Permission To Feel, by Marc Brackett, is a book 📖 I recently read. This post will be my notes for it.
⚠️ Spoilers! and lots of feelings attached in this post! You’ve been warned.
“How are you feeling?”
A simple yet hard question to answer. Then listen to it; with empathy, not trying to interpret nor explain.
Reflecting back, that question impacted my life in a few occasions. First, a vivid memory from grade school when I went home with 100% score on a math test. My mom’s response was “how does that make you feel?”. Memorably, that felt empowering. In a second occasion, I remembered being asked that question by my mentor first week in an internship couple years ago. I think it did threw me off at that moment (in a good way), and I responded with the most sophisticated answer, ‘pretty good’ 😓. It was automatic.
Do I even know how I feel? Have I given myself permission to ask?
Despite not being able to identify emotions well, I think everyone would agree that possessing emotional attributes like confidence, kindness, sense of purpose, ability to build healthy relationships are all desirable as we grow into adulthood.
In reality, most people (me included) often steer around those conversations. It’s an unchartered territory for many of us. It’s almost easy to tell people/yourself to ‘suck it up’ rather than attending to those emotions.
Personally, I feel like I grew up in a house that doesn’t express emotions well. When one is upset, tired, angry, etc, everything is often implicit. It was not because it wasn’t allowed.. but perhaps a lack of vocabularly, or vulnerability? Despite the absence of expression, there was also lots of (implicit) love and I’ve always felt secure. After reading this book though, I know that these things take lots of intentional practice to get good. At the very least, it’s good to have them at the back of my mind and not to shy away from these conversations.
Emotion/feelings
Feelings are signals from the brain to formulate experiences. To stop feeling is like trying to stop breathing. It carries information to help make informed decisions. Motivation, meaning, purpose, priority, passion, attention, social relationships, collaboration, creativity and memory - they’re all powered by emotions, not cognition. Emotions are required to enhance rational thoughts, it isn’t one or the other.
In the same way that emotions can distract us, they too can narrow our vision and clear distractions to what matters most.
Emotion is a tool and source of information
The goal of EI isn’t to let emotion get in the way. In contrast, it prevents excessive and subconscious influence of emotions on our actions. It helps us identify causes so we could start exploring ways to regulate rather than surrendering to it.
RULER framework: the 5 steps to identify and manage emotions
1. Recognizing 🧘♂️
How are you feeling? Don’t answer yet.. First let’s sense it viscerally.
Am I feeling up/down? Pleasant/unpleasant? Approach/avoid? Energized/depleted? notice minor physical cues. Also recognize them in others: facial expressions, body language, vocal tones, etc.
The Mood meter is a Pleasantness vs Energy plot
- Yellow zone: posture erect, eyes sparkling, energized (e.g: finding myself in the zone, go climbing)
- Red zone: tense body, heart beats fast, furrowed/raised eyebrows. Fight or flee response (e.g: presentation, meeting stranger, debugging)
- Green zone: body at ease, slow breathing, gentle smile, feel secure
- Blue zone: down gaze, frown, slump posture, feeling like disappearing
There’s a test to identify emotion in facial expressions (could be a nice game). I have a feeling I’ll score badly on this one 🙈 We often misread how we think others feel. Often, I don’t even know whether my displayed expression is appropriate. We evolve with these skills, but still need to learn them. It vary slightly with cultures, personalities, context, gender/racial bias, etc.
2. Understanding 🪲
Asking “Why?” opens the pandora box, not knowing what to expect.
As a listener, an emotional scientist means learning emotions by a process of discovery and investigation. We’re not just there for sympathy; but dive underneath words. Look for opportunities to ask questions like following to gently invesigate our suspicion: - “I’ve noticed you… What’s going on?”, - “What’s happening at school that make you get these feelings?”, - “What/who usually make you feel this way?”, - “what can I do to support you?” - “What do you think they/this character feel and why?”
You can’t help yourself/others without first understanding the cause (like debugging!)
Don’t judge the emotion, there isn’t good/bad, it’s not on you to decide what they should feel. Which is hard as a parent, not to deny/defend/blame.
Behavior isn’t the end goal: Emotion causes behavior, thus think of those as cues to identify the source and offer help. If we only focus on restoring the right behavior, we’re forcefully treating the symptoms. Rather than disciplining misbehaviors, strategize a solution for the underlying issue. (e.g. A tantrum may be caused by anxiety, anger, fear, shame, self-disappointment, etc)
3. Labeling 🏷
Hundreds of words to describe feelings, yet we (I) chose to use ‘fine’.
