Tangle of Emotions
During a ramble around Pinterest two years ago, I spotted an interesting visual: Ball of Grief: A Tangled Ball of Emotions. I printed it out (sans author, sorry) and have kept it in my file to remind me of how truly tangled and interconnected our emotions can be.
The skein-like ball of emotions shares over 40 emotions, ranging from sadness and inadequacy, to despair and denial, to rage. It provides a great resource for writers as potential characters enter problems and situations and must deal with their entanglements.
And…
Recently I read a novel about a woman who lost her husband. Both were in their mid-thirties. They had 4 young children that now she was raising them alone. As she progresses through the tangle of emotions of the 5 stages of grief, she also steps into a romantic relationship which mimics those same five stages. I found that especially interesting since I’d never through about how a person might struggle to allow herself to love again.
We tend to think of emotions as pure, as though we’re either happy, sad or afraid, lonely or angry. In reality, emotions may be mixed. Tangled is a good way to express it.
Exactly! I also think the image shares the interrelationship of emotions and the tangled ball makes it easy to visualize/remember.
Every person is such a jangly tangly mix of emotions, it’s sometimes hard to sort them out. That’s what makes us interesting and unique.