children, it’s easy for everything to become a source of shame when nothing is normalized. You assume that if no one is talking about it, it must be just you.

I knew that the comment about too much dessert was funny when someone felt good about how they looked and how the same comment would unleash a screaming match if someone didn’t feel good about themselves that day or that hour.

understood that people would do almost anything to not feel pain, including causing pain and abusing power, and I understood that there were very few people who could handle being held accountable for causing hurt without rationalizing, blaming, or shutting down.

It’s awful that the same substances that take the edge off anxiety and pain also dull our sense of observation. We see the pain caused by the misuse of power, so we numb our pain and lose track of our own power. We become terrified of feeling pain, so we engage in behaviors that become a magnet for more pain. We run from anger and grief straight into the arms of fear, perfectionism, and the desperate need for control.

When we stop numbing and start feeling and learning again, we have to reevaluate everything, especially how to choose loving ourselves over making other people comfortable. It was the hardest work I’ve ever done and continue to do.

The edges taught me that the more I used alcohol, food, work, caretaking, and whatever else I could get my hands on to numb my anxiety and vulnerability, the less I would understand my feelings, thoughts, and behaviors. I finally realized that trying to outrun and outsmart vulnerability and pain is choosing a life defined by suffering and exhaustion.

I’ve learned that power is not bad, but the abuse of power or using power over others is the opposite of courage; it’s a desperate attempt to maintain a very fragile ego. It’s the desperate scramble of self-worth quicksand. When people are hateful or cruel or just being assholes, they’re showing us exactly what they’re afraid of. Understanding their motivation doesn’t make their behavior less difficult to bear, but it does give us choices. And subjecting ourselves to that behavior by choice doesn’t make us tough—it’s a sign of our own lack of self-worth.

I am responsible for holding you accountable in a respectful and productive way. I’m not responsible for your emotional reaction to that accountability. Sadly, I’ve also learned that sometimes, even when the pain takes your breath away, you have to let the people you love experience the consequences of their own behavior. That one really hurts.

if you ask me to identify the biggest barriers to developing brave leaders or cultivating courage in our families or bringing justice to communities, I’d go right back to what I believed was true about people when I was a kid: People will do almost anything to not feel pain, including causing pain and abusing power; Very few people can handle being held accountable without rationalizing, blaming, or shutting down; and Without understanding how our feelings, thoughts, and behaviors work together, it’s almost impossible to find our way back to ourselves and each other. When we don’t understand how our emotions shape our thoughts and decisions, we become disembodied from our own experiences and disconnected from each other.

often, when we feel lost, adrift in our lives, our first instinct is to look out into the distance to find the nearest shore. But that shore, that solid ground, is within us. The anchor we are searching for is connection, and it is internal. To form meaningful connections with others, we must first connect with ourselves, but to do either, we must first establish a common understanding of the language of emotion and human experience.

If stress is like being in the weeds, feeling overwhelmed is like being blown. Overwhelmed means an extreme level of stress, an emotional and/ or cognitive intensity to the point of feeling unable to function.

Jon Kabat-Zinn describes overwhelm as the all-too-common feeling “that our lives are somehow unfolding faster than the human nervous system and psyche are able to manage well.”

A trait is considered to be something that is part of an individual’s personality and therefore a long-term characteristic of an individual that shows through their behavior, actions, and feelings. It is seen as being a characteristic, feature, or quality of an individual. For example, someone who says “I am a confident person” or “I am just an anxious person” is stating that these attributes are part of who they are. A state, on the other hand, is a temporary condition that they are experiencing for a short period of time. After the state has passed, they will return to another condition. For example, someone who says “I am feeling quite confident about this interview” or “I feel nervous about doing this” is describing states.

I’d describe myself as having frequent state anxiety with trait rising, and I know that therapy has been essential for me in terms of recognizing and understanding my reactions and developing techniques for working through my feelings of anxiety. I’ve also had to give up caffeine, commit to eight to nine hours of sleep a night, and exercise almost every day.

