# Faces & Expressions: Emotion Cards That Help People Name Their Feelings Meet Faces & Expressions — 60 watercolour emotion cards for therapy, coaching, teens and self-reflection. How to use them to name feelings, in person or online. **Emotion cards** are picture cards that help people recognise and name what they feel. [**Faces & Expressions**](https://mindtrays.com/decks/mindtrays-faces-expressions) is a new MindTrays deck of 60 watercolour faces — joy, calm, sadness, fear, anger, shame, wonder and the in-between moments that are hard to name — for therapy, coaching and self-reflection: you point to a face first, and the word follows. Naming a feeling sounds simple until you try. Children, teenagers and plenty of adults can sense that something is happening inside without finding the word for it. This deck gives them somewhere to start. ## Why Faces Work When Words Don't We read faces long before we read anything else. From infancy we scan expressions for meaning, and a single look can carry more emotional information than a paragraph. That instinct is still there when language runs out — which is exactly when a face card helps. Some people find emotions genuinely hard to put into words; others can name them but not say them out loud. Pointing at a face lowers the bar: "this one" is easier than the perfect sentence. And because the person chooses the image, the meaning comes from them — the same projective principle behind all metaphorical cards, explained in our piece on [why images bypass our defences](https://mindtrays.com/blog/the-psychology-of-projective-techniques-why-images-bypass-our-defenses). ## What's Inside the Deck Faces & Expressions holds 60 original watercolour portraits created for MindTrays — people of different ages and backgrounds, from young children to grandparents — grouped into eight clusters: - **Joy & Warmth** — laughter, pride, tenderness, quiet contentment - **Calm & Presence** — listening, stillness, concentration - **Sadness & Loss** — grief, tiredness, numbness, longing - **Fear & Worry** — startle, unease, watchfulness - **Anger & Frustration** — irritation, resentment, cold anger - **Shame, Withdrawal & Hiding** — the turned-away face, embarrassment, shyness - **Surprise, Curiosity & Wonder** — amazement, intrigue, awe - **In-Between & Hard to Read** — a smile that doesn't reach the eyes, relief mixed with exhaustion There are no words on the cards. That is deliberate. ## Emotion Cards vs a Feelings Chart A feelings chart hands people a list of labels and asks them to pick the right one. Emotion cards work the other way round. A face that looks angry to one person reads as hurt or frightened to another — and that difference is the conversation. Nothing on the card tells anyone what they "should" see, so the person's own reading comes first. The last cluster matters most here. Real feelings are often mixed, and a face caught between two expressions gives people permission to say "both". ## 6 Ways to Use Emotion Cards ### 1\. The check-in One card at the start of a session: "Which face is closest to how you're arriving today?" It surfaces the state behind "fine, busy week" in seconds. ### 2\. From face to word Choose the face, describe what it's feeling in your own words, then notice where that feeling sits in your body. Three small steps from recognition to language. ### 3\. Me and the other person One face for yourself in a situation and one for the other person, side by side. Couples, parents and teams often soften the moment they have to imagine the other side. ### 4\. The mask and what's underneath Two cards: the face I show, and the feeling behind it. Especially useful when someone presents as "fine". ### 5\. Now and wanted How I feel now, how I'd like to feel — then talk about the smallest step between the two faces. ### 6\. The group round Everyone picks a face for how a shared moment felt. The range of choices opens the discussion better than any question. ## Emotion Cards for Teenagers Adolescents often feel intensely and resist being asked to explain. Faces let a teenager point rather than perform, which lowers defensiveness and makes honest contact more likely. For more on working with this age group, see our [practical guide to cards with teenagers](https://mindtrays.com/blog/using-metaphorical-cards-with-teenagers-a-practical-guide-for-therapists). ## Using the Deck in Online Sessions Faces & Expressions runs on MindTrays' shared board, so the client browses, chooses and places their own cards while you both watch the layout change live — no account, nothing to install. That keeps the client's choice at the centre of the work even over video. See [how collaborative sessions work](https://mindtrays.com/collaborative-mode) and our [step-by-step guide to online sessions](https://mindtrays.com/blog/how-to-run-an-online-therapy-session-with-metaphorical-cards-stepbystep). ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What are emotion cards used for? To help people recognise, name and talk about feelings — in therapy, counselling, coaching, classrooms, families and personal journaling. ### Are emotion cards only for children? No. The faces cover every age, and adults use them just as often — in couples work, supervision, burnout coaching and self-reflection. ### Do the cards tell you what someone feels? No. Metaphorical cards carry no fixed meanings and predict nothing — this is not tarot. The person looking decides what a face means. More in [metaphorical cards vs tarot](https://mindtrays.com/blog/metaphorical-cards-vs-tarot). ### Can I use Faces & Expressions online? Yes. The whole deck works in the browser on a shared board, in person on one screen or remotely with a client. ## Try Faces & Expressions [**Open the Faces & Expressions deck**](https://mindtrays.com/decks/mindtrays-faces-expressions), pull a [free daily card](https://mindtrays.com/daily), or [browse all MindTrays decks](https://mindtrays.com/decks). When a feeling is hard to name, a face can offer the first word. _— MindTrays Team_ --- [View on MindTrays](https://mindtrays.com/blog/faces-and-expressions-emotion-cards)