How to Use Emotions as Data | Dr. Marc Brackett

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32:38I'm overloaded. And the fear is often tied to past experiences or things that have been shared with us that we should be fearful of. Or just in the moment, like you're at home and by yourself and you don't expect anybody's gonna join you and then you hear the door open. It's like, uh-oh, right? It's like that disruption of your, like what you think is supposed to happen. I live in the countryside. When I first moved there, I was sitting in my little home office and a bobcat walked by my office. I'm like, we're dead. We're moving. Of course, I didn't know anything about bobcats. But so my perception that moment was like, dogs are dead, we're dead.

33:16You know, it's over. That's fear. You know, anxiety is when the pandemic hit and my center shut down because the university shut down. It's like, when is it going to open? Like, you know. Yeah. Soon, maybe. The stress was I got 5 ,000 emails from people who were having nervous breakdowns saying, Mark, we need your help. I don't have enough time in the day to respond to these emails. That's stress. And so the strategy for the stress was like, Mark, you're going to do the best you can today. Are you going to delegate it and get other people to respond? That's how I'm going to deal with the stress.

33:51The anxiety was, Mark, you have no control over this pandemic. You're not the president of the university. You don't work for the CDC. see. You're going to make no choices about this. You're going to just have to go with the flow and just tell yourself that every day. You're going with the flow. You're going with the flow. And then for the fear, that's something you got to investigate or protect yourself. Actually do something about. Yeah. Okay. There's a fire. This is not a time to ponder. Get out. Bobcat, lock the door. Exactly. I'm curious because you bring up parenting and I think, you know, emotional regulation obviously is very impactful to us as professionals in our career.

34:32But I just want to sidebar a little bit because I'm really curious about this now approaching emotional regulation around children that you're in care of and how to do that in a meaningful way. Because we've all seen the tantrums, the emotional dysregulation in children and how stressful that can be and overwhelming to us as parents. It's the same thing, buddy. It's like you just start off with you've got to be the role model. if you are showing up at work or at home with your kid and you're shaking and like talking this way and like oh my gosh oh my gosh what's happening like the world's coming to an end you're gonna your kid is gonna absorb that when your kid gets activated if you're like running if you're running out of the room or you you know yell at the kid they're gonna feel that and so the first step in what we call co-regulation, which is what parents are doing with kids, is you've got to deactivate your arousal because you're going to get triggered by the crying.

35:30You're going to get triggered by whatever it is. I don't know if you or most people do. Yeah. And it's like, okay, I can get through this. It's just crying. The kid is not attacking me. The kid is just whatever they're feeling. they're feeling. And so like just having that mindset can be really helpful. Just like, I'm going to give myself permission to feel uncomfortable right now, but there's going to do anything about it. And my kid is clearly has a knee that's not being met. Deep breathing. I know people think that's cliche at this point. I think it's the number one strategy. It just helps you to be still.

36:08It's not sufficient. You just can't breathe your whole way through life. I mean, you have to breathe your way through life, but it's not sufficient for regulation. And then there's a lot of self-talk. Okay. How do I want to show up for my kid? How do I want my kid to experience in me right now? So that's the beginning stages. When they're older and they have language, then you have to show that kind of unconditional support, validation, be curious, explorers of their emotions. And then you've got to help them with strategies. Learn those strategies. Let's take a walk. Let's do some breathing together.

36:49Let's cuddle. Just play around with it. Because not everybody's going to want the same thing. We were talking about that recently. There are people who are huggers. There are people who aren't huggers. No problem. Yeah, it's recognizing that and reacting to that. And personality will matter. People think I do a lot of public speaking. Everybody thinks I'm outgoing. And I actually don't even like people, to be honest. Just kidding. Hence moving to the country. Exactly. I'm an introvert. And so for me, like today, I've got meetings. I have about a 45-minute commute. I had meetings on my way here, meetings all day.

37:28When I go home today, I'll get home around six. The last thing I don't want to do is make a phone call or have friends over. I'm lucky I have a pool in my house. I'm going swimming by myself. And I'm just going to do laps and I'm just going to zone out. that's what I need to restore. Someone else, after a long day at work, they're like, sports bar, I want music and screaming. That would put me into a hospital. You know, it's just, that's life. Life is, so let me, before I'm sharing so many little anecdotes here, but permission to feel, label it accurately. You got your budget that we spoke about already, which is like the sleep and the nutrition and the exercise.

