Places we go when…
Things are uncertain or too much
We compare
Things don’t go as planned
It’s beyond us
We’re hurting
With others
We fall short
We search for connection
The heart is open
Life is good
We fell wronged
To self-assess
Things aren’t what they seem
#1 Places We Go When Things Are Uncertain Or Too Much
Stress
Overwhelm
Anxiety
Worry
Avoidance
We feel stressed when we evaluate environmental demand as beyond our ability to cope successfully.
This includes elements of unpredictability, uncontrollability, and feeling overloaded.
Emotional reaction is more tied to our cognitive assessment of whether we can cope with the situation than to how our body is reacting.
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.”
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.
Avoidance will make you feel less vulnerable in the short run, but it will never make you less afraid.
Worrying and anxiety go together, but worry is not an emotion; it’s the thinking part of anxiety.
Worry is described as a chain of negative thoughts about bad things that might happen in the future.
That’s what anxiety feels like to me. Escalating loss of control, worst-case-scenario thinking and imagery, and total uncertainty.
An intolerance for uncertainty is an important contributing factor to all types of anxiety. Those of us who are generally uncomfortable with uncertainty are more likely to experience anxiety in specific situations as well as to have trait anxiety and anxiety disorders.
Excitement
Dread
Fear
Vulnerability
Excitement is described as an energized state of enthusiasm leading up to or during an enjoyable activity.
But it doesn’t always feel great.
Dread is the feeling of extreme reluctance to meet or face some issue.
Dread occurs frequently in response to high-probability negative events; its magnitude increases as the dreaded event draws nearer.
Vulnerability means being open to attack, harm, or damage.
Vulnerability is the emotion that we experience during times of uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure.
There is no courage without vulnerability. Courage requires the willingness to lean into uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure.
In a world where perfectionism, pleasing, and proving are used as armor to protect our egos and our feelings, it takes a lot of courage to show up and be all in when we can’t control the outcome.
Fear is a negative, short-lasting, high-alert emotion in response to a perceived threat, and, like anxiety, it can be measured as a state or trait.
The typical responses are fight, flight, or freeze.
#2 Places We Go When We Compare
Comparison
Admiration
Reverence
Envy
Jealousy
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. It is the crush of conformity from one side and competition from the other—it’s trying to simultaneously fit in and stand out. “Be like everyone else, but better.” �
It’s not be yourself and respect others for being authentic, it’s “Fit in, but win.”
Comparing ourselves to others leads us to fear, anger, shame, and sadness.
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.
Interestingly, admiration often leads to us wanting to improve ourselves. It doesn’t, however, make us want to be like the person or thing we admire—we just want to be better versions of ourselves.
Jealousy is when we fear losing a relationship or a valued part of a relationship that we already have.
Jealousy doesn’t seem to be a singular emotion but rather a cognitive evaluation in response to feeling anger, sadness, and/or fear. In other words, we think jealousy in response to how we feel.
Envy occurs when we want something that another person has.
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.
What’s interesting is that while admiration fosters self-betterment, reverence seems to foster a desire for connection to what we revere—we want to move closer to that thing or person.
Resentment
Schadenfreude
Freudenfreude
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.
When others report success to us, they generally hope for an empathic response of shared joy.
Ongoing lack of Freudenfreude eventually can pose a fatal challenge to a relationship.
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.
#3 Places We Go When Things Do Not Go As Planned
Boredom
Expectations
Disappointment
Regret
Discouragement
Boredom is the uncomfortable state of wanting to engage in satisfying activity, but being unable to do it.
If I assign myself something to do and it’s really boring, I normally end up mindlessly scrolling on social media.
The unconscious, unexamined, and unexpressed expectations are the most dangerous and often turn into disappointment.
Sometimes our expectations are realistic, clearly communicated, and self-aware.
Are you setting goals and expectations that are completely outside of your control? It’s dangerous to put your self-worth in other people’s hands.
Discouraged: I’m losing my confidence and enthusiasm about any future effort—I’m losing the motivation and confidence to persist.
Regretful: It didn’t work out how I wanted, and the outcome was caused by my decisions, actions, or failure to act.
What we regret most are our failures of courage, whether it’s the courage to be kinder, to show up, to say how we feel, to set boundaries, to be good to ourselves, to say yes to something scary.