Our anxiety often leads to one of two coping mechanisms: worry or avoidance.

Worry is described as a chain of negative thoughts about bad things that might happen in the future.

Avoidance, the second coping strategy for anxiety, is not showing up and often spending a lot of energy zigzagging around and away from that thing that already feels like it’s consuming us.

“It is not fear that stops you from doing the brave and true thing in your daily life. Rather, the problem is avoidance. You want to feel comfortable, so you avoid doing or saying the thing that will evoke fear and other difficult emotions. Avoidance will make you feel less vulnerable in the short run, but it will never make you less afraid.”

Anxiety and excitement feel the same, but how we interpret and label them can determine how we experience them. Even though excitement is described as an energized state of enthusiasm leading up to or during an enjoyable activity, it doesn’t always feel great.

Dread occurs frequently in response to high-probability negative events; its magnitude increases as the dreaded event draws nearer.

Because dread makes an anticipated negative event even worse, we often prefer to get unpleasant things over with quickly, even if doing them sooner means that they will be more unpleasant (e.g., a more painful procedure now is preferred to a less painful procedure later).

For anxiety and dread, the threat is in the future. For fear, the threat is now—in the present. Fear is a negative, short-lasting, high-alert emotion in response to a perceived threat,

Vulnerability is the emotion that we experience during times of uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure.

leaders don’t have all the answers, but ask important questions

Vulnerability is not weakness; it’s our greatest measure of courage.

When I go into comparison, I completely lose the meditation and alone time I need.

Comparison is actually not an emotion, but it drives all sorts of big feelings that can affect our relationships and our self-worth.

Comparison is a creativity killer, among other things.

Comparison is the crush of conformity from one side and competition from the other—it’s trying to simultaneously fit in and stand out.

Many social psychologists consider social comparison something that happens to us. Fujita writes, “From this perspective, when we are presented with another person who is obviously better or worse off, we have no choice but to make a social comparison. ‘It can be hard to hear an extremely intelligent person on the radio, or see an extremely handsome one in the grocery store, or participate on a panel with an expert without engaging in social comparison no matter how much we would like not to’ (Goethals, 1986, p. 272)… Even if we do not choose whether or not to make a comparison, we can choose whether or not to let that comparison affect our mood or self-perceptions.”

We feel admiration when someone’s abilities, accomplishments, or character inspires us, or when we see something else that inspires us, like art or nature.

Reverence, which is sometimes called adoration, worship, or veneration, is a deeper form of admiration or respect and is often combined with a sense of meaningful connection with something greater than ourselves.

Envy occurs when we want something that another person has. Jealousy is when we fear losing a relationship or a valued part of a relationship that we already have.

Envy typically involves two people and occurs when one lacks something enjoyed by another.

Jealousy typically involves three people and occurs when one fears losing someone to another person.

90 percent of recalled episodes of envy can be attributed to one of three categories: Attraction (e.g., physical attractiveness, romantic attraction, social popularity); Competence (e.g., intelligence, knowledge); and Wealth (e.g., financial status or lifestyle).

we might even feel a pang of jealousy when a partner or friend spends a lot of time alone, doing something that doesn’t involve us.

research has found that high levels of jealousy are directly related to problem drinking and to interpersonal violence when drinking.

Maya Angelou frames it. “Jealousy in romance is like salt in food. A little can enhance the savor, but too much can spoil the pleasure and, under certain circumstances, can be life-threatening.”

For years, I assumed that resentment was a form of anger related to my perfectionism. I mostly felt resentful toward people whom I perceived to be not working or sacrificing or grinding or perfecting or advocating as hard as I was.

Resentment is part of envy.” Oh, holy shit. I’m not mad because you’re resting. I’m mad because I’m so bone tired and I want to rest. But, unlike you, I’m going to pretend that I don’t need to.