38:18And then the other buckets are the breathing, as we've spoken about. Big bucket there, lots of activities there. And then I think the bucket that is the most powerful that I wrote a lot about in dealing with feeling is the cognitive bucket. For somehow or another, I think that we are programmed early in life to be self-saboteurs. You're too tall, you're too short, you're too fat, you're too skinny, you're too dark, you're too light, you're too feminine, you're too masculine. It's all this stuff. And then we kind of believe it. It's like we're gaslighted from our early childhoods. And someone else has defined our reality for us.

38:58And then that seeps into how we deal with our feelings. And so it's a lot of repair that has to be done there and a lot of unlearning and relearning how to have more self-compassion. So what is that like initial signal that this is an area where you have to relearn or you have to unpack for many of us when we're in that regulation state? When you mess up, what's the first thing that you say to yourself? Let me ask the two of you that. Like when you mess up with your kid or your wife or your partner, whatever you're in, like when you really mess up, what's your go-to cognitive strategy? Yeah, for me, it is embarrassment.

39:37I have shame tied to it. Like, again, I want to retreat, right? It goes back to that emotional outburst, and then I just want to retreat into solitude. And John, how about for you? It's difficult to pin it because it's such a broad question. But for myself, yeah, I'm mad at myself, and I want to channel it into something creative. That's a great kind of redirection if you can do that. So that would be a healthy way to deal with emotions. I got plenty of songs written from that experience. I got records written. Well, that's good. You're sublimating. And again, that's what I learned from my dad.

40:17When my dad was pissed off, he would go into the music room and start playing. So it's just what I had always done my whole life. I never, in fact, getting involved in this field, I mean, I've always known that about myself. That was a channel, that's an outlet that I've always had. And then once you recognize it, that it's value, you find other ways to do that same thing. So guitar plan is one, writing is another, working in the garden is another, taking it out into the gym, finding a way to be productive with now newfound energy that, if not dealt with, can tear you apart. This is a good example to expand upon because it's like all strategies are both helpful and could be unhelpful.

41:07And let me give you the example. So let's say you're a parent. Let's go back to AJ for a minute. You're a parent and you're like, gosh, I'm really doing a shitty job here. I'm going to go write a song about it. It's like, no, AJ, you've got to figure out how to have a relationship with your kid. And so they say, you have to really evaluate the strategy. Is it helping to achieve the outcome? And I think writing is a fabulous strategy, by the way. But it's like that might be good for certain feelings and certain things, but not for everything. I know my wife wouldn't be happy if I retreated to my guitar and wrote a song about pissing her off.

41:45So these are situations where when there's others at play in a relationship that we're managing, you know retreating into solitude is actually really harmful and it's one of those patterns that i've had to work on in my personal relationships of like hey you know you're feeling that embarrassment and shame but i still want to talk to you like i want to regulate and express what's going on here there's an organization that i'll plug called jail guitar doors and what it's a few musicians um but what they do is they take acoustic guitars to jail uh to lock up and they teach inmates how to use them to write and channel their energy.

42:25And one of the things I found fascinating is there are stories about how those guys have never had an outlet. They'd never been taught anything. I mean, it's one of the reasons why they're finding themselves in jail for life. So to learn something like that can certainly give you a brand new perspective on things that you've done, things that you're doing right now, and things that you're going to be doing in the future. I have a podcast that's about my work. It's called Dealing with Feeling Also. And I interviewed Duff McKagan from Guns and Roses. And it was really interesting because he talked about how one day he was walking around Seattle, nobody knew who he was the next day, like he's on billboards and famous and how like that mess with his head and he had no strategies to deal with it.

43:15And really interesting conversation. It resulted in a lot of drug use and alcoholism. And then he said, I was curious about, because some people say, well, I'm the most creative when I'm high. And he was saying how now as he's gotten older and he's been sober, he feels he's his most creative place. And it was a really great conversation around strategies and dysregulation and the link between regulation and creativity, which I think is really interesting in terms of how we can channel our emotions for creative things as you do, John. I'm curious about exploring that a little further because it feels like it is a bit of a fine line between the regulate and the escape and the bury and whether it's drugs or alcohol or some of these maladaptive strategies, what should we be aiming for to not fall into the escape pattern, but to actually be meaningfully regulating what's going on?

