E008 · Emotional experience & regulation
Difficulties identifying emotions
What did the young person notice before they knew what they were feeling?
Phoenix Encyclopaedia
Overview
Some young people find it difficult to recognise, distinguish or describe their emotional states.
They may know that something feels different without being able to identify whether they are anxious, angry, embarrassed, disappointed, excited, overwhelmed, hungry, tired or physically uncomfortable.
For some, emotional awareness begins with bodily sensation rather than an emotion word.
They may notice:
- a tight chest;
- a headache;
- heat;
- nausea;
- muscle tension;
- restlessness;
- pressure;
- a desire to escape;
before they know what emotion is present.
This can make self-advocacy and regulation more difficult because the young person may only recognise what is happening once the emotional state has become intense.
Difficulty identifying emotions does not imply an absence of emotion.
It also does not imply low empathy.
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What this might look like
A young person might:
- frequently say “I don’t know” when asked how they feel;
- use a small number of broad labels such as good, bad, angry or fine;
- describe physical sensations rather than emotions;
- recognise emotions only after the event;
- confuse anxiety with illness;
- become distressed before recognising what has upset them;
- rely on adults to interpret their internal state;
- copy emotion words suggested by others without being confident they fit;
- appear emotionally flat while experiencing significant internal intensity;
- struggle to explain why something was difficult;
- recognise emotions in others more easily than in themselves;
- identify thoughts or events instead of feelings when asked;
- become overwhelmed by direct emotional questioning.
Emotional awareness is not always immediate.
Some young people need considerable time before they can make sense of an experience.
Don’t assume
Do not assume that:
- “I don’t know” means refusal;
- the young person is hiding something;
- difficulty naming emotion means lack of emotion;
- the young person lacks empathy;
- giving them a list of emotion words solves the difficulty;
- an adult can always identify the young person’s emotion more accurately than they can;
- there is one correct emotional label for an experience.
Demanding the “right” emotional word can turn emotional literacy into another performance task.
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Developmental expression
At this stage
Early childhood
Emotion identification is naturally developing. Some young people may show a wider gap between physiological or behavioural signs and their ability to recognise or communicate internal states.
Early childhood
Emotion identification is naturally developing. Some young people may show a wider gap between physiological or behavioural signs and their ability to recognise or communicate internal states.
Middle childhood
Expectations increase for young people to explain feelings, reflect on behaviour and use emotional language.
Difficulties may become particularly visible during restorative conversations or emotional-literacy activities.
Early adolescence
Internal states become increasingly complex, while social expectations around emotional expression intensify.
A young person may become more aware that others seem able to describe feelings more easily and begin masking uncertainty.
Later adolescence
Some young people develop intellectual ways of discussing emotion without necessarily experiencing greater access to their own internal states.
Others develop highly personalised emotional vocabularies or rely more heavily on bodily, sensory or situational cues.
The goal is not to force emotional experience into a standard vocabulary.
Choose each stage to see how the presentation and surrounding expectations may change over time.
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Strengths and differences
Young people who identify emotions differently may also demonstrate:
- careful analytical thinking;
- strong observation of external events;
- rich sensory awareness;
- thoughtful reflection given sufficient time;
- precise language once an experience has been understood;
- capacity to recognise patterns retrospectively;
- strong empathy expressed through action rather than emotion language.
Fluent emotional vocabulary should not be mistaken for emotional depth, and limited vocabulary should not be mistaken for emotional absence.
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Top tips
- Begin with what the young person notices.
- Accept “I don’t know” as useful information.
- Explore body sensations, situations and urges as well as emotion words.
- Offer possibilities rather than insisting on labels.
- Give processing time.
- Build emotional language outside crisis.
- Use visual supports when genuinely useful.
- Allow personalised descriptions.
- Help the young person notice early patterns.
- Support communication of need even when the emotion itself cannot be named.
Try asking
“What did you notice in your body, thoughts or behaviour before you knew something was wrong?”
Or:
“You don’t have to know the emotion yet — what can you tell me about what it felt like?”
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Things needing careful planning
Consider:
- restorative conversations;
- therapy or counselling;
- behaviour debriefs;
- emotional-literacy programmes;
- safeguarding conversations;
- pain or illness;
- anxiety identification;
- regulation plans;
- communication passports;
- self-advocacy;
- transitions to greater independence.
Plans should include ways for the young person to communicate:
“Something is wrong”
even when they cannot yet explain exactly what.
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Practical support principles
A useful sequence is:
Notice → describe → connect patterns → explore possible meaning → communicate need → build vocabulary over time
Helpful approaches include:
- body-awareness activities;
- interoceptive noticing;
- visual emotion supports;
- personalised emotion scales;
- co-regulation;
- emotion coaching;
- reflective conversations when calm;
- linking situations, body sensations and possible emotions;
- allowing descriptive or metaphorical language;
- offering multiple communication methods;
- helping the young person identify what support is useful without requiring a precise label.
The young person might be able to say:
“My chest feels tight and I need to leave.”
That is already meaningful self-advocacy, even if the word anxiety is not yet available.
From understanding to support
Phoenix Atlas connections
Core
- Emotion coaching
- Co-regulation
Often useful
- Zones of Regulation / structured emotional-regulation frameworks
- Visual and anticipatory supports
- Mindfulness or present-moment noticing, where appropriate
- Body-awareness and interoceptive approaches
- Relationship and trust building
Any tool should remain a means of helping the young person understand themselves, rather than a test of whether they can reproduce adult-defined emotion language.
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Evidence and cautions
Alexithymia is a term used for marked difficulty identifying and describing emotions. Reviews find associations with autistic traits and higher rates in autistic samples, but substantial heterogeneity means alexithymia is neither synonymous with autism nor an explanation for every difficulty identifying emotions. (1; 2)
Emotional-identification programmes also require care. Emotion-regulation measurement uses varied constructs and methods, so correctly matching pictures, situations and emotion words should not automatically be treated as better access to one's own internal experience. (3)
Phoenix distinguishes performing emotional knowledge from developing emotional understanding and self-advocacy. Success means increasingly noticing internal change, understanding patterns, communicating needs and making choices about support, not simply naming more emotions.
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Public evidence sources
- 1. Alexithymia and autistic traits in children and adolescents — systematic review.
- 2. Alexithymia in autism — systematic review and meta-analysis.
- 3. Measurement of emotion regulation in children and adolescents — systematic review.
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Possible explanatory lenses
Difficulties identifying emotions may be explored alongside autism, anxiety, trauma, sensory and interoceptive differences, communication differences, developmental factors, depression, relational experiences or other differences in emotional processing.
But the practical starting point can remain very simple:
What can this young person notice — even before they can name it?
About this entry’s source
Open Beta · read the evidence notes and limitations
Source status describes the underlying material. The current site edition is Open Beta; the evidence notes and limitations remain part of the entry.
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Explore connected approaches
These Atlas entries link to this topic for a specific reading purpose. Follow the connection and its limits in the entry; it is not an automatic intervention recommendation.
- A002 · Emotion coaching
- A011 · Zones of Regulation
- A029 · Group dramatherapy
- A030 · Individual dramatherapy
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