Resentment is the feeling of frustration, judgment, anger, “better than,” and/ or hidden envy related to perceived unfairness or injustice. It’s an emotion that we often experience when we fail to set boundaries or ask for what we need, or when expectations let us down because they were based on things we can’t control, like what other people think, what they feel, or how they’re going to react.

“schadenfreude,” it simply means pleasure or joy derived from someone else’s suffering or misfortune.

nothing that celebrates the humiliation or pain of another person builds lasting connection.

freudenfreude, which is the opposite of schadenfreude—it’s the enjoyment of another’s success. It’s also a subset of empathy.

shoy and bragitude. In an intervention designed by researchers to increase freudenfreude, they coined two new terms to describe behaviors that were very effective: Shoy: intentionally sharing the joy of someone relating a success story by showing interest and asking follow-up questions. Bragitude: intentionally tying words of gratitude toward the listener following discussion of personal successes.

It’s like the shows lull the easily distracted part of my brain into a rhythmic stupor, setting free the deeper, meaning-making part of my brain to engage and start making connections between things that don’t seem connectable.

“Boredom is your imagination calling to you.”

Disappointment is unmet expectations. The more significant the expectations, the more significant the disappointment.

Disappointment takes a toll on us and our relationships. It requires considerable emotional bandwidth. Researcher Eliane Sommerfeld explains that we come away from the experience of disappointment feeling bad about ourselves and the other person. Our negativity is tinged with astonishment and surprise, and, at the same time we’re trying to forgive, we’re concealing emotions.

“When it’s just me with the kids, I have no expectations for getting my own stuff done. I give up my to-do list so I can actually enjoy the craziness.” It was that simple. This fight was all about stealth expectations.

Now, before weekends, vacations, or even busy school or workweeks, we talk about expectations. We specifically ask each other, “What do you want this weekend to look like?” I might say, “This is going to be a busy weekend. I’m down for whatever we need to do, but I would like to swim at least one day and play pickleball for a couple of hours on Saturday.”

That doesn’t mean stealth expectations no longer trip us up. They do. But now we help each other.

we often ask ourselves and each other: What’s this about? What are you not saying?

“Painting done” means fully walking through my expectations of what the completed task will look like, including when it will be done, what I’ll do with the information, how it will be used, the context, the consequences of not doing it, the costs—everything we can think of to paint a shared picture of the expectations. It’s one of the most powerful tools we have.

The therapist asked me if I had shared my expectations with Steve, or explained to him how we did it in our family and asked him to celebrate with me that way because it meant a lot to me. I rolled my eyes and said, “If I have to ask, it’s not worth it.” She tilted her head and said, “If you’re not asking for what’s important to you, maybe it’s because you don’t think you are worth it.” Shut up. You don’t know me. You’re fired.

There are too many people in the world today who decide to live disappointed rather than risk feeling disappointment. This can take the shape of numbing, foreboding joy, being cynical or critical, or just never really fully engaging.

I’ll never forget how he looked at me when he said: I used to think the best way to go through life was to expect the worst. That way, if it happened, you were prepared, and if it didn’t happen, you were pleasantly surprised. Then I was in a car accident and my wife was killed. Needless to say, expecting the worst didn’t prepare me at all. And worse, I still grieve for all of those wonderful moments we shared and that I didn’t fully enjoy. My commitment to her is to fully enjoy every moment now. I just wish she was here now that I know how to do that.

Both disappointment and regret arise when an outcome was not what we wanted, counted on, or thought would happen. With disappointment, we often believe the outcome was out of our control (but we’re learning more about how this is not always the case). With regret, we believe the outcome was caused by our decisions or actions.

The idea of “no regrets” doesn’t mean living with courage, it means living without reflection. To live without regret is to believe we have nothing to learn, no amends to make, and no opportunity to be braver with our lives.

Discouraged, resigned, and frustrated are also ways that we feel when things aren’t going or didn’t go as desired.

