Invent a new, “emotional” lexicon!

In talent development work, one the greatest difficulties I run into is a lack of a robust lexicon to describe emotional issues.

I know, someone’s actually asking for more jargon, right? But here’s why I think we need it: Try to explain where personality ends and mood begins… or where mood ends and emotion begins. I bet you can’t.

But turn the conversation to something intellectual, and you’re covered in spades; we can even distinguish the type of understanding you have of an issue into one of six levels!

Generically, you can comprehend something, get it on a surface level or dig deeper, analyze it or synthesize it, grasp it or not quite follow, consider, ruminate, ponder, wonder, imagine, or think about it…

And so on.

Yet… pondering an emotional construct like love or hate makes no sense. You don’t “think” about love. you can’t decide to do it.

There is nothing intellectual about emotions.

Which means none of those words that are intellectually based really work.

So we need some words, please, because “feel” just doesn’t cut it.

Personally, I’d like words to describe the following…

“to enable learning” (a more active form of “facilitating;” the inverse of “teaching”)
I doubt I’ve ever told anyone anything they didn’t already know. My value isn’t in being new or novel, it’s in being able to package ideas in a way that makes them more accessible. So I’m not really a “teacher” who imparts knowledge… but “coach” to me suggests practice through rote repetition and “facilitator” sounds too hands-off.

“emotional logic”
Let’s say that empathy is to emotions what understanding is to intellect. We then need a word that describes the process of achieving empathy… akin to “If I follow you’re logic… then yes, I understand.” In Stranger From a Strange Land, L. Ron Hubbard gave us “grok,” which comes close, but then came Scientology, so we’re back to needing a new word here.

“empathy directed toward an idea”
Sometimes, empathy isn’t really meant for a person, it’s meant for the collective feeling a group of people will have after a particular idea is adopted. It’s not always pity; sometimes, the emotion you’re connecting to is positive. Imagine being able to describe for a volunteer the ability to vicariously experience the joy of someone who’s life s/he’d touch, if s/he’d only engage… with a single word.

“to respond based on your feelings, even while framing your disagreement as a logical one”
Playing politics certainly gets to this, but we ned a more generic term to cover politics, blind spots (like when Reps or Dems—shockingly!—fall in line with their party), and mischievous instigations.

“trust based on consistency of character rather than excellence of character”
I have a friend who is trustworthy not because he’ll necessarily always do the right thing, but because he’ll act predictably, so it’s easy to anticipate when/where he’ll bend the rules. I can’t always trust him per se, but I can, since I can predict exactly where my exposure is and therefore eliminate it.

stages of friendship between acquaintance and close friend
Terms like hi/bye friends, frenemies and bromance start to distinguish some of these lines, but we need more here.

What about you? What “emotional” words do you wish you had?

This is one of those topics that I can’t claim to have any of the answers. My creativity isn’t suited for a challenge like this.

So any help is appreciated!