How to develop an emotional vocabulary for chords and progressions?

I've recently wanted to try my hand at learning to write music. I want to approach music from an emotional perspective: suppose I want the piece of music to invoke a certain feeling, then use this basis to choose chords, voicing, etc. I feel like I can read chords, play them, but I feel like I've never developed a mapping between chords and how they sound and feel. Another problem is that sometimes when I think of an emotion, certain chords ring up in my head but I don't know what those chords are.

What's a good way to develop this sort of "emotional" vocabulary for music?

Some ideas that I have is that I simply need to work on ear training, but make sure to not only associate the sounds with a "shape" or chord, but also with an emotion. Maybe it's just that I've approached ear training in a way that's too robotic and trying just to memorize sounds with notes. I guess it's kind of like a language in which you can learn to read and recognize words and their meanings, but you'll never be fluent without understanding what the words feel.