How to Identify Your Negative Emotions
Social worker and author Brené Brown joins Dr. Laurie Santos to discuss the importance of recognizing and precisely naming our emotions. They explore how understanding the nuances of feelings like envy, jealousy, worry, and resentment can help us navigate difficult experiences and foster deeper connections.
Deep Dive Analysis
17 Topic Outline
The Problem with Suppressing Negative Emotions
Brene Brown's Background and Early Emotional Observations
The Limits of Emotional Language and Human Experience
Why We Avoid Recognizing and Naming Difficult Emotions
Defining and Quantifying the Number of Emotions
The Atlas of the Heart: A Map of Emotional Layers
Language Doesn't Just Communicate, It Shapes Emotion
The Four B's Framework for Understanding Emotions
Distinguishing Between Envy and Jealousy
The Involuntary Nature of Social Comparison
Understanding Surprise as a Short-Lived Bridge Emotion
Differentiating Worry (Future) and Rumination (Past)
The Nuance Between Overwhelm and Stress
Anxiety vs. Excitement: Similar Biology, Different Outcomes
Resentment's True Origin: A Function of Envy
Disappointment and the Role of Uncommunicated Expectations
The Power of Emotional Language for Flourishing
7 Key Concepts
Emotional Suppression
The act of pushing away or avoiding negative sensations. Science shows this strategy ultimately makes people feel worse in the long run, exacerbating difficult emotions rather than diminishing them.
Language Shapes Emotion
The idea that the words we use to describe our feelings not only communicate them but also actively influence and shape the emotional experience itself. Having more precise language allows for deeper understanding and healing.
Emotional Granularity
The ability to recognize and articulate specific, nuanced emotions rather than broadly categorizing them into a few general terms like 'happy, sad, pissed off.' This precision is crucial for understanding and navigating one's emotional landscape.
The Four B's
A framework for understanding emotions, comprising Biology (where in the body emotion is felt), Biography (personal history and learned beliefs about feelings), Behavior (how one acts when feeling an emotion), and Backstory (the underlying reasons or context for the emotion).
Benign vs. Malicious Envy
Benign envy is wanting something someone else has while being glad they have it. Malicious envy is wanting something someone else has and wishing them ill for possessing it, often accompanied by a desire to see them lose it.
Surprise as a Bridge Emotion
Surprise is a uniquely short-lived emotion, lasting only about one second. It acts as a bridge, immediately leading to other emotions and cognitions, which are often exacerbated or heightened by the initial surprise.
Worry vs. Rumination
Worry is a thought pattern that points towards the future, often involving anxiety about potential negative outcomes. Rumination is a thought pattern that points towards the past, dwelling on past events or actions without making progress in dealing with them.
10 Questions Answered
People often struggle because it's human nature to avoid painful reflection, and there's a misconception that acknowledging negative emotions gives them more power, when in reality, naming them gives us power.
When we lack the language to describe nuanced emotions, we are forced to shove complex experiences into limited categories, crippling our ability to own and communicate our true feelings and hindering healing and learning.
Brene Brown's research, based on a content analysis of 70,000 people, explored 87 emotions and experiences that were deemed helpful for people to name to move through them, though she states there's no definitive number.
Brene Brown believes we cannot truly read emotion in others. Instead, the approach should be to get curious, connect deeply, question, challenge, and listen to understand what others are feeling.
Envy is wanting something someone else has, while jealousy is the fear of losing something you already possess to someone else.
Distinguishing them is crucial because worry points to the future (often related to anxiety) and rumination points to the past (dwelling on past events), requiring different paths and strategies to deal with them effectively.
Understanding the difference allows individuals to reserve the term 'overwhelmed' for situations where life is truly unfolding faster than their nervous system can manage, preventing the 'shut down protocol' that can occur when the term is overused for mere stress.
While the physiological responses to anxiety and excitement can be very similar, research shows that when people label what they're feeling as excitement, the outcomes tend to be more positive than when they label it as anxiety, suggesting a potential for better preparation and navigation.
Resentment is often a function of envy, not anger. It arises when one is deep into burnout and feels others aren't working as hard, but the underlying emotion is envy because others are taking care of themselves or setting boundaries.
Disappointment is a reaction to a violation of an expectation. Recognizing this can help individuals address 'stealth expectations' (uncommunicated expectations) in relationships, leading to better communication and fewer instances of blame and anger.
