WeFeel is an application that runs on your mobile device, your computer, or over a web browser. It allows you to create entries throughout the day which include your current emotional state, life outlook, a journal entry, goal progress and up to four custom items you would like to track. (We think you should track your Awesomeness level.) If you want to, you can share this information with someone else; for example a mental health professional, social worker, or family member.The WeFeel app allows you to quickly select the emotions you are feeling at the time, give a scale to the intensity, add a journal entry or track custom items if you want and hit submit. The whole process takes less than a minute and requires as few clicks as possible. The app can also remind you to enter information throughout the day, either randomly or according to your schedule.
Features
A key feature for WeFeel is that we don’t believe that emotional states are negative or positive. It is perfectly normal to feel fear, sorrow, anger, joy, and love. We’ve have these emotions to help us in life to make better decisions, to be part of a group, and to face the challenges of just getting through the day. No one should tell you that feeling sorrow, fear, or happiness today is a bad thing. But knowing how you feel and seeing how those feelings change over time will help you better understand yourself.
Core Emotions
We also believe that all the emotions we experience are made of a mixture of core emotions. Different levels of the core emotions blend together to make up all those words we use to express ourselves. We don’t limit you to scales of polar opposite emotions, because we don’t think emotions have polar opposites. Many times we can say we were either happy *or* sad, but there are times when you can be a little bit of both. In English we use the word bittersweet or melancholy to describe that state.
Say How You Feel Without Words
There are lots of words that we use to describe emotions and the intensity of an emotion helps determine what you would call it. A little bit of fear could be called Anxiety by one person, or Nervousness by another. A lot of fear may be Dread or Terror. Instead of tracking the exact word used to describe an emotional state our app instead asks you to just start with the core emotion and tell us how much of it you are feeling. This lets us compare feelings from one person to the next (which is great from a research standpoint). For individuals it means you don’t have to decide if you are feeling happiness, joy, or delight. And don’t worry, we’ll help you understand what emotions fit into which core emotion if you need it.
Visualize Emotions Over Time
WeFeel’s power comes from its ability to show you data over time, in a way that is easy for you to understand. There’s no point in collecting data if you can’t do anything with it after all. You can visually see how your feelings change over time. Look back and see a time when you were really happy, click to read your journal entry for that day. You may share the data with a professional, who can then use that to guide conversations during sessions.
By visualizing the data you can begin to see trends, like: “every time I’m at work by myself I tend to start feeling sad and depressed.” Once you have a trend you can work to discover the cause. You can also begin to see the little wins that make you happy and try to replicate them. And, you can put facts behind self-talk. A person may consider themselves an angry person and it’s great to see their surprise when they look back over time to find they actually aren’t angry all that often. It’s easy for us to tell ourselves things that just aren’t true. Real data will help us to see truth vs perceived truth, and maybe change our lives for the better.
