This post is part of The Midlife Syllabus—an ongoing series about the things we should’ve been taught but weren’t. The stuff that actually matters now. No grades, no gold stars. Just real lessons for a real life.
Here’s something I didn’t learn in school: how to name what I was feeling.
I could diagram a sentence, write a killer five-paragraph essay, even solve for x. But ask me to identify what was happening inside my chest during a fight, a job interview, a breakup—and I’d freeze. My emotional vocabulary was limited to: fine, tired, mad, and don’t worry about it.
This is not a unique problem. Most of us grew up fluent in productivity but emotionally semi-literate. We learned how to win. How to achieve. How to be agreeable. But we did not learn how to sit with discomfort. Or how to say, I feel anxious without apologizing for it. Or how to hear someone else’s anger without needing to fix it, defend it, or flee the room.
And now, here we are. Midlife. Leading teams. Parenting teenagers. Navigating divorce. Managing aging parents. Trying not to scream into a throw pillow during family holidays. Still learning to read our own emotional cues like it’s our first day on the job.
Emotions aren’t weaknesses. They’re data.
That’s the reframe no one gave us: emotions aren’t disruptive. They’re information. Your anger is a boundary being crossed. Your anxiety is a signal something doesn’t feel safe. Your joy is a GPS ping pointing toward what matters.
But if you were raised to be “nice,” or “strong,” or “low maintenance,” chances are you were taught to filter emotions out, not take them seriously.
I can’t count the number of times I’ve said I’m just tired when I was actually disappointed. Or It’s fine when I was deeply hurt. Or I don’t care when I very clearly did.
That gap between what we feel and what we say? That’s where resentment and confusion build up like emotional plaque.
Emotional literacy isn’t just for therapy—it’s for life.
In the real world, emotional fluency looks like:
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Knowing when you’re actually angry vs. just scared.
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Being able to tell your partner: I feel rejected when you do that instead of launching into character assassination.
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Pausing mid-meeting and asking yourself: Am I shutting down because of what’s happening now or because of what this reminds me of?
This is the kind of intelligence that makes relationships work, teams functional, and middle-aged nervous systems slightly less fried.
It’s not airy-fairy. It’s skill.
And like any skill, it can be learned. Slowly. Clumsily. Then all at once.
Where do you start? With a feeling wheel and some honesty.
No, really. Google “feelings wheel.” You’ll get a rainbow chart that looks like it belongs in a preschool classroom. Print it out. Keep it somewhere visible.
Why? Because most of us reach for the same five emotional words on repeat. The feelings wheel reminds you that there are more than just sad, mad, glad, stressed, and ugh. There’s overwhelmed. Dismissed. Hopeful. Lonely. Tender. Unsettled. Grateful. Jealous. Energized.
These aren’t just words. They’re doorways.
The more precisely you can name what you feel, the more clearly you can act in response.
Midlife is the perfect time to get fluent
In our 20s, we over-explained. In our 30s, we powered through. In our 40s and 50s? We start asking better questions.
We get tired of pretending. Of performing. Of masking every emotional flare-up with a productivity hack or a self-help meme. We start to want language that matches the depth of our lives.
So we learn to name the thing. Not because it fixes everything. But because it makes us less likely to spiral or shut down. Because it helps us stay connected. Because it lets the people we love know where we are.
That’s what literacy does. It makes the world make sense.
Even the world inside us.