Feeling = emotion + context. The four dials that turn six standard-issue waves into every feeling you’ve ever had — and a field guide to all of them.
Part one drew the line: an emotion happens in the body, a feeling is made in the mind. This part structures what the mind actually does in between. The short version is one sentence long: a feeling is an emotion plus context. The useful version notices that context isn’t one thing — it decomposes into four questions, answered in about a second, usually without our permission.
What does this touch?
A task · a person · a principle · me
How much rides on it?
Low → high. The volume dial.
Has this happened before?
First time → pattern → decades-old file
What does it say about me?
Not about me → a verdict on me
Three dials adjust the feeling; the fourth changes its nature. When Identity enters the context — when the event becomes a verdict on the self — feelings get heavier and stickier. Fear becomes insecurity. Sadness becomes shame. If a reaction seems bigger than its event, a dial you can’t see is turned to maximum.
Hold the emotion constant and turn only the dials. One wave — anger — produces seven different feelings, seven different conversations, and seven different things a leader should do next. Nothing below changes except context:
| Emotion | Target | Stakes | History | Identity | → The feeling |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Anger | a task | low | first time | not about me | →Annoyed |
| Anger | an obstacle | medium | recurring | not about me | →Frustrated |
| Anger | a principle | high | pattern | not about me | →Indignant |
| Anger | a person | high | long pattern, tallied | “they don’t value me” | →Resentful |
| Anger | a person | high | years, retold | “I was a fool to trust” | →Bitter |
| Anger | myself | high | — | “I did harm” | →Guilty |
| Anger | myself | high | pattern | “I am the harm” | →Ashamed |
Betrayed = surprise + anger + hurt sharing one context: a person target, high stakes, a trust history, an identity term. Blindsided = the same compound where the anger is about process, not outcome. Jealous = fear + anger with a rival in the target dial.
The anger table is one chapter of a larger field guide. Below are all six waves run through the same four dials — open a family to unfold it. The rule holds everywhere: read across any row and nothing changes except context. A feeling word is just a wave with its dial-settings compressed into a syllable or two.
| Emotion | Target | Stakes | History | Identity | → The feeling |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fear | a specific moment ahead | low | first time | not about me | →Nervous |
| Fear | an outcome | medium | on a loop | not about me | →Worried |
| Fear | no clear object | medium | humming for weeks | not about me | →Anxious |
| Fear | my standing | high | pattern | “am I actually enough?” | →Insecure |
| Fear | too many fronts at once | high | compounding | “I can’t hold this” | →Overwhelmed |
| Fear | something certain, approaching | high | — | not about me | →Dread |
The costume: fear almost never comes to work dressed as fear. It arrives as control — micromanagement, endless requests for detail, the person who won’t delegate.
| Emotion | Target | Stakes | History | Identity | → The feeling |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sadness | a hoped-for outcome | low | first time | not about me | →Disappointed |
| Sadness | effort and progress | medium | repeated losses | “why keep trying?” | →Discouraged |
| Sadness | a person who mattered | high | a trust history | “I mattered less than I thought” | →Hurt |
| Sadness | connection | medium | ongoing | “I’m not part of this” | →Lonely |
| Sadness | the future tense | high | a long accumulation | not about me | →Hopeless |
| Sadness | something irreplaceable | high | — | not about me | →Grief |
The armour: cynicism is very often hurt or disappointment wearing armour — “I no longer let myself hope, because hoping cost me.” A cynical long-tenured employee is frequently a formerly idealistic one.
| Emotion | Target | Stakes | History | Identity | → The feeling |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Disgust | a behaviour | low | first time | not about me | →Put off |
| Disgust | a decision | medium | recurring | not about me | →Disapproving |
| Disgust | a standard, violated | high | pattern | not about me | →Appalled |
| Disgust | a person, plus superiority | high | a long tally | “I’m above this” | →Contemptuous |
The one to catch early: anger wants repair; contempt wants distance. When “I’m angry at them” becomes “I’ve lost respect for them,” the lane has changed.
| Emotion | Target | Stakes | History | Identity | → The feeling |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Surprise | new information | low | — | not about me | →Curious |
| Surprise | my map of how things work | medium | — | not about me | →Confused |
| Surprise | a decision made about me | high | a trust history | “I didn’t count enough to be told” | →Blindsided |
| Surprise (+ anger + hurt) | a person I trusted | high | a trust history | “I was a fool to trust” | →Betrayed |
The multiplier wave: surprise hands off within seconds to whatever comes next — which is why consultation isn’t a courtesy; it’s surprise-management.
| Emotion | Target | Stakes | History | Identity | → The feeling |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Joy | a task, done well | low | — | not about me | →Pleased |
| Joy | the future | medium | — | not about me | →Hopeful |
| Joy | what might be coming | high | — | “this could be mine” | →Excited |
| Joy | my own work | high | — | “I did that” | →Proud |
| Joy | someone’s help | medium | — | not about me | →Grateful |
| Joy | a load, lifted | high | carried for two years | “…but others are hurting” | →Relieved — then guilty |
Good weather has filters too: some won’t let it stand — relief turns to guilt, pride to “who am I to,” excitement gets dampened in advance to protect against disappointment.
If a feeling is an emotion plus context, then context is the feeling minus the emotion — and that subtraction is the whole diagnostic method. You can’t negotiate with the wave; it’s physiology, and it already happened. But every dial is discussable. “Resentful” minus anger leaves: a person, high stakes, a long tally, an identity wound — four conversations, none of which are “calm down.”
Run the subtraction often enough and a pattern appears: the dials keep producing answers to the same three questions — the three on the front page of this practice. They’re not a separate model; they’re what the equation computes. When a feeling walks into your office, it is almost always answering one of these:
The Target and Stakes dials feed this one. Frustration at being overridden, resentment at decisions made about you without you — the agency question beneath most of what gets labelled “resistance to change.”
Where you’ve seen it: the anger row of the field guide above, run through a restructure.
The History dial feeds this one — and the belonging weathers of Part 2 are its forecast: alone as the event; lonely, rejected and abandoned as what we build on it. The trust question.
Where you’ve seen it: Part 02 — the stories we didn’t write.
The Identity dial feeds this one — the dignity question, and the deepest of the three. Shame and hurt wearing anger’s costume; often what’s really being defended in a performance conversation.
Where it goes next: Part 04 — the two conversations where this is worth money.
If this series landed somewhere real for you or your organisation, the next conversation is about you: where you are, where you need to be, and what would move it.
Start the conversation →