This is an original deck of 42 cards! Researched, designed, and shipped directly by us at Studio Pandemonia! USA-based.

“If you’re willing to invest a little time in yourself, you can learn to master your moods more effectively, just as an athlete who participates in a daily conditioning program can develop greater endurance and strength.”

-David D. Burns

This deck is inspired by a research study called the Maps of Subjective Feelings, where 100 distinct feelings had their neural sensations in the human body mapped and compared. My goal was to artistically represent the maps combined with iconic body language of that emotion to create a quick and easy reference tool for emotion identification. As I went farther into studying this concept, I also looked at the work of Robert Plutchik who originally developed the Emotion Wheel and set about trying to update that concept with the new scanning technology!
Booklet Included!

The 40 Feelings are based on comparisons I did between various versions of the emotion wheel, investigating core emotions, their derivatives, relationships between them, and acute vs. chronic states. Each distinct emotion is paired with an eminent psychology researcher whose body of work goes into detailed focus about it, and each of them has authored a book on the recommended reading list! The affiliate links support work on this project, each book is at least 4.5 star rated and might be just the reference you are looking for if you want to dive deep on a card in particular.

I delved into questions like, where are emotions felt in the body? What kind of physical symptoms do we experience when we feel emotions? Which hormones, neurotransmitters and parts of the brain are involved with particular feelings? How do we let emotions inform and guide us, instead of overwhelming us and distorting our actions? Explore the project here: https://www.elementalconflux.com/bodysense

“Studies show that repeated noticing and naming of our emotions increases cell volume in the corpus callosum, the integrative fibers linking the two hemispheres of the cortex, making it easier to integrate the intuitive meaning of the emotion with the cognitive understanding of it. Self-empathy makes this process safe, even with difficult or “negative” emotions.”

― Linda Graham, MFT