What's Your Emotional Type? Women Only...

For women, emotions are like water; they flow.

When I first got into therapy, my therapist began to educate me about my emotions. I thought I was crazy. She said, “No, just colorful.” What she explained to me is that everyone feels their feelings differently. Some of us paint with pastels, while others go for richer hues. We have different palettes. My mother and I are very different emotionally. We have spent years coming to the place where we finally understand one another. Growing up she was the stable one, and I brought big emotional extremes and theatrical moods.

As I considered how emotions are like water, contemplating the ways that water flows, I came up with the four emotional types of women. Most of us have a primary, with a secondary:

River women
River women are emotion in motion. Theirs is a subtle and constant stream of emotion that flows like a river from one feeling to the next, often seamlessly. They are remarkably even-tempered, with a great sense of playfulness. If they learn to channel their emotions into positive outlets, everything they touch takes on a certain shine.

Though their emotions aren’t predictable, per say, they have patterns that are known to themselves and their loved ones, which are relatively decipherable. For example, a river woman might know that weddings always make her cry. She knows to never leave the house for a wedding without a purse full of tissue. River women laugh easily, and have great senses of humor, knowing innately how to cheer others and make them smile, just as rivers provide nourishment and sanctuary for all kinds of life.

Rain women
Like the rain that comes and then departs, rain women have feelings that come from out of nowhere, and then dissolve and vanish back into the mystery. A rain woman can experience sudden emotional outbursts when logically she can’t make sense of why or where the feeling is coming from. I had a friend a few years ago who was certainly a rain woman. We would be in the middle of a conversation when suddenly out of nowhere she would begin to sob about something she was feeling. I would usually be very surprised by the suddenness and intensity of her feeling. Then, just as quickly, the rains would stop and the sun would come out and she would be laughing and carrying on again. It’s very important that rain women not judge themselves just because the emotion is so sudden.

Rain refreshes and renews and restores. And then it departs to make way for the sunshine. Rain women can also tend to brood, like storm clouds on the horizon. Exercise helps them move emotions through. Rain women are often moved by the emotional victories and downfalls of other people. They will cry or laugh for someone else's win or loss, even total strangers, just as quickly as for themselves.

Lake women
Still waters run deep. Lake women very rarely show their emotions on the surface. They feel so deeply and so privately, that their emotions usually remain contained. They are often referred to as calm or meditative individuals. They express their feelings with a simple warm smile, or a silence that indicates their sorrow. They are most comfortable showing their feelings when they are alone, or with someone they know intimately. They are not women who repress their feelings, but women who reveal very little of what they feel just naturally. Because they feel so deeply, they are often extremely connected to their environment, and prefer to be out in nature or in retreat centers.

They also make great team players, and excel at sports like golf that require significant concentration and sensing beyond themselves. Lake women are also very empathic, picking up the feelings of others and mirroring them, or taking them on as their own. This is the same way a lake mirrors a flock of geese flying overhead. They receive impressions very easily. Lake women have to learn to build protective boundaries around themselves so they do not absorb the emotions of others.

Ocean women
The ocean is a vast and deep body of water, always changing on the surface. This is the most complex and rich emotional temperament, and also the most challenging. Where a river or a rain woman might have one feeling at a time, ocean women can have emotional cocktails, feeling ten ways at once, with many layers of feeling spreading in all directions. There is a lot to sort through for ocean women. They are sometimes overwhelmed. On the surface, they are much like the sea. Every day is different. Some days are calm and tranquil. Other days are tempestuous and wild. An ocean woman can wake up in the morning from a night of dreams, and her whole day will carry the emotions from her sleep. Like the ocean these women are beautiful and deep and mysterious.

Because their emotions can be so vast and unidentifiable, ocean women need music and dance and art to help them find and feel their feelings fully. Talking with close friends also helps to ground the shape-shifting ocean woman, and help her identify what she feels. Ocean women who become actors can lose themselves in their characters, completely embodying the role without a trace of themselves apparent. They have access to a great reservoir of feeling that informs their lives.

What emotional type are you?

What emotional type do you think your best girlfriend is?

What emotional type might your mother be, or your daughter?

About The Author
This is an excert from the Kaia Van Zandt's book, The Beauty Promise: How to Become More Beautiful At Any Age (c) Lakshmi Canyon Press, 2007.