I did more in therapy with matching an existing feeling to a description in order to gain control, than to identify feelings. I'd already figured most of that out for myself through literature and TV. When you're brought up being told abuse is "love" and that your feelings don't exist--but somehow you're experiencing them in uncomfortable ways--there's a need for re-education.

If someone is content without experiencing/recognizing emotions by and large, then I think naming/explaining them maybe is irrelevant. But I make sense of my world through metaphor, so I can't imagine functioning without it. I do think there's responsibility involved and therapists shouldn't be so cavalier about assuming emotional recognition to always be a positive thing.

I think it's very akin to what Vicki Hearne talks about in "Adam's Task": that naming (in this case of an animal), in a metaphysical way, is an act of obligation to take responsibility for life consequences.