The idea of “no regrets” doesn’t mean living with courage, it means living without reflection.
Disappointed: It didn’t work out how I wanted, and I believe the outcome was outside of my control.
Disappointment is unmet expectations. The more significant the expectations, the more significant the disappointment.
When disappointment happens, it’s an incredible opportunity for meaningful connection.
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Resignation
Frustration
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.
#4 Places We Go When It’s Beyond Us
Awe and Wonder
Confusion
Curiosity
Interest
Surprise
Both awe and wonder are often experienced in response to nature, art, music, spiritual experiences, or ideas.
We can feel overwhelmed by the vastness of something that is almost incomprehensible, it almost feels like what we’re witnessing can’t be true.
Wonder inspires the wish to understand; awe inspires the wish to let shine, to acknowledge and to unite.
When feeling awe, we tend to simply stand back and observe, “to provide the stage for the phenomenon to shine.:
“I need time for my confusion. Confusion can be a cue that there's new territory to be explained or fresh puzzle to be solved”
When we’re trying to work through our confusion, we need to stop and think, engage in careful deliberation, develop a solution, and revise how we approach the next problem.
To be effective, learning needs to be effortful.
Too much confusion can lead to frustration, giving up, disengagement, or even boredom.
Surprise as an interruption caused by information that doesn’t fit with our current understanding or expectations.
Surprise is the shortest-duration emotion, rarely lasting more than a few seconds.
In addition to being a short bridge, surprise is also an amplifier.
Interest is a cognitive openness to engaging with a topic or experience.
Interest is more of a state (“interested” is not who we are but how we are at a specific time).
Curiosity seems to be both a trait and a state. You can be a curious person and, regardless of having this trait or not, you can feel curious about something in the moment.
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.
#5 Places We Go When Things Aren’t What They Seem
Amusement
Bittersweetness
Nostalgia
Cognitive Dissonance
Paradox
The definition of amusement that aligns with our research is “pleasurable, relaxed excitation.”
Bittersweet is a mixed feeling of happiness and sadness.
What all of the comments have in common is sadness about letting go of something, mixed with happiness and/or gratitude about what’s been experienced and/or what’s next.
A paradox is the appearance of contradiction between two related components.
We’re drawn to authentic, imperfect people, but we’re scared to let people see who we really are.
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, such as “Smoking is a dumb thing to do because it could kill me” and “I smoke two packs a day.”
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.
We define nostalgia as a yearning for the way things used to be in our often idealized and self-protective version of the past.
Irony
Sarcasm
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.
Sarcasm is a particular type of irony in which the underlying message is normally meant to ridicule, tease, or criticize.
#6 Places We Go When We’re Hurting
Anguish
Hopelessness
Despair
Sadness
Grief
Anguish is an almost unbearable and traumatic swirl of shock, incredulity, grief, and powerlessness.
Anguish often causes us to physically crumple in on ourselves,
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.
Hope is a way of thinking—a cognitive process. Hope is learned.
We experience hope when: (1) we have the ability to set realistic goals (I know where I want to go); (2) 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 am persistent…); (3) we have agency—we believe in ourselves (I can do this!).
A central process in grieving is the attempt to reaffirm or reconstruct a world of meaning that has been challenged by loss.
Feeling sad is a normal response to loss of defeat or even the perception of loss or defeat..
Sadness is important and we need it.
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.
#7 Places We Go With Others
Compassion
Pity
Empathy
Sympathy
Setting Boundaries
Compassion is the daily practice of recognizing and accepting our shared humanity so that we treat ourselves and others with loving-kindness, and we take action in the face of suffering.
Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It’s a relationship between equals.
Pity is the near enemy of compassion.
There’s nothing worse than feeling pitied, and we have the research to show us why it feels so isolating.
Pity involves four elements: a belief that the suffering person is inferior; a passive, self-focused reaction that does not include providing help; a desire to maintain emotional distance; and avoidance of sharing in the other person’s suffering.
Boundaries are a prerequisite for compassion and empathy. We can’t connect with someone unless we’re clear about where we end and they begin.
Clear is kind. Unclear is unkind.
If there’s no autonomy between people, then there’s no compassion or empathy, just enmeshment.
When I’m prioritizing being liked over being free, I was much sweeter but less authentic.
“It’s okay to be pissed. It’s not okay to raise your voice and pound on the table.”
