Search Results for language of emotions

Jealousy (and its partner envy) needs a hearty welcome, because these two emotions are perhaps the most hated (and valenced) emotions in the entire emotional realm. This is a tragedy, because jealousy and envy are essential for your social survival — you really need them! Luckily, you can work with jealousy and envy empathically and shield yourself from the deeply unfortunate things we’ve all been taught … Read More

Welcoming the healing break of confusion In my empathic approach to emotions, I’ve separated emotions into seventeen categories that are based on the unique actions each emotion requires. When I created these categories, I wasn’t trying to erase emotional nuance; I did it so that you could get a handle on your emotions and develop a working emotional vocabulary. I identify two healing and protective emotions … Read More

In the updated 2023 version of my book, The Language of Emotions, anxiety has its very own chapter. But in the original, it didn’t because I didn’t understand anxiety very well! It wasn’t until late 2010 — after the original version of the book came out — that I heard Dr. Mary Lamia on my car radio and realized what had caused my complete emotional ignorance … Read More

Welcoming the gifts of fear! Many of us have been taught to see fear as a problem, but it’s actually an intuitive emotion that helps you orient yourself, connect with your instincts, and act and respond skillfully. Fear helps you orient you to change and novel situations, and it focuses on the present moment and your immediate surroundings. But if you think of the ways we … Read More

Understanding hatred Previously, we looked at our tendency to express our hatred instead of working with it more deeply. Often, we can become obsessive about our hate targets and project all sorts of troubling material onto them. The fascinating thing about hatred is that you choose your hate targets not simply because they’re odious, but because they’re specifically odious in ways that cause specific, shadow-driven hatequakes … Read More

Hatred: The Shadowy and Necessary Emotion As we take a tour through the emotional realm, we’ve started with the Anger Family emotions that help you set boundaries: Anger, shame/guilt, and apathy (the protective mask for anger). Now, we’ll look at an emotion that can set boundaries in very troubling ways if you don’t know how to work with it: hatred. Actually, we’ll continue to look at hatred … Read More

We’ve looked at anger and shame, and now, we’ll focus on what I call the masking state of apathy (or boredom). Empathically, when I look at behaviors, I seek the emotions that underlie them. In apathy and boredom, I see a state that serves to mask fatigue and depression, certainly, but most of all, I see that apathy and boredom mask anger that can’t be dealt … Read More

You can befriend all of your emotions. In my post on befriending your anger, I re-framed anger as a necessary emotion that supports you in developing and maintaining your healthy self image. Now, let’s look at the emotion that I call anger’s friend or partner: shame. I envision anger as the sentry that calmly walks the perimeter of your self-image and watches out for any challenges … Read More

Anger is essential to true forgiveness I wrote this piece in my book The Language of Emotions back in 2010, but I return to it a lot. So much of what we’re told about forgiveness teaches us to avoid the powerful emotions that arise when we’ve been wounded or betrayed. But these powerful emotions are crucial to our ability to realize what happened, feel it, and … Read More

We’ve been told that anger needs to be controlled or suppressed, and that it’s a negative emotion, but anger can be the most honorable emotion you have if you know what it is, why it appears, and how to work with it. All of your emotions bring you specific gifts and skills, and we’ll look at all of your emotions — one by one — in … Read More