Understanding Emotions: Beyond 'Good' or 'Bad'

"How are you?" – "Good." Or maybe: "Fine, I guess." We all know these answers. We use them daily, often without thinking. But what do they actually mean? Are you energized, content, relieved – or just not bad?

Most of us never learned to name our feelings with precision. Yet this is where a key to self-discovery lies. This article shows how principles from Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and current research on emotional granularity can help us understand ourselves better.

The Cognitive Triangle: A Framework for Understanding

In the 1960s, psychiatrist Aaron Beck developed a concept that has shaped psychotherapy ever since: the cognitive triangle. The basic idea: our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are interconnected. When one aspect changes, it influences the other two.

An example: You wake up in the morning and your first thought is "Today is going to be exhausting." This thought pattern influences your feeling – perhaps you notice slight tension, restlessness in your body. This feeling in turn shapes your behavior: you grab your coffee hastily, skip breakfast, respond less patiently to the first email.

What's interesting about this model: it works in all directions. When you learn to perceive and name your feelings more precisely, you gain insight into your thought patterns. And when you consciously change your behavior – perhaps through a short morning routine – it can affect your thoughts and feelings.

Emotional Granularity: The Art of Precise Naming

In the 1980s, psychologist Robert Plutchik developed his emotion wheel – a visual representation of eight primary emotions, each at three intensity levels. Joy, trust, fear, surprise, sadness, disgust, anger, and anticipation form the primary colors of our emotional palette.

This differentiation is more than an academic exercise. Research shows: people with high emotional granularity – the ability to recognize fine distinctions between similar feelings – have more tools for self-regulation. They can identify their needs more precisely and act accordingly.

The difference between "I'm sad" and "I'm lonely" may seem subtle, but it leads to different insights. Sadness may need space and time to process. Loneliness, however, signals a lack of connection – and perhaps invites reaching out to someone.

The same applies to other emotions: Is this physical tension more like excitement or anxiety? Both feel physiologically similar – faster heartbeat, heightened alertness – but carry different meanings. Excitement often signals anticipation of something positive, while anxiety points to a perceived threat.

Context Tells the Story

A single data point is like a puzzle piece – interesting, but hard to place. Only context makes it valuable.

In Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, a mood diary therefore captures not just the emotion itself, but also: What was the triggering situation? What thoughts went through my mind? What did I do as a result?

This connection enables insights that isolated emotion measurements cannot provide. When you observe over weeks that your mood tends to be better on days with physical exercise, a personal pattern emerges. Not because someone told you exercise is good, but because you see it in your own data.

This approach is particularly valuable when it reveals surprising connections. Perhaps you notice that certain social situations exhaust you more than expected. Or that your mood is more stable on days with adequate sleep.

The Frequency Question: Less Can Be More

A surprising finding from current research: more tracking isn't automatically better. A study by Jamalabadi et al. (2025) shows that for regular monitoring, weekly assessments are often as informative as daily logging – without the risk of so-called "survey fatigue."

What is Survey Fatigue? Survey fatigue describes the exhaustion that occurs when people are asked questions too frequently or too extensively. The consequences: declining response quality, more superficial answers, and in the worst case, complete abandonment. With self-observation, this effect can be particularly insidious – you're still tracking, but without the necessary attention.

Tracking too frequently (more than four times daily) can also lead to reactivity effects: you start behaving differently because you're being observed. This can distort the data.

For most people, a good rhythm is once or twice a day. A brief check-in, a conscious moment of self-reflection. No lengthy questionnaires, no pressure about missed days.

This last point matters: research shows that a single missed day doesn't diminish long-term benefits. Regularity is more valuable than completeness.

The Difference from Superficial Tracking

Many apps offer mood tracking today. Often it comes down to a smiley slider: sad on the left, happy on the right. This simplification may be accessible, but it misses what research identifies as valuable.

The Cognitive Behavioral Therapy approach is more nuanced. It's not about rating each day on a scale from one to ten. It's about understanding context. What situation contributed to this feeling? What thoughts accompanied it?

This added differentiation requires a bit more time – ten seconds instead of three. But it yields insights that go beyond "today was a good day."

A Start Without an App

You don't need an app to begin today. Take a moment and ask yourself: What am I feeling right now – beyond "good" or "bad"?

Perhaps you're curious. Perhaps skeptical. Perhaps hopeful. All three are different emotional states – and each tells a different story about what you're experiencing.

This ability – precisely naming what's happening inside you – is a first step toward understanding yourself better. Not to optimize yourself. But to gain clarity.

And understanding is often where change begins.