Emotional body chart

Summary

• An emotional body chart is a visual tool that helps clients identify where specific feelings manifest physically.

• Practicing a body mapping emotions activity builds interoception, aiding in trauma processing and emotional regulation.

• Clinicians can use a printable emotions in the body map to assist neurodivergent clients or those with alexithymia.

• Integrate the body map emotions worksheet into sessions to bridge the gap between physical sensations and emotional literacy.

Tools like an emotional body chart can help clients strengthen their emotional awareness and literacy. 

This article provides an overview of the body mapping emotions activity and how to use it with clients, and we’ve included a free printable emotions in the body map that you can save to your electronic health record (EHR) and use in your practice.

What is an emotional body chart?

Also called a body map of emotions, an emotional body chart is a visual tool for helping clients identify where they feel emotions. 

Using a body outline, clients are encouraged to mark, color, or identify where they feel emotions in their bodies.

Integrating an emotional body chart into your clinical practice provides a tangible way for clients to externalize internal sensations.

Research suggests that emotions are felt in different parts of the body, specifically:

• Anxiety causes sweaty hands, tight muscles, and trembling

• Fear is felt as chills, muscle tension, or numbness

• Happiness may feel light and experienced as sensations throughout the body

• Sadness is felt mainly in the chest or as a heaviness in the limbs

• Love may be experienced in the top half of the body

Emotion mapping can be helpful for clients because recognizing emotions is part of the body’s signalling system. The brain's ability to identify these signals is called interoception, which also gives us other essential cues, like feelings of hunger, thirst, body temperature, pain, and breathing changes. 

By visualizing these sensations on an emotional body chart, clients can move from vague discomfort to specific physiological awareness. This visual data helps bridge the gap between abstract feelings and physical reality.

Recognizing emotions and other interoceptive cues helps to:

• Strengthen emotional awareness

• Regulate emotions

• Interpret and meet the body’s needs

• Process unresolved trauma that’s held in the body

However, individual experiences vary. Not all people can identify their emotions or other bodily cues, and some individuals over- or under-respond to these signals. 

For example, neurodivergent clients may not recognize interoceptive signs, whereas people with anxiety or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) may over-respond to cues. 

More recent research also shows that people who experience chronic pain may report significantly stronger negative emotions, but they may not feel those emotions as strongly in their bodies.

For these individuals, providing a printable emotions in the body map acts as a baseline reference, allowing them to compare their personal sensations against common physiological patterns over time.

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Body mapping emotions activity

There are several ways to approach body mapping emotions with clients, such as:

Emotions or feelings wheel

This activity can help clients identify the specific emotions they are experiencing, which could lead to exploring where they feel the emotion in their body.

Download our feelings wheel for adults PDF or feelings wheel for kids.

Body mapping exercise

Providing a printable emotions in the body map allows clients to take the exercise home, fostering consistency in self-observation.

Using a blank silhouette of the body, prompt the client to:

• Circle the areas of the body where they feel something—this can be a physical sensation or emotion.

• Identify areas where they feel an emotion.

• Describe the emotions using words like tight, heavy, shaky, warm, itchy, tingly, comfortable, sore, or fluttery.

• Color parts of the body where they feel certain emotions. For example, anger may be colored red, sadness could be blue, anxiety may be orange, and black could be shame. The client can pick their colors for each emotion. 

• If the client struggles to identify emotions, you may use an object and ask them to observe their sensations as they touch, smell, or look at the object.

• Depending on their age, you could expand on interoceptive awareness by asking the client to identify what their body might be signalling, such as hunger, anger, excitement, or anxiety.

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How to use the body map emotions worksheet

You can download and use the emotional body chart worksheet in several ways.

For instance, use it as a psychoeducational prompt for the session to describe interoception or emotions. For younger populations, framing the body map emotions worksheet as a “Where do I feel?” worksheet can make the concept of interoception more accessible and less intimidating.

You can also provide the printable emotions in the body map to the client to remind them of what you discussed during therapy, then ask the client to use the activity worksheet between sessions and report their progress at their next therapy appointment. 

It can also be a skill development tool to enhance emotional awareness in neurodivergent clients with alexithymia.

Lastly, share it with coworkers or supervisees or print the emotional body chart worksheet and leave copies in your waiting room or therapy room.

Sources

• Hartmann, M., Lenggenhager, B., & Stocker, K. (2023). Happiness feels light and sadness feels heavy: introducing valence-related bodily sensation maps of emotions. Psychological research. 

• Nummenmaa, L., Glerean, E., Hari, R., & Hietanen, J. K. (2014). Bodily maps of emotions. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 

• Ojala, J., Suvilehto, J. T., Nummenmaa, L., & Kalso, E. (2023). Bodily maps of emotions and pain: tactile and hedonic sensitivity in healthy controls and patients experiencing chronic pain. Pain. 

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