This map was created as part of my work in teaching Emotion Management courses to lay audiences. The aim was to provide a simple yet clinically and scientifically grounded visual tool to help people recognize and connect with their emotional experience on a bodily level. The selected emotions – Anger, Sadness, Guilt, and Joy- were chosen based on their prominence in both everyday emotional life and psychotherapy, as well as the relative clarity of their somatic expressions.
The project draws from several sources, including peer-reviewed studies on bodily maps of subjective feelings (Nummenmaa et al., 2013&2018; Volynets et al., 2020), ISTDP literature (Abbass, 2015), and personal consultations with Allan Abbass and Jon Frederickson. From an ISTDP perspective, many emotions have distinct physiological correlates: anger often rises from the feet or abdomen with heat and energy toward the extremities; sadness tends to settle as heaviness in the chest and throat; and guilt, while more variable and evolutionarily recent, frequently presents as upper chest and neck pressure accompanied by sobbing and remorse. While guilt lacks the more consistent somatic pathway seen in anger, recurring physical patterns do emerge clinically. After careful consideration and dialogue, Joy was selected over Love. Joy, though transient, is often linked to clear and universal bodily expressions – lightness, warmth, upward energy, and spontaneous smiling or movement – making it easier to depict. In contrast, love is a multifaceted relational experience with more context-dependent and culturally shaped expressions.
While this map is not diagnostic, it offers a clinically informed and accessible reference point for psychoeducation, therapy, and self-awareness. It can support clients and students in tracking emotional activation in the body, a key step toward naming, tolerating, and regulating emotions. The map intentionally simplifies complex experiences, and its design reflects common patterns rather than truths. Cultural, psychological, and individual factors all influence how emotions are felt and expressed. This is a living project. Future versions may include a broader spectrum of emotions, as well as adaptations for clinical training and therapeutic dialogue. Feedback from clinicians, researchers, and patients alike is welcome as the map continues to evolve.
Click on the picture below to get the pdf version of the file.
Author: Katalin Tamás, (Hungary)
Katalin Tamás is a licensed psychologist and psychotherapist in training, offering individual and group psychodynamic psychotherapy for adults in both English and Hungarian. She specializes in relationship difficulties, somatic symptom management, and avoiding the catastrophic misalliances detailed in this article (most of the time). Katalin is one of the leaders of the Hungarian team for Davanloo’s Intensive Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy (ISTDP) and serves as an editor for the Journal of Contemporary ISTDP. She is currently completing the final year of her core training in ISTDP. She works in private practice in the beautiful, emotionally complex city of Budapest.