Disappointed: It didn’t work out how I wanted, and I believe the outcome was outside of my control. Regretful: It didn’t work out how I wanted, and the outcome was caused by my decisions, actions, or failure to act. Discouraged: I’m losing my confidence and enthusiasm about any future effort—I’m losing the motivation and confidence to persist. Resigned: I’ve lost my confidence and enthusiasm about any future effort—I’ve lost the motivation and confidence to persist. Frustrated: Something that feels out of my control is preventing me from achieving my desired outcome.

If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the christening of all children, I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life, as an unfailing antidote against the boredom and disenchantments of later years, the sterile preoccupation with things that are artificial, the alienation from the sources of our strength.

When feeling awe, we tend to simply stand back and observe, “to provide a stage for the phenomenon to shine.” Awe and wonder are essential to the human experience. Wonder fuels our passion for exploration and learning, for curiosity and adventure.

“I need time for my confusion.” Confusion can be a cue that there’s new territory to be explored or a fresh puzzle to be solved.

concept of optimal confusion is key to understanding why confusion is good for us and why it’s categorized as an epistemic emotion—an emotion critical to knowledge acquisition and learning.

“To be effective, learning needs to be effortful. That’s not to say that anything that makes learning easier is counterproductive—or that all unpleasant learning is effective. The key here is desirable difficulty. The same way you feel a muscle ‘burn’ when it’s being strengthened, the brain needs to feel some discomfort when it’s learning. Your mind might hurt for a while—but that’s a good thing.” Comfortable learning environments rarely lead to deep learning.

Interest is a cognitive openness to engaging with a topic or experience. Curiosity is recognizing a gap in our knowledge about something that interests us, and becoming emotionally and cognitively invested in closing that gap through exploration and learning. Curiosity often starts with interest and can range from mild curiosity to passionate investigation.

curiosity is the feeling of deprivation we experience when we identify and focus on a gap in our knowledge.

Choosing to be curious is choosing to be vulnerable because it requires us to surrender to uncertainty. We have to ask questions, admit to not knowing, risk being told that we shouldn’t be asking, and, sometimes, make discoveries that lead to discomfort.

Einstein said, “The important thing is not to stop questioning.

surprise as an interruption caused by information that doesn’t fit with our current understanding or expectations. It causes us to reevaluate.

We normally use “surprise” for experiences that link quickly to emotion. When we use the term “unexpected,” the experience starts with thinking (just like surprise), but it often stays cognitive rather than bridging to emotion.

multiple experiments have shown that when experts express doubt, they become more persuasive. When someone knowledgeable admits uncertainty, it surprises people, and they end up paying more attention to the substance of the argument.

The definition of amusement that aligns with our research is “pleasurable, relaxed excitation.” Amusement differs from happiness in that happiness is a general sense of pleasure, whereas amusement appeals specifically to one’s sense of humor.

The bittersweet side of appreciating life’s most precious moments is the unbearable awareness that those moments are passing.—MARC PARENT, Believing It All Bittersweet is a mixed feeling of happiness and sadness.

Watching children grow up Leaving a job Divorce/ Ending a relationship Graduating Letting go of friendships that aren’t working Moving Death of a loved one Teachers watching students graduate Retiring Coming home from vacation

Nostalgia was considered a medical disease and a psychiatric disorder until the early nineteenth century. Today, researchers describe nostalgia as a frequent, primarily positive, context-specific bittersweet emotion that combines elements of happiness and sadness with a sense of yearning and loss.

It can be an imaginary refuge from a world we don’t understand and a dog whistle used to resist important growth in families, organizations, and the broader culture and to protect power, including white supremacy. What’s spoken: I wish things were the way they used to be in the good ol’ days. What’s not spoken: When people knew their places. What’s not spoken: When there was no accountability for the way my behaviors affect other people. What’s not spoken: When we ignored other people’s pain if it caused us discomfort. What’s not spoken: When my authority was absolute and never challenged.