44:22I think it goes back to the reflection piece, which is I used to be a martial arts instructor and I took like classes at gyms and I'd see people like six hours a day at the treadmill. And I'm like, that is not a good strategy. Yes, exercise is good, but you're overdoing it. And so every one of these buckets that I'm talking about, breathing, I used to belong to a meditation center, and I would see all these people who were really suffering just escape and live in the Zen temple all day long on the cushion. I'm like, dude, you've got to get out in the real world and try this out. You've got to ask the girl on a date.

45:04This is not going to help you. This is going to be debilitating. You're going to get lost in this reflection. and so it goes back to asking yourself the difficult questions which is is how i'm living my life is how i'm dealing with my feelings helping me achieve my goals or not and so it's that you know we've got to pause and check in with like how it's working for us it's like john with your music i'm sure that for the most part it's really helpful and maybe there's sometimes it's not helpful. Oh, it's my favorite escape as well. It's both an adaptive and a maladaptive strategy depending on the context.

45:42Yeah. Almost dosage dependent. Yeah, exactly. And so everything is like that. I mean, I, I can't tell you how many people like toxic positivity, right? It's like, everything's going to be fine. I'm like, you may think that way. I'm telling you, it's not fine. We have some, we have to work through this just so you know, like, I'm glad you're like, everything's going to work out. Like shit happens. I'm like, okay, thank you. Now let's really work through the problem. And so, you know, yes, you want to have, be self-compassionate, but you don't want to be self, so self-compassionate that you make it, you excuse yourself from doing the hard work.

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47:00One who navigates life on their own terms, effortlessly. They do not always show up on time, but when they arrive, you notice an individual confident in their contradictions. They know the rules but behave as if they do not exist. Muteen, the new fragrance by Miu Miu, defined by you. One piece that we love, at least, and we've had a couple episodes on it now, I think has been frustrating us is this emotional vocabulary. So again, going back to what we shared earlier, that we're just not learning this. And we just had a really fascinating episode around psychobabble and how a lot of these psychological terms are now being expanded and mislabeled in ways that are distorting the way we're perceiving reality, calling everyone a narcissist or everyone a sociopath.

47:50Now, a lot of us really struggle in the emotional vocabulary area, and the labeling piece is actually really impactful for us to regulate these emotions. Because if we're mislabeling things, we're not going to be able to actually process them. So help us as we're now recognizing maybe we don't have the emotional vocabulary telling fear, stress, and anxiety apart. Have I got a gift for you? The reason why I say that is for the last five years, I've partnered with the co-founder of the company Pinterest, and we built an app that's called How We Feel, which is available for free across the world in multiple.

48:28It's in Android and iOS, and has 500 emotion words built into it with their definitions. And so it's a really cool tool. I could be proud and say we've got a big award from Apple a couple of years ago for it. And I've had about 3 million people use it. And it's built to help you identify your feelings more accurately. And so what it does is it helps you see through using a tool that we've created called the mood meter, which is basically there's two axes. You got pleasantness and you got energy. Minus five to plus five from like in your brain. How pleasant do you feel right now? Minus five is like this is the most unpleasant experience.

49:13Plus five, the most pleasant. Energy is you feel exhausted and tired or do you feel energized? And you cross those axes and you get this quadrants, yellow, red, blue, and green. Yellow, high energy, pleasant. So what are some words for high energy and pleasant emotions? Just shoot them out. Joyful, ecstatic. Happy, excited, elated, jubilant, ebullient, optimistic. And so that's the yellow. The green, it's pleasant but lower in energy. What do you think? Calm, relaxed. Content, tranquil, peaceful, serene. Zen. And then we got the left side. We got unpleasant feelings. And remember I'm saying unpleasant, not negative, not bad.

50:03Unpleasant. The blue, low energy, unpleasant. What do you think? Depressed. Sad, down, disappointment, hopeless, despair, despondent, depressed. And then the red is the anxiety and the anger family. Frustration. So from peeved to enraged or from uneasy to terrorized or panicky. And so it creates this beautiful picture of your emotional life. And so what we help people do is they look at that app design and they can move their finger around and see exactly how they're feeling. And then see the differences between the emotions to help them get it more, you know, be more accurate. And why is that labeling so helpful from the regulation standpoint?