We can definitely consider sympathy the near enemy of empathy.
Rather than being a tool for connection, sympathy emerged in the data as a form of disconnection.
Researchers found that cancer patients on the receiving end of sympathy describe it as an unwanted, superficial, pity-based response that, although well intended, is focused on the observer’s discomfort rather than on alleviating the patient’s distress.
Empathy, the most powerful tool of compassion, is an emotional skill set that allows us to understand what someone is experiencing and to reflect back that understanding.
meaningful connection requires a combination of compassion and cognitive empathy or perspective taking.
The empathy I’m talking about is understanding what someone is feeling, not feeling it for them.
Compassion is a daily practice and empathy is a skill set that is one of the most powerful tools of compassion.
Comparative Suffering
Fear & scarcity trigger comparison, even pain and hurt are not immune to being assessed and ranked.
“My husband died, and that grief is worse than your grief over missing your daughter’s wedding.”
The family in India doesn’t benefit more if you conserve your concern only for them and withhold it from your child who is also suffering.
Sharing how we feel, even complaining, is OK as long as we piss and moan with a little perspective. Hurt is hurt, every time we honor our own struggle and the struggles of others with empathy and compassion, the healing that results affects all of us.
#8 Places We Go When We Fall Short
Shame
Self-Compassion
Perfectionism
Guilt
Humiliation
Shame— I am bad. The focus is on self, not behavior.
Shame is the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love, belonging, and connection. I’m unlovable. I don’t belong.
Shame is a social emotion. The antidote to shame is empathy. If we reach out and share our shame experience with someone who responds with empathy, shame dissipates.
Narcissism as the shame-based fear of being ordinary.
Self-compassion entails being warm and understanding toward ourselves when we suffer, fail, or feel inadequate, rather than ignoring our pain or flagellating ourselves with self-criticism.
Self-compassionate people recognize that being imperfect, failing, and experiencing life difficulties are inevitable, so they tend to be gentle with themselves when confronted with painful experiences rather than getting angry when life fails short of set ideals.
Humiliation— I’ve been belittled and put down by someone. This left me feeling unworthy of connection and disgusted with myself. This was unfair and I didn’t deserve this.
With shame, we believe that we deserve our sense of unworthiness. With humiliation, we don’t feel we deserve it.
Humiliation as the intensely painful feeling that we’ve been unjustly degraded, ridiculed, or put down and that our identity has been demeaned or devalued.
“Never allow anyone to be humiliated in your presence.”
Guilt— I did something bad.
The focus is on behavior. Guilt is the discomfort we feel when we evaluate what we’ve done or failed to do against our values.
It can drive positive change and behavior.
Like shame, guilt is an emotion that we experience when we fall short of our own expectations or standards. However, with guilt, our focus is on having done something wrong and on doing something to set things right, like apologizing or changing a behavior.
Perfectionism is a self-destructive and addictive belief system that fuels this primary thought: If I look perfect, live perfectly, work perfectly, and do everything perfectly, I can avoid or minimize the painful feelings of shame, judgment, and blame.
Perfectionism is a function of shame. Perfectionism is not striving to be our best or working toward excellence. Healthy striving is internally driven. Perfectionism is externally driven by a simple but potentially all-consuming question: What will people think?
Embarrassment
Embarrassment— I did something that made me uncomfortable, but I know I’m not alone. Everyone does these kinds of things. Embarrassment is fleeting, sometimes funny.
Embarrassment is a fleeting feeling of self-conscious discomfort in response to a minor incident that was witnessed by others.
#9 Places We Go When We Search for Connection
Belonging
Fitting In
Connection
Disconnection
Insecurity
We have to belong to ourselves as much as we need to belong to others.
Any belonging that asks us to betray ourselves is not true belonging.
True belonging doesn’t require us to change who we are; it requires us to be who we are.
Our sense of belonging can never be greater than our level of self-acceptance.
Fitting in is being accepted for being like everyone else.
If I get to be me, I belong. If I have to be like you, I fit in.
There are three types of insecurity: (1) domain specific insecurity occurs when we are insecure about a specific domain or resource of life, for example, food insecurity, financial insecurity, or a lack of physical security; (2) relationship or interpersonal insecurity occurs when we don’t feel we have a supportive and trusting relationship; (3) general or personal insecurity occurs when we are overly critical of our weaknesses.