Being emotionally literate matters because it gives yourself authorship, power to acknowledge, express, and exchange with others our experiences and understanding of the world.
Identifying the various shades of emotion also modulate our responses (like how precise servo motors allow more control). We can identify minor feelings and regulate them before they escalate (from irritated to panicked/enraged, or from apathetic to hopelessness).
It’s important to correctly distinguish and label emotions, to pinpoint its cause and get it addressed appropriately. I.e. stress vs pressure, shame vs guilt vs embarrassment, joy vs content. These seems related at the surface but caused by very different reasons
Mood meter (or thesaurus) could help teach you vocabs. But the real challenge comes when you have to affix those vocab to the feeling inside. Takes practice.
4. Expressing 🕺
Can I reveal and share this? (not trivial, takes bravery and risk involved)
Expressing is a co-skill. You can’t do it alone. Hope that the receiving end reacts well. It can help understand each other, but it could also provoke something they’re not prepared to deal with.
Bottled-up emotion lead to self-doubt, low self-worth, loneliness, eating-disorder, or even physical pain. Find outlets to express, whether it’s face-to-face or writing journals.
As a listener, welcome every emotion - good/bad/happy/sad/success/failures. Listen, don’t just hear: body language, eye contact, subtle vocal inflections, silences, … don’t send signals of indifference, but there for them.
Some more deep / interesting discussions: - Assault victims find it unbearable to share due to shame/guilt, fear of distrust or retaliation. - Teachers feel like appearing weak will risk reducing their authority - Classrooms aren’t meant to be ruled. Expression -> relationship -> engagement. Create safe space where they can be emotionally honest. - ‘Anger privilege’. Power differential, race, minority, gender often decides who may express emotions freely. Those lacking privelege must pay a price when expressing emotions like anger, frustration, and irritation. Like it or not, this power dynamic carries over from parent-children, teacher-student, boss-subordinate. - ‘Emotional labor’ is the effort to manage/hide emotion. Often there are certian emotions you’re allowed to display (in work, home).
End of day, let’s give ourselves and each other the permission to feel.
5. Regulating
What’re you going to do about it?
What’re your strategies, and be honest (ie. go on social media when you’re bored). Strategies are limitless, and it depends on situation, emotion, person.
It’s not about banishing negative emotions nor tightly controlling it. You start with permitting yourself to feel all of it, before regulating. Sometimes it’s not to force shift their emotion elsewhere, but to be comfortable with wherever they are.
Analogy: backpressuring the stream/flow of emotion
We affect each other’s emotions. Examples of co-regulation: - Caregiver gives physical/verbal comfort to reassure infant that its emotional distress is manageable. Without it, the infant might be at the mercy of their emotions. - Upbeat music promotes energy, gentle music promotes consensus and rational thought. - Deliver closing speech that activates not only enthusiasm but bit of anger and emergency. - Give someone a hug, or accompany someone through their misery
Some category of strategies
- breathing: helps being present, less reactive/overwhelmed, decrease heart rate. Nose breathing are slow and deeper than mouth. Chant something like ‘in’/‘out’ or ‘calm/ease’
- forward-looking: anticipate, avoid, and modify environment. I.e. don’t go near fast food
- attention-shifting: divert attention away from source. ie. Doing things you enjoy like climbing, daydream, food, etc, helps to avoid mental anxiety. Procrastination is effective but cheap - leaving the painful part till later like what politicans do. Self-talk yourself compassionately and non-criticizingly in 3rd person to allow some distance with the experience (i.e. ‘Steven, you know this feeling is impermanent, go to bed’, ‘Steven, you now have opportunity to share something impactful and help… you should feel psyched!’).
- cognitive-reframing: find a new way of seeing the trigger. Transform the perception of reality. I.e. reappraising and assume best intention, maybe it isn’t anxiety but excitement. But not the long-term solution since it’ll re-emmerge again.
- meta-moment: When triggered/caught off guard, pause, take a moment to step out of the moment, prevent yourself from acting out, remind us to act as our best self would.
Regulation requires lots of brainpower 🧠. Ties back to factors like diet, exercise, social support, sleep! Inadequate sleep is associated with reduced brain connection for cognitive control.
