Permission to Feel Quotes

“Most of us are unaware of how important vocabulary is to emotion skills. As we’ve seen, using many different words implies valuable distinctions—that we’re not always simply angry but are sometimes annoyed, irritated, frustrated, disgusted, aggravated, and so on. If we can’t discern the difference, it suggests that we can’t understand it either. It’s the difference between a rich emotional life and an impoverished one. Your child will inherit the one you provide.”
― Marc Brackett, Permission to Feel: The Power of Emotional Intelligence to Achieve Well-Being and Success

“Emotion regulation is not about not feeling. Neither is it exerting tight control over what we feel. And it’s not about banishing negative emotions and feeling only positive ones. Rather, emotion regulation starts with giving ourselves and others the permission to own our feelings—all of them.”
― Marc Brackett, Permission to Feel: The Power of Emotional Intelligence to Achieve Well-Being and Success

“The irony, though, is that when we ignore our feelings, or suppress them, they only become stronger. The really powerful emotions build up inside us, like a dark force that inevitably poisons everything we do, whether we like it or not. Hurt feelings don’t vanish on their own. They don’t heal themselves. If we don’t express our emotions, they pile up like a debt that will eventually come due.”
― Marc Brackett, Permission to Feel: The Power of Emotional Intelligence to Achieve Well-Being and Success

“The core skill of Understanding is the search for the underlying theme or possible cause that fuels the emotion. We’re not asking questions and listening to answers just to provide a sympathetic ear. As we listen, we’re looking for a meaning that goes deeper than the words being said.”
― Marc Brackett, Permission to Feel: The Power of Emotional Intelligence to Achieve Well-Being and Success

“It’s possible to distract ourselves to such a degree that we avoid dealing with anything difficult—even when our lives would be improved by facing reality and doing something about it.”
― Marc Brackett, Permission to Feel: The Power of Emotional Intelligence to Achieve Well-Being and Success

“Labeling emotions accurately increases self-awareness and helps us to communicate emotions effectively, reducing misunderstanding in social interactions.”
― Marc Brackett, Permission to Feel: The Power of Emotional Intelligence to Achieve Well-Being and Success

“First, our emotional state determines where we direct our attention, what we remember, and what we learn. Second is decision making: when we’re in the grip of any strong emotion—such as anger or sadness, but also elation or joy—we perceive the world differently, and the choices we make at that moment are influenced,”
― Marc Brackett, Permission to Feel: The Power of Emotional Intelligence to Achieve Well-Being and Success

“My message for everyone is the same: that if we can learn to identify, express, and harness our feelings, even the most challenging ones, we can use those emotions to help us create positive, satisfying lives.”
― Marc Brackett, Permission to Feel: The Power of Emotional Intelligence to Achieve Well-Being and Success

“Strong, negative emotions (fear, anger, anxiety, hopelessness) tend to narrow our minds—it’s as though our peripheral vision has been cut off because we’re so focused on the peril that’s front and center.”
― Marc Brackett, Permission to Feel: The Power of Emotional Intelligence to Achieve Well-Being and Success

“Again, the necessary skills: The first step is to recognize what we’re feeling. The second step is to understand what we’ve discovered—what we’re feeling and why. The next step is to properly label our emotions, meaning not just to call ourselves “happy” or “sad” but to dig deeper and identify the nuances and intricacies of what we feel. The fourth step is to express our feelings, to ourselves first and then, when right, to others. The final step is to regulate—as we’ve said, not to suppress or ignore our emotions but to use them wisely to achieve desired goals. In the next section, we’ll take those steps one by”
― Marc Brackett, Permission to Feel: The Power of Emotional Intelligence to Achieve Well-Being and Success

“Sometimes parents avoid dealing with their child’s feelings by turning to technology as a way of removing themselves from the stress of the moment. According to research, this only increases the child’s misery and inspires even more bad behavior … which parents then use as an excuse to isolate themselves even further.”
― Marc Brackett, Permission to Feel: The Power of Emotional Intelligence to Achieve Well-Being and Success

“A ironia, porém, é que quando ignoramos nossos sentimentos, ou os suprimimos, eles se tornam mais fortes. Gostemos ou não, as emoções realmente poderosas se acumulam em nosso interior como uma força sombria que envenena tudo o que fazemos. Sentimentos que nos machucam não desaparecem por conta própria. Eles não se curam sozinhos. Se não expressamos nossas emoções, elas se acumulam como uma dívida que em algum momento será cobrada.”
― Marc Brackett, Permissão para sentir: Como compreender nossas emoções e usá-las com sabedoria para viver com equilíbrio e bem-estar

“Emotional sickness is avoiding reality at any cost. emotional health is facing reality at any cost. —M. SCOTT PECK”
― Marc Brackett,Ph.D., Permission to Feel: The Power of Emotional Intelligence to Achieve Well-Being and Success

“Society tells us that when a woman expresses her intense negative emotions publicly, she’s lost control and should be penalized. When a man does the same, it’s normal male behavior and does not merit punishment.”
― Marc Brackett, Permission to Feel: The Power of Emotional Intelligence to Achieve Well-Being and Success

