What Color Is a Feeling?

What color is anxiety? What color is hope? A neurodivergent creator has been asking people to answer questions like these, and thousands have, within a day. The answers are specific, surprising and almost never the same.

Here are twelve of my dyes with nothing assigned to them. Which one is your calm? Which one is your joy? Which one is anxiety?

Your answer is right

Skin tone and seasons explain a lot about which colors flatter you. They don’t explain why a certain green makes your chest loosen, or why a color everyone loves makes you uneasy. Some people resonate with a color for reasons nobody else may ever understand, and that’s okay. That’s information about you.

I feel calmed by pale and dim tones, muted and subdued, even when they aren’t my best colors. And I reach for pink when I want to say I feel joyful. That’s why every skin tone guide pulls out your best pinks.

Dopamine dressing

A lot of people dress for the lift a color gives them. Many neurodivergent people are dopamine seeking, and getting dressed can be one of the most reliable joys of the day. That isn’t frivolous. It’s regulation, and it’s yours.

Questions to ask yourself

• Do I like this color because it feels nice, or because it matches something in me, like my hair, my eyes or the shape of my body?
• Would I wear it spending the day with kids? To be respected in a meeting? To be seen?
• What part of me am I decorating today?

Tell me yours

Answer in the comments: what color is anxiety for you? What color is hope, or rest, or being understood? I read every one.

The idea behind More Joy is that sustainable joy is infinite and has to be shared. For me, joy lives in understanding why. Wearing color changes how I connect with people; it’s a visual way of saying I can decorate the part of me that feels happy. More in Color as Somatic Language.