You will fail! give permission to do so. Try again. Have courage to apologize, forgive ourselves and others, seek professional help when needed.
Some examples of emotions:
It’s healthy to feel both positive and negative at a good amount (Aristotle’s virtue ethics!). - pessimism: anticipate unwanted events - guilt: internal moral compass - Shame: our perception of external judgment - embarassment: caught violating norms - jealous: fear of losing something you have - envy: wanting something others have - joy: getting what you want - contentment: feeling complete and not wanting anything - stress: too many demands and not resources - pressure: when something seems to be at stake (i.e. expectations) - anxiety: not in control / uncertain (keep us away from things we have no control over) - fear: incoming danger - anger: response to unfairness/injustice (a motivator) - disappointed: unmet expectations - sadness: helps work through difficult problem (crying carries stress hormones out of body) - excitement: simulate ideas
Few real life topics
Parenting / Teaching - Kids follow us closely. Focus on practicing strategies in your own emotional lives first. - Understanding Emotion is part of development - Co-regulate the child. Be a problem solving partner. Examples: - “You sound upset. Are you angry because of… Let’s play this together instead” (attention-shifting) - “Perhaps he thought it was his own toy, he has a similar one” (reappraisal) - “Why don’t you let him play with your toy? I’ll make sure he returns it after 2 min” - Over time, your reactions to children alters their brain structure. - For reflection: What feelings were/weren’t expressed by your parents? Were they emotion scientist, asking you what you felt and why, or were they judges blaming, finding fault for how you felt? How did that affect you in your adult life? - Idea: create a charter at home to build sense of agency for their emotions and others. - How do we want to feel as a family? (ie. loving, respectful, included, calm, playful…) - What can we do to experience these feelings often? - What can we do when we broke the charter, how to settle disputes? - Remind children to respect their parents’ emotions too, and sets a reminder for tough times. Put them on the fridge. Update when needed - Don’t attribute emotions. Allow them to express their own feelings, help them label. - When your kid is bullied: ask questions, strategize future responses. Set groundwork for the journey, rather than quick interventions. - Divergent thinking considers many solutions, whereas convergent thinking looks for the one solution. Divergent thinking results in more joy, pride, satisfaction. - School should give students new things to love (field of study, friends). What teachers teach is themselves and their contagious passion, more than just the material. We learn if we care. And memorizing isn’t the same as learning. - Guide them to be their own emotional scientist - ask them what they do if they feel certain ways. (everyone will have to discover their own strategies). How would they want to feel in the classroom? Shift from following rules -> to being active in creating safe space for their own environment -> Engagement - Conflict resolution idea: prompt them to say how the other might’ve felt, possible cause, and how they express/regulate their emotions. - When kids are in a hamster wheel of achievement, emotional skills are at the bottom of the list. They don’t realize that it’s all linked.
Work - We’re in for the long haul, from our youth to retirement. - Be in environment whne expression of emotion is acceptible (at Shopify, as long as you’re not being an asshole). Avoid corporate bullies whose only definition of success is making money, as it’ll be lonely. Your employees will operate at higher level if you pay more attention and compassion. - Emotional contagion: How do I make others feel? - Idea to ask an interviewer: “Honestly, how does it make you feel to work here?”. Does it allow for your authentic best selves to shine.
Relationships - How do I feel when I encounter this person? Do I look forward, emotionally neutral, or feel tense inside? Recognize how different you treat people based on how they make you feel - Basic dynamic is: approach/avoid. Positive emotions draws people in, while those with negative discourage social interaction - which is sad because those are people who often needs opportunity to build social skill. (i.e. a baby needing emotional support acts out, thus will receive less of it. Why..)
Closing Remakrs
Emotion skills is one that we practice together. We each play a role to create a more inclusive, compassionate, innovative, and better quality of life.
Now that I close the book, where should I start? WFH really doesn’t help practice those nonverbal cues, so I’ll definitely start going out more and seek interactions, seek different emotions, and learn to develop these skills. Better sleep too, because my brain just doesn’t regulate well without enough of it.
One extra TODO for me is to learn different emotional vocabs in Indonesian language. I don’t think I’m emotionally literate in my language at all. I was trying to find an indo version of a mood meter but couldn’t find any.
Recently, a close friend of mind started going to therapy and I heard good things. Those do get covered by my health insurance so kinda tempted to go for it maybe next year because I’m just mega curious what it’s like and learn about myself a bit more.