a situation in which you feel betrayed.

Because most of us don’t have an extensive emotional vocabulary at our fingertips, a tool like an emotion wheel can be useful to specify our emotions.

Here’s how to use it:

1) Start at the center and figure out which of these six general emotions you are feeling: bad, fearful, angry, disgusted, sad, happy, or surprised.

2) Choose a more specific emotion from the series of 6 to 9 emotions bordering the general emotion you chose. For example, if you are angry, decide next if you actually feel humiliated, mad, frustrated, etc.

3) If you’d like, you can choose an emotion from the outer portion of the wheel to further specify how you are feeling. For example, if I am angry, I might decide I am actually feeling bitter. The two words on the outer portion of the wheel that are associated with bitter are indignant and violated. If I believe that somebody is forcing me to complete a task in too short an amount of time, I might feel rushed. But if I feel like somebody is forcing me to do something I’m not sure I want to do, maybe I feel pressured. If I feel rushed, the solution might be to request more time to complete the task. If I feel pressured, however, the solution might be to ask for more information about the task, or for more time to decide whether I want to complete the task at all.