The level of divisiveness, uncertainty, and anxiety in the world today leads a lot of us to struggle with rumination, which Garrido explains is an “involuntary focus on negative and pessimistic thoughts.” It’s important to note that she also differentiates rumination from reflection, which is “highly adaptive and psychologically healthy.”

worry is focused on the future, while rumination focuses on the past or on things about ourselves that we’re stuck on.

We define nostalgia as a yearning for the way things used to be in our often idealized and self-protective version of the past.

The engine that drives self-justification, the energy that produces the need to justify our actions and decisions—especially the wrong ones—is the unpleasant feeling that Festinger called “cognitive dissonance.” Cognitive dissonance is a state of tension that occurs when a person holds two cognitions (ideas, attitudes, beliefs, opinions) that are psychologically inconsistent with each other,

Dissonance is disquieting because to hold two ideas that contradict each other is to flirt with absurdity, and, as Albert Camus observed, we are creatures who spend our lives trying to convince ourselves that our existence is not absurd. At the heart of it, Festinger’s theory is about how people strive to make sense out of contradictory ideas and lead lives that are, at least in their own minds, consistent and meaningful.

The paradox is one of our most valuable spiritual possessions… only the paradox comes anywhere near to comprehending the fullness of life.—CARL JUNG

While cognitive dissonance pushes us to resolve the tension of conflicting information, paradox challenges us to straddle the tension of two conflicting elements and recognize that they can both be true.

para (contrary to) and dokein (opinion). The Latin term paradoxum means “seemingly absurd but really true.”

A paradox is the appearance of contradiction between two related components.

Undisciplined thinkers force debates into stark “Tyranny of the OR” choices; disciplined thinkers expand the conversation to create “Genius of the AND” solutions.

“Genius of the AND” dualities. For example: Creativity AND Discipline Innovation AND Execution Humility AND Audacity Freedom AND Responsibility

Irony and sarcasm are forms of communication in which the literal meaning of the words is different, often opposite, from the intended message. In both irony and sarcasm, there may be an element of criticism and humor. However, sarcasm is a particular type of irony in which the underlying message is normally meant to ridicule, tease, or criticize.

Both irony and sarcasm are easily misunderstood, especially when you’re talking to someone you don’t know well, when there’s already some heightened emotion in the exchange, or when you’re emailing or texting.

I was raised in a family where sarcasm was confused with intellectual ability and craft.

the word “sarcasm” comes from a Greek word meaning “to tear flesh.”

I think that’s the biggest watch-out with irony and sarcasm: Are you dressing something up in humor that actually requires clarity and honesty?

This...

Anguish… It’s one of those words you understand the meaning of just by the way that it sounds. It has this gnarling rasp to it as you twist your mouth around to say it… kind of like what feeling it does to your insides.

Anguish is an almost unbearable and traumatic swirl of shock, incredulity, grief, and powerlessness.

It’s often hard to find our way back into our bodies after experiencing anguish. This is why so much effective trauma work today is not only about reclaiming our breath, our feelings, and our thinking, but also getting our bones back and returning to our bodies.

The human spirit is resilient, and just as we can reclaim our ability to breathe and feel and think, we can rebuild the bones that anguish rips away. But it takes help and time.

hope is made up of what researcher C. R. Snyder called a “trilogy of goals, pathways, and agency.” We experience hope when: We have the ability to set realistic goals (I know where I want to go). We are able to figure out how to achieve those goals, including the ability to stay flexible and develop alternative pathways (I know how to get there, I’m persistent, and I can tolerate disappointment and try new paths again and again). We have agency—we believe in ourselves (I can do this!).

Hope is a function of struggle—we develop hope not during the easy or comfortable times, but through adversity and discomfort.

Unfortunately, there are times when hope isn’t sufficient to combat entrenched systemic barriers. It doesn’t matter how much hope we have if the deck is stacked or the rules apply to some but not others—that is actually a recipe for hopelessness and despair.

While hope is not an emotion, hopelessness and despair are emotions. Hopelessness arises out of a combination of negative life events and negative thought patterns, particularly self-blame and the perceived inability to change our circumstances.