Self-security is “the open and nonjudgmental acceptance of one’s own weaknesses.” People who are more secure are more willing to be vulnerable with others.
Disconnection is often equated with social rejection, social exclusion, and/or social isolation, and these feelings of disconnection actually share the same neural pathways with feelings of physical pain.
I define connection as the energy that exists between people when they feel seen, heard, and valued; when they can give and receive without judgment; and when they derive sustenance and strength from the relationship.
Invisibility
Loneliness
Invisibility as a function of disconnection and dehumanization, where an individual or group’s humanity and relevance are unacknowledged, ignored, and/or diminished in value or importance.
There are two types of dehumanization—stereotyping and invisibility.
At the heart of loneliness is the absence of meaningful social interaction—an intimate relationship, friendships, family gatherings, or even community or work group connections.
“To grow into an adulthood for a social species, including humans, is not to become autonomous and solitary, it’s to become the one on whom others can depend. Whether we know it or not, our brain and biology have been shaped to favor this outcome.”
It’s not the quantity of friends but the quality of a few relationships that actually matters.
#10 Places We Go When the Heart Is Open
Love
Lovelessness
Heartbreak
Trust
Self-Trust
Love the umbrella term love as including “the preoccupying and strong desire for further connection, the powerful bonds people hold with a select few and the intimacy that grows between them, the commitments to loyalty and faithfulness.”
Love is not something we give or get; it is something that we nurture and grow, a connection that can be cultivated between two people only when it exists within each one of them—we can love others only as much as we love ourselves.
Injustice and systematic oppression that we see in the world today stem from a deep, collective lovesness and calls for an ethic of love.
Fear of radical changes leads many citizens to betray their minds and hearts.
Self-trust is normally the first casualty of failure or mistakes. We stop trusting ourselves when we hurt others, get hurt, feel shame, or question our worth.
B: Did I respect my boundaries?
R: Was I reliable?
A: Did I hold self accountable?
V: Did I respect the vault?
I: Did I act from my integrity?
N: Did I ask for what I need?
G: Was I generous to myself?
Trust as “choosing to risk making something you value vulnerable to another person’s actions.”
Distrust as a general assessment that “what is important to me is not safe with this person in this situation (or any situation).”
BRAVING: Boundaries (clear is kind), Reliability, Accountability (own mistakes), Vault (not sharing whats is not yours to share), Integrity, Nonjudgment, Generosity (most generous interpretation).
Heartbreak is what happens when love is lost.
Heartbreak is an altogether different thing. Disappointment doesn't grow into heartbreak, nor does failure...It comes from the loss of love or the perceived loss of love. My heart can be broken only by someone to whom I have given my heart.
Betrayal
Defensiveness
Flooding
Hurt
For there to be betrayal, there would have to have been trust first.
Betrayal is so painful because, at its core, it is a violation of trust.
It happens in relationships in which trust is expected and assumed, so when it’s violated, we’re often shocked, and we can struggle to believe what’s happening. It can feel as if the ground beneath us has given way.
Defensive behaviors have the purpose of distracting you from your feelings of being hurt and feeling shamed. The objective (whether you realize it or not) is to shift attention to the faults of the other person, so that in turn you feel better about yourself in the moment.
At its core, defensiveness is a way to protect our ego and a fragile self-esteem.
“My feelings are hurt.” It’s simple, vulnerable, and honest. But we don’t say it very often.
When we respond to hurt feelings with anger, the other person tends to match our anger with more anger.
Flooding is “a sensation of feeling psychologically and physically overwhelmed during conflict, making it virtually impossible to have a productive, problem-solving discussion.”
Calling a time-out: “Okay, can we circle back in twenty minutes?”
#11 Places We Go When Life Is Good
Joy
Happiness
Calm
Contentment
Gratitude
Joy is sudden, unexpected, short-lasting, and high-intensity.
It’s characterized by a connection with others, or with God, nature, or the universe.
Joy expands our thinking and attention, and it fills us with a sense of freedom and abandon.
Happiness is stable, longer-lasting, and normally the result of effort.
It’s lower in intensity than joy, and more self-focused. With happiness, we feel a sense of being in control. Unlike joy, which is more internal, happiness seems more external and circumstantial.
