Quotes About Emotions

her pain, Beck. She loved you enough for both her children.

rage had taken its turn in the driver's seat, and she had lashed out, first at John and then at Grace's coach: "You pointed Grace out to the abductor? What kind of fucking idiot are you?

One absolutely crucial element in moving your brain from panic to logic is to put words to what you're feeling at each stage.

I need to talk to you about something. I was so busy feeling upset with you and then acting impatient and irritated that I stepped on your toes instead of walking in your shoes. When I stopped to do that, I thought if I were you, I'd feel frustrated (scared, angry, etc.). Is that true?

Emotions are built on layers. Beneath hatred is usually anger; beneath anger is frustration; beneath frustration is hurt; beneath hurt is fear. If you keep expressing your feelings, you will generally move through them in that order. What begins with "I hate you" culminates in "I'm scared. I don't want to lose you, and I don't know what to do about it.

happiness is actually more closely tied to how you perceive and emotionally react to the events and people around you. That's because people who perceive the world as positive or negative will react to it positively or negatively.

While the simple act of naming the emotions you feel at each stage in a crisis is part of the solution, it's just the first step.

anger and empathy—like matter and antimatter—can't exist in the same place at the same time. Let one in, and you have to let the other one go. So when you shift a blamer into empathy, you stop the person's angry ranting dead in its tracks.

Becoming defensive or counterattacking simply reinforces the idea that you think these people are wrong and unimportant (and stupid), which amplifies their mirror neuron gap and fuels their fire. When you make a counterintuitive move and encourage them to talk, you do the opposite: You mirror respect and interest, and they feel compelled to send the same message back.

It is not a guilt tripping, it is empathy training

An ounce of apology is worth a pound of resentment

3. Realize that the crazy behavior isn't about you. Instead, it's all about the person you're dealing with.

The key fact to know when somebody goes nuclear is that the person is stuck in attack mode, so rational, reasonable, intelligent conversation won't work. A guy who's throwing a computer at the boss or waving a gun around can't listen to reason, because he can't access the higher thought processes that say "Hey, calm down—this is crazy.

Your task, if you're facing a person who's running amok, is to break that lock. How? By talking the person up gradually from "I want to hurt someone" to "I'm terribly upset" to "I need to find a smart way to handle this." These stages correlate with the three levels of the brain: the primitive reptile brain, the emotional mammal brain, and the logical human brain.

Inside every person is a real person. Who is just as afraid or nervous or in need of empathy as anyone else. Make a person feel felt.

To do that, follow these steps: 1. Say, "Tell me what happened." Venting allows the person to begin moving from blindly striking out (the most primitive response) to feeling emotional (a higher response). The person's screaming or yelling will upset you, but it's far less dangerous than the threat of physical violence—so let it happen.

4. Now say, "And that makes you feel angry/frustrated/ disappointed/upset or what exactly…." Pick the word you think best describes what the person feels. If the person corrects you, ask the person to say what the actual feeling is and repeat it back and get another "Yes." Remember that when someone attaches a word to a feeling, it lowers agitation. That's critical.

Stage 2 At this point, you're dealing with someone who's no longer striking out wildly but is still venting—better, but still a problem. So your next goal is to move the person from the emotional middle (mammal) brain up into the rational upper (human) brain.

Occasionally you'll slide into crazy when an upset causes your three brains to temporarily misalign, but you won't live there permanently.

crazy starts with a misaligned brain,

All of us—even if we're strong at the core—will occasionally lose it when stress causes our brains to misalign.

To be wronged is nothing unless you continue to remember it." —CONFUCIUS

Getting your emotions under control isn't just a key to being a great leader like Jim. It's also the most important key to reaching other people, especially in times of stress or uncertainty. It's why a cool and controlled hostage negotiator can get through to someone who seems unreachable

Research by Matthew Lieberman at UCLA shows that when people put words to their emotions—"afraid," "angry"—the amygdala, that little biological threat sensor that can throw the brain into animal mode, cools down almost instantly. At the same time, another part of the brain—part of the prefrontal cortex, which is the "smart" area of the brain—goes to work.