What Your Negative Emotions Are Trying to Tell You
Dr. Laurie Santos revisits a conversation with Harvard Medical School psychologist Susan David, author of Emotional Agility. They explore why bottling or brooding over negative emotions is ineffective, instead advocating for embracing them as valuable data points to understand our values and needs for greater well-being.
Deep Dive Analysis
16 Topic Outline
Introduction to Emotional Spring Cleaning
The Lighthouse Analogy for Negative Emotions
Susan David's Personal Journey and Work
Common Unhealthy Responses: Bottling Emotions
Common Unhealthy Responses: Brooding on Emotions
Introduction to Emotional Agility
Understanding What Emotions Signal
Societal Display Rules and Unseeing Emotions
The Power of Emotion Granularity
Emotions as Data, Not Directives
Creating Space Between Self and Emotion
Asking "What's the Funk?" to Understand Function
Emotions Signaling Values and Needs
Avoiding "Dead People's Goals"
The Importance of Values Affirmation
Acceptance of Emotions and Flourishing
6 Key Concepts
Bottling Emotions
Pushing aside difficult emotions, often with good intentions like needing to be productive, which paradoxically amplifies them and negatively impacts well-being, resilience, and relationships.
Brooding on Emotions
Getting stuck in a difficult emotion by ruminating, getting victimized by newsfeeds, or constantly replaying why one is unhappy, which keeps individuals stuck and prevents effective forward movement.
Emotional Agility
The ability to engage with one's everyday thoughts, emotions, and experiences in a healthy way, holding them lightly to understand their signals and respond effectively to situations. It involves curiosity, compassion, and courage.
Display Rules
Implicit or explicit societal and family rules that dictate which emotions are acceptable to express, often leading people to suppress or unsee difficult feelings because they are perceived as not allowed or fixable.
Emotion Granularity
The superpower of precisely labeling emotions beyond broad terms like "stressed" to more specific feelings like "disappointment" or "unsupported," which helps in understanding the emotion's cause and identifying appropriate actions.
Dead People's Goals
Goals or desires focused on avoiding discomfort (e.g., "I don't want to be stressed"), which are unrealistic for a meaningful life, as only those who are "dead" never experience stress, loss, or disappointment.
8 Questions Answered
We often try to avoid difficult feelings by distracting ourselves or suppressing them, or we get caught up in rumination and worry, rather than getting curious about what they're trying to tell us.
Bottling emotions, or pushing them aside, leads to an amplification effect, undermining well-being, resilience, relationships, and the ability to achieve goals because we aren't adapting to reality.
Brooding, or getting stuck in negative emotions by replaying them, keeps individuals trapped in the emotional experience, preventing them from moving forward effectively and is associated with lower well-being and goal attainment.
Emotions are signals, like a lighthouse, that indicate important things in our lives, such as job dissatisfaction or relationship issues, helping us navigate challenges and adapt to a changing world if we listen to them effectively.
Loneliness often signals that intimacy and connection are important to an individual and that they may not have enough of it in their current life, prompting a need to seek out more connection.
Boredom at work can signal that an individual values growth and learning, and they may not be experiencing enough of it in their current role, suggesting a need to seek out new challenges or opportunities.
It's difficult because society and families often have "display rules" that implicitly or explicitly convey that certain emotions, like anger or sadness, are not allowed or should be "fixed" with positivity, leading to an internal war with one's own feelings.
One core way to connect with values is by paying attention to difficult emotions, as they often signpost things that truly matter to us, and by taking time to affirm what's important in relationships or careers.
11 Actionable Insights
1. Embrace Emotions as Data
View all emotions, even negative ones, as valuable data points or signals about what is important to you, rather than problems to be fixed or avoided. This helps in adapting to life’s realities and developing effective strategies.
2. Cultivate Emotional Agility
Develop the ability to engage with your everyday thoughts, emotions, and experiences in a healthy way, holding them lightly without ignoring them or letting them control you, to respond effectively to situations.
3. Label Emotions Precisely
Practice emotion granularity by using specific labels for your feelings beyond broad terms like “stressed,” as this helps identify the cause and necessary steps to process the emotion effectively.
4. Ask “What’s the Funk?”
Inquire about the function of your emotions by asking “What’s the funk?” (What’s the FUnctioN?), to understand what needs or values the emotion is signaling, enabling you to adapt and make value-aligned changes.
5. Change “I Am” to “I’m Noticing”
Create healthy space between yourself and your emotions by reframing “I am [emotion]” to “I’m noticing that I’m feeling [emotion],” which allows for wisdom and intentional choice instead of being defined by the feeling.
6. Show Up to Difficult Emotions
End the internal conflict with your emotions by acknowledging them with compassion, recognizing that there’s no right or wrong way to feel, which allows you to move forward effectively.
7. Accept Discomfort for Meaning
Recognize that discomfort, stress, loss, and disappointment are an unavoidable “price of admission” for a meaningful life, and develop the capacity to be with and learn from these uncomfortable emotions.
8. Move Towards Your Values
Actively take steps each day that align with your core values, even if they involve discomfort, because this consistent movement is essential for living a meaningful life and staying true to yourself.
9. Affirm Your Values Regularly
Take time to remind yourself of what is truly important to you in different areas of your life, as this values affirmation can protect against social contagion and help you stay aligned with your core beliefs.
10. Avoid Bottling Emotions
Do not push aside or suppress difficult emotions, as this can lead to an amplification effect, undermining well-being, resilience, relationships, and goal attainment. Acknowledge them instead of ignoring them.
11. Stop Brooding on Emotions
Refrain from getting stuck in negative emotions by replaying them endlessly in your mind or getting hooked on being right, as this keeps you trapped and prevents effective forward movement.
7 Key Quotes
A lot of my work is born not in the halls of Harvard or Yale, but in, like so many of us, in the messy, tender business of life.
Susan David
our emotions are the signal, you know, our emotions are signaling things that are important.
Susan David
Grief is love looking for its home.
Susan David
between stimulus and response. There is a space. And in that space is our power to choose. And in that choice lies our growth and our freedom.
Viktor Frankl
You are not the cloud. You are the sky.
Susan David
Internal pain always comes out. And the people that pay the price are ourselves and our communities, our children.
Susan David
Discomfort is the price of admission to a meaningful life.
Susan David
1 Protocols
Cultivating Emotional Agility
Susan David- Be curious with your emotions: Slow down and ask what the emotion is telling you about your needs or values.
- Be compassionate: Recognize that being human is hard.
- Be courageous: Be willing to face what you see and feel, even if you don't like it.
- Understand your values and needs: Use the insights from your emotions to clarify what truly matters.
- Move forward in the direction of those values: Take actions aligned with what you've learned.