Gratitude is an emotion that reflects our deep appreciation for what we value, what brings meaning to our lives, and what makes us feel connected to ourselves and others.
Research on emotion shows that positive emotions wear off quickly. Our emotional systems like newness. They like novelty. They like change. … �
In effect, I think gratitude allows us to participate more in life. We notice the positives more, and that magnifies the pleasures you get from life. Instead of adapting to goodness, we celebrate goodness.
I define contentment as the feeling of completeness, appreciation, and “enoughness” that we experience when our needs are satisfied.
When you are discontent, you always want more, more, more.
Calm as creating perspective and mindfulness while managing emotional reactivity.
People who can bring perspective to complicated situations and experience their feelings without reacting to heightened emotions.
Calm is an intention. Do we want to infect people with more anxiety, or heal ourselves and the people around us with calm?
“Do I have enough information to freak out? The answer is normally no. Will freaking out help? The answer is always no.”
Foreboding Joy
Relief
Tranquility
If you’re afraid to lean into good news, wonderful moments, and joy—if you find yourself waiting for the other shoe to drop—you are not alone. It’s called “foreboding joy,” and most of us experience it.
Emotion is more frightening than joy, because we believe if we allow ourselves to feel joy, we are inviting disaster.
When we push away joy, we squander the goodness that we need to build resilience, strength, and courage.
Relief as “feelings of tension leaving the body and being able to breathe more easily, thoughts of the worst being over and being safe for the moment, resting, and wanting to get on to something else.”
Tranquility is associated with the absence of demand and “no pressure to do anything.”
#12 Places We Go When We Feel Wronged
Anger
Contempt
Disgust
Dehumanization
Hate
Anger is an emotion that we feel when something gets in the way of a desired outcome or when we believe there’s a violation of the way things should be.
When we feel anger, we believe that someone or something else is to blame for an unfair or unjust situation, and that something can be done to resolve the problem.
When we deny ourselves the right to be angry, we deny our pain.
Anger often masks emotions that are more difficult to name and/or more difficult to own.
Contempt, simply put, says, “I’m better than you. And you are lesser than me.”
Contempt is poisonous to a relationship because it conveys disgust and superiority, especially moral, ethical, or characterological. Contempt as “perhaps the most corrosive force in marriage.”
Solution is not that we need to disagree less, but we need to learn how to disagree better
Hate is a combination of various negative emotions including repulsion, disgust, anger, fear, and contempt.
We feel hate toward individuals or groups that we believe are intentionally malicious and unlikely to change.
What’s interesting is that we can develop hate toward people we do not know personally simply based on their affiliation with a group or ideology that doesn’t align with our beliefs.
Hate is actually fueled by our need for connection. I call this common enemy intimacy.
Dehumanization is “the psychological process of demonizing the enemy, making them seem less than human and hence not worthy of humane treatment.”
Moral disgust is even more dangerous because of its dehumanizing implications.
once a target is viewed with disgust, this judgment seems to be permanent.
With contempt, we look down on the other person and we want to exclude or ignore them. With disgust, inferiority is not the issue, the feeling is more physical—we want to avoid being “poisoned” (either literally or figuratively).
Disgust “arises as a feeling of aversion towards something offensive.
Core disgust is thought to protect the body from ingestion of contaminants, while disgust in an interpersonal context is thought to “protect” us from unseemly behavior or contamination of the soul.
Self-Righteousness
“Self-righteousness is the conviction that one’s beliefs and behaviors are the most correct.”
#13 Places We Go to Self-Assess
Pride
Hubris
Humility
Pride is a feeling of pleasure or celebration related to our accomplishments or efforts.
Authentic pride.
Hubris is an inflated sense of one’s own innate abilities that is tied more to the need for dominance than to actual accomplishments.
Hubris sounds like an almost foolproof way to assert yourself in the world—no accomplishments, no respect, no social acceptance needed. You would, however, have to hone your bullying skills and be open to being seen as an asshole.
Humility is openness to new learning combined with a balanced and accurate assessment of our contributions, including our strengths, imperfections, and opportunities for growth.
Humility involves understanding our conbtributions in context, in relation to contributions of others and our own place in the universe.
What humility isn’t: downplaying yourself or your accomplishments, which is modesty, not humility. It’s also not low-esteem or meekness or letting people walk all over you.