50:48This is a big one for like parents and kids. Your kid is four years old or five years old, and they come in the house stomping their feet. I hate you. How are they feeling? What do you think? Latred. Anger. What else? Anger. And firstly, the big question is, how do you know? And the answer is, you definitely don't. Because behavior is not feeling. We're brought up in a very strange world where, especially for boys, they're not going to come feeling, I'm feeling shame right now. You know, I'm feeling humiliated and embarrassed. They're not going to do that. They're going to show up with a lot of anger, a lot of built up.

51:30So one is you got to know as a parent, like behavior is not feeling. Behavior is behavior. Now my job is to find out how the kid is feeling or how my partner's feeling or who my colleague's failing. Then, you know, you ask them questions. I, let's make it like, now it's an older kid. I failed my test. Well, let's find out why you failed your test. Did you fail it? The teacher told me that we only had to know these three things and there were other things on the test. Okay. So that's not fair. So that is anger. Was there anything unfamiliar? No, it was always there. Oh, what I'm hearing is that you didn't study the things that were on the test.

52:10Oh, yeah, you're right. I forgot to study that piece. Oh, you're probably disappointed because you had an expectation that wasn't met. And so do you see, I'm doing that kind of emotion coaching with anybody. It could be my partner. It could be my kid. It could be anybody. To like, tell me more, tell me more. Oh, and I'm listening really carefully for the underlying theme around the feeling. Is the theme around injustice? is the theme around unmet expectations, because those are one's anger, one's disappointment. Now, as that co-regulator for my partner or my kid or my colleague, I can think, okay, so what might be helpful?

52:55What suggestions might I make to help that person manage the disappointment? So for me, because I was not athletic as a kid, but I got into martial arts, I failed my yellow bell test. It was like devastating. I'm like a loser. I'm being bullied. And now I failed my freaking yellow bell test. Couldn't get any worse. And so the question is like, did I fail it because I freeze and I panicked or did I fail it because I didn't know the moves? And so like how I would help my kid would be, I need more data to know, oh, you panic. So we need to help you build confidence versus I can help you with your blocks or your kicks.

53:38I think a key concept in the book that really stood out to me is how impactful this mislabeling can be towards creating self-doubt, impacting your confidence, how you understand yourself. And because we're not really taught this vocabulary and we collapse down to just a few key emotions that seem to be the right label and move past it as fast as possible, then it's actually doing real sustainable harm to how we see ourselves, what our self-image is, what our self-esteem is. And also it doesn't help us communicate very clearly our needs. If you just say, I feel like shit, what does that mean? Or even the word upset, I'm upset.

54:16Are you frustrated? Are you sad? Are you disappointed? Like what is it? And that communication is so key to maintaining and having great relationships in your life, which are so impactful. You're not kidding. If I want to move into like couples and colleagues space for a minute, I cannot tell you, even working at a center for emotional intelligence, this is our life, our livelihood. And it's like when someone is feeling a strong emotion about someone else's work or something about their relationship, it is hard for people to tell people how they're feeling. Well, let's dive in there because that state of flooded, right?

54:54I'm sure a lot of listeners are like, this is great. This is so helpful. These tools sound, you know, in theory, so practical. But then when we are in that moment where we are flooded and it feels chaotic and we are grasping to even try to figure out the vocabulary. What is your advice in those moments that feel the most challenging around the emotional regulation front? Build space. Build the space. You don't have to respond immediately. It's okay. You can say, you know what, AJ, I need a minute and just go out in the room, go sit in the bathroom if you have to. Go garden for a little while. do whatever you got to do.

55:33Just build a space to lower the temperature so that way you can really know why you're feeling the way you're feeling and plan your response or plan your conversation. Don't try to do it in the moment. It never works. I've tried it so many times and it drives me out of my mind. And it's like, I can't do it because when I think my partner has on something that, you know, is, but I just, I just go for the jugular. It's terrible. And so I know now, Mark, you want to stay in this relationship, right? Yes, yes, I do, I do, I do. Okay, good. Then get out of the room. Go downstairs, go work out, go do some yoga, go take the walk.