“emotions are the most powerful force inside the workplace—as they are in every human endeavor.”
― Marc Brackett, Permission to Feel: The Power of Emotional Intelligence to Achieve Well-Being and Success

“First, our emotional state determines where we direct our attention, what we remember, and what we learn. Second is decision making: when we’re in the grip of any strong emotion—such as anger or sadness, but also elation or joy—we perceive the world differently, and the choices we make at that moment are influenced, for better or for worse. Third is our social relations. What we feel—and how we interpret other people’s feelings—sends signals to approach or avoid, to affiliate with someone or distance ourselves, to reward or punish. Fourth is the influence of emotions on our health. Positive and negative emotions cause different physiological reactions within our bodies and brains, releasing powerful chemicals that, in turn, affect our physical and mental well-being. And the fifth has to do with creativity, effectiveness, and performance.”
― Marc Brackett, Permission to Feel: The Power of Emotional Intelligence to Achieve Well-Being and Success

“In every grade, students love it—being asked for their input is something of a novelty. All day long, year after year, their emotions are bottled up, and suddenly here comes a teacher wondering what they’re feeling, how they want to feel, and what they’ll do to get there.”
― Marc Brackett, Permission to Feel: The Power of Emotional Intelligence to Achieve Well-Being and Success

“third-person self-talk is a way of being empathetic to ourselves.”
― Marc Brackett, Permission to Feel: The Power of Emotional Intelligence to Achieve Well-Being and Success

“Harsh self-criticism activates the sympathetic nervous system (fight/flight) and elevates stress hormones. Self-compassion, on the other hand, triggers the mammalian caregiving system and hormones of affiliation and love such as oxytocin.”
― Marc Brackett, Permission to Feel: The Power of Emotional Intelligence to Achieve Well-Being and Success

“As a rule, doing something you enjoy is a very effective strategy for regulating negative emotions.”
― Marc Brackett, Permission to Feel: The Power of Emotional Intelligence to Achieve Well-Being and Success

“Too often we look for strategies that will shift people out of negative emotion spaces, but that’s not always possible. During difficult times, sometimes we just need to be there for one another.”
― Marc Brackett, Permission to Feel: The Power of Emotional Intelligence to Achieve Well-Being and Success

“Wordlessly, babies get their messages across loud and clear, as any parent can attest. Infant emotions are focused on the basics of survival—the need for food, sleep, physical comfort, and security. This underscores the primary purpose of emotional expression: it keeps us alive. From a Darwinian perspective, demanding attention to our feelings is a necessity, not a choice.”
― Marc Brackett, Permission to Feel: The Power of Emotional Intelligence to Achieve Well-Being and Success

“Contentment, however, is more a state of psychological balance, not something we actively pursue—we feel contentment when we cherish the present moment.”
― Marc Brackett, Permission to Feel: The Power of Emotional Intelligence to Achieve Well-Being and Success

“When we’re acting as an emotion scientist with someone else, we can ask the other person: What might have happened to cause this feeling? What usually makes you feel this way? What’s going on that you’re feeling this way? What were you doing just before you started feeling this way? Who were you with? What do you need right now? What can I do to support you? As a teaching exercise, we’ll sometimes have children read a story, then ask them: What does this character feel? Why does he or she feel that way? What do you think might have caused this character to feel this way? What about what happened to the character helps you to understand his or her feelings? If the same thing happened to you, what do you think you would feel?”
― Marc Brackett, Permission to Feel: The Power of Emotional Intelligence to Achieve Well-Being and Success

“These are some of the questions we can ask when we’re trying to understand our own feelings: What just happened? What was I doing before this happened? What might have caused my feelings or reaction? What happened this morning, or last night, that might be involved in this? What has happened before with this person that might be connected? (In the event that your emotion has to do with a relationship.) What memories do I have about this situation or place?”
― Marc Brackett, Permission to Feel: The Power of Emotional Intelligence to Achieve Well-Being and Success

“As we listen, we’re looking for a meaning that goes deeper than the words being said.”
― Marc Brackett, Permission to Feel: The Power of Emotional Intelligence to Achieve Well-Being and Success

“Understanding emotions is a journey. Possibly an adventure. When it’s finished, we may find ourselves someplace new, someplace unexpected, somewhere, perhaps, we had no intention of going. And yet there we are, wiser than before—maybe wiser than we wished to be. But there’s no other way forward.”
― Marc Brackett, Permission to Feel: The Power of Emotional Intelligence to Achieve Well-Being and Success

“Are we actually getting worse at reading one another’s emotions? There’s evidence that says we are. The more time we spend communicating through electronic screens, the less face-to-face (or even voice-to-ear) time we spend and the less practice we get at reading the nonverbal cues.”
― Marc Brackett, Permission to Feel: The Power of Emotional Intelligence to Achieve Well-Being and Success

“It’s human nature to pay more attention to negative emotional information than positive.”
― Marc Brackett, Permission to Feel: The Power of Emotional Intelligence to Achieve Well-Being and Success

“Back in the eighteenth century, the poet Alexander Pope said it well: “All looks yellow to the jaundiced eye.” If you go through life angry, you will see anger everywhere you look. The same is true of other emotions—even positive ones.”
― Marc Brackett, Permission to Feel: The Power of Emotional Intelligence to Achieve Well-Being and Success