20 Actionable Insights
1. Embrace Difficult Emotions
Stop running away from difficult emotions; instead, allow, embrace, and learn from them, as suppressing and avoiding them only makes you feel worse in the long run.
2. Name Emotions for Power
Actively look difficult emotions in the eye and name them, because this act gives you power over the emotion itself, rather than it having power over you.
3. Use Precise Emotional Language
Employ specific language to describe your feelings, as this precision helps uncover underlying issues like betrayed expectations, which is essential for healing and learning.
4. Analyze Emotions with Four B’s
When experiencing an emotion, use the framework of Biology, Biography, Behavior, and Backstory to understand its layers and gain deeper insight into what you are feeling and why.
5. Map Emotions for Better Navigation
Commit to recognizing and describing your feelings more precisely, especially difficult ones, to better navigate your emotional landscape and find your way back to yourself and others.
6. Understand Others Through Curiosity
When trying to understand what others are feeling, get curious, connect deeply, question, challenge, and listen, rather than attempting to ‘read’ their emotions.
7. Distinguish Worry from Rumination
Differentiate between worry, which is future-oriented anxiety, and rumination, which involves getting stuck on past events, to apply appropriate and distinct coping strategies.
8. Reframe Resentment as Envy
If you feel resentful, especially when burnt out, consider if it’s actually envy for others’ self-care or boundaries, shifting the focus from blaming others to addressing your own unmet needs.
9. Manage Disappointment by Clarifying Expectations
Recognize that disappointment stems from violated expectations, particularly uncommunicated ‘stealth expectations,’ and address them by updating or openly communicating them to prevent conflict.
10. Reframe Anxiety as Excitement
When experiencing similar physiological responses that could be anxiety or excitement, try to reframe the feeling as excitement, potentially by adjusting your ‘backstory’ or perspective to a ‘cool challenge’.
11. Acknowledge Comparison, Then Release
Accept that comparison is an involuntary human tendency, but consciously choose to let go of it and focus on your own experience, rather than letting it dictate your feelings.
12. Manage Surprise’s Amplifying Effect
Understand that surprise is a short-lived emotion that heightens subsequent emotions; if you dislike heightened emotions, you can mitigate surprises (e.g., by knowing plot details of a movie).
13. Discuss Shame to Reduce It
Actively talk about difficult emotions like shame, as avoiding discussion can paradoxically lead to experiencing it more intensely and frequently.
14. Challenge Worrying Myths
Dispense with the beliefs that worrying is helpful or unchangeable, and avoid worrying about worrying itself, as these myths hinder effective management of anxiety.
15. Use ‘Overwhelmed’ Precisely
Reserve the term ‘overwhelmed’ for situations where life’s pace truly exceeds your nervous system’s capacity, rather than using it for general stress, to avoid triggering a ‘shut down protocol’.
16. Distinguish Envy and Jealousy
Learn the precise definitions of envy (wanting something someone else has) and jealousy (fear of losing something you have to someone else) to accurately identify and address these distinct feelings.
17. Address Envy by Asking Needs
When you identify feelings of envy, turn inward and ask yourself what you need that you are afraid to ask for, to uncover and address your unmet needs directly.
18. Reality-Check Expectations with Others
Proactively discuss and align expectations with others, especially for shared experiences like vacations, to prevent disappointment and potential conflict.
19. Notice Body Sensations, Reframe
Pay specific attention to the physical sensations associated with emotions and explore if there’s ‘wiggle room’ in how you describe them, potentially reframing negative experiences.
20. Practice Gratitude for Emotional Landscape
When feeling lost or overwhelmed by emotions, pause to be grateful that you get to experience such a spectacular emotional landscape in the first place, and marvel at its complexity.
6 Key Quotes
The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.
Ludwig Wittgenstein (quoted by Brene Brown)
If we look it in the eye and name it, it gives us power.
Brene Brown
I don't think we can read emotion in people. What I think we can do is get curious, connect with them deeply, as opposed to diminish, question, challenge and listen.
Brene Brown
To compare is human. To let go of it is divine.
Brene Brown
Overwhelmed where life is unfolding at a pace faster than my nervous system or psyche can manage.
Jon Kabat-Zinn (quoted by Brene Brown)
Resentment is actually a function of envy.
Mark Brackett (quoted by Brene Brown)