Despair is a sense of hopelessness about a person’s entire life and future. When extreme hopelessness seeps into all the corners of our lives and combines with extreme sadness, we feel despair.

we can also look to Martin Seligman’s research on resilience, especially what many people call his 3 Ps: personalization, permanence, and pervasiveness. Personalization: When we experience despair and hopelessness, we often believe that we are the problem and forget to think about larger issues and context. Self-blame and criticism don’t lead to increased hopefulness; they’re quicksand. Realizing that outside factors play a role in our struggles can give us a different lens on our experience. Permanence: This one is tough, because thinking that our struggle will never end is built in to the experiences of despair and hopelessness. This is the “Tomorrow will be no different from today” thinking. One way to build resilience is to practice thinking about the temporary nature of most setbacks as a part of how we look at adversity on a daily basis. We can’t afford to wait to build this skill until we’re up against something huge in our lives. Permanence can be tough for me, so I’ve developed the habit of asking myself, “I’m really scared, worried, overwhelmed, stressed about what’s happening. Will this issue be a big deal in five minutes? Five hours? Five days? Five months? Five years?” I’ve been doing it for about a year—I started it during the pandemic—and now I try not to sink into fear until I’ve asked and answered these questions. If nothing else, it pulls my thinking brain online instead of letting my fear brain run the show. Pervasiveness: Sometimes, when we’re struggling, we fall into the trap of believing that whatever we’re up against has stained or changed every single thing in our life. Nothing good is left. I recently found myself dealing with a crisis at work that, for a moment, felt like the end of the world. I felt as if this thing had swallowed me whole and nothing was left. Then I got a text that said “hey mom do you know where my new goggles are?”

The BS

sadness is important and we need it. Feeling sad is a normal response to loss or defeat, or even the perception of loss or defeat.

Sadness and depression are not the same thing.

Sadness and grief are not the same thing.

it’s important to consider that sadness can be beneficial, too. Sad people are less prone to judgmental errors, are more resistant to eye-witness distortions, are sometimes more motivated, and are more sensitive to social norms. They can act with more generosity, too.

the sad-film paradox: How can a negative emotion such as sadness go together with “aesthetic liking” and even pleasure?

Sadness moves the individual “us” toward the collective “us.”

three foundational elements of grief emerged from the data: loss, longing, and feeling lost. Loss—While death and separation are tangible losses associated with grief, some of the participants described losses that are more difficult to identify or describe. These included the loss of normality, the loss of what could be, and the loss of what we thought we knew or understood about something or someone. Longing—Related to loss is longing. Longing is not conscious wanting; it’s an involuntary yearning for wholeness, for understanding, for meaning, for the opportunity to regain or even simply touch what we’ve lost. Longing is a vital and important part of grief, yet many of us feel we need to keep our longings to ourselves for fear we will be misunderstood, perceived as engaging in magical or unrealistic thinking, or lacking in fortitude and resilience. Feeling lost—Grief requires us to reorient every part of our physical, emotional, and social worlds. When we imagine the need to do this, most of us picture the painful struggle to adjust to a tangible change, such as someone dying or moving away. But this is a very limited view of grief.

Disenfranchised grief is a less-studied form of grief: grief that “is not openly acknowledged or publicly supported through mourning practices or rituals because the experience is not valued or counted [by others] as a loss.” The grief can also be invisible or hard to see by others. Examples of disenfranchised grief include loss of a partner or parent due to divorce, loss of an unborn child and/ or infertility, the multitude of losses experienced by a survivor of sexual assault, and loss of a loved one to suicide. As an illustrative example of disenfranchised grief, Tashel Bordere explains that sexual assault survivors suffer from numerous losses, many of which are invisible to others. Some of these losses include loss of one’s prior worldview, loss of trust, loss of self-identity and self-esteem, loss of freedom and independence, loss of a sense of safety and security, and loss of sexual interest.