56:20And then you realize that's where some of the strategies come in. One of them is called time travel, where you ask yourself, like, was I really pissed at what he said or what she said, or is that I'm just tired? How much will this matter to me in a week from now? I'm not even going to remember it. And so, like, why bother? Like, really, what are you going to go back in now? And so when you build a space, that's when you can become more kind of rational about the experience. So I tell people, if you have to pinch yourself, do whatever it takes. Do not go from automatic, habitual, unhelpful reaction to automatic, breathe, build space, healthy response.

57:15I'm feeling a sense of relief hearing that, that someone who's studied emotional regulation to such a degree, his framework's surrounded, still needs to go on that walk. Are you kidding? especially when it's like, whatever, it's like, we made a deal here. We're not buying any more stuff or whatever it is. Remember we had a conversation about this last week. Remember that? Remember that? And it's sort of like, yeah, here we go. So in wrapping, our audience loves frameworks and acronyms. And I know you're a big proponent of RULER and probably could spend another hour on it, but tying a bow on everything we chatted around it, I'd love to wrap with this.

57:54RULER is an acronym. for five skills, recognize, understand, label, express, and regulate. Today, we focused mostly on the kind of, oh, we did a little bit of everything, actually. But, you know, the focus is on dealing with feeling, my book, and regulation. And I think start with giving yourself permission to feel build your emotional vocabulary have no notice how your budget is working for against you strive towards having greater self-compassion than being a self-denigrator you know know that you should do this with relationships and have people you can talk to about this and schedule your well-being time those are the basics and obviously i go into the depths of how to do that, you know, but, um, I think if you can get all those buckets understood and filled with things that are helpful for you, you're going to have a way better time dealing with your feelings.

59:00You shared something there that I think is really helpful. I know it's been super helpful in my own journey in joining a men's group and doing men's work is this sharing that I'm working on this area. Like I've recognized that, you know, in certain contexts or certain situations, my emotional regulation is just non-existent and it's an area that I want to grow in and sharing that with your partner with a friend with a group of men is so impactful for you developing these skills and them giving you the space to work through developing these skills correct and you know I always joke like the 90s were my anger years like I'm just angry at the way I was parent like the way my parents brought me up and yeah I was angry about a lot of things I'm now 55 I'm like enough with the anger, you know, it's like, grow up, Mark, you know, it's like, you know, your parents were, you know, you're, you're a man now, but now I'm chronically overwhelmed.

59:52And so I find that I'm really dedicating my regulation strategies to dealing with that. And I think that's interesting to think about your life. Yeah. There'll be throughout life, there'll be certain weeks and months where you're going to have to focus in on more on regulating one, one particular emotion more than another. and that's kind of interesting to just know about ourselves and and um and then you see how that i've noticed that how i the strategies i like to use for being overwhelmed which are mostly like setting limits self-care stuff are really different than the strategies for like anger and frustration and so I'll end by saying I think it's life's work and there's a beauty to that because it means you don't have to be perfect if you just accept the fact that I'm going to have feelings for the rest of my life and I can't predict everything that's going to happen then you just accept the fact that you're in learning mode forever well thank you for making the time and space for us in your season of overwhelm this was a fun conversation I appreciate it.

1:01:02Thank you, AJ. Where can our audience find out more about the work you do in the app again? The book is called Dealing with Feeling. You can get that anywhere you kind of look for books. The app is called How We Feel. You can find that in the App Store, both in the Android version and the iOS version. And then I think the best place for people to learn more about my work and my podcast called Dealing with Feeling also is just my website, which is mark, with a C, M-A-R-C, bracket. B-R-A-C-K-E-T-T dot com. Thank you, Mark. Enjoy your time in the pool this evening. Yeah, thank you.

1:01:48And now comes the part of the show where we showcase one of our X-Factor Accelerator members. Take it away, Tammy. Hey, everybody. This is Tammy. and as a retail business owner, the old saying, you know, it's lonely at the top. It's true. I joined X Factor because I wanted to be in a group of people who were kind of on the same level that I was, who were trying to live their best lives and it has been an amazing community to be a part of. I am in X Factor with people who are really trying to create their best future and their best lives and I highly recommend the program to anybody who's thinking about it.

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