The gifts of ALL emotions—including depression

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What Your Feelings Are Trying to Tell You

Karla McLaren — June 12, 2023

Though I’m fairly certain you’ve heard otherwise, emotions are a vital part of everything you are: every thought, every choice, every relationship, every dream, every failure, every triumph, every act of violence, and every act of love. When you can learn their language, you can change your life for the better.

And when we can all learn their language, we can change the world.

Hello! I’m Karla McLaren, and I’m excited to announce the upcoming release of the revised and updated edition of The Language of Emotions: What Your Feelings Are Trying to Tell You, which will be available in bookstores on June 27th.

Whether you’re a reader of the original Language of Emotions, or if you’re new to this work, I welcome you to this complete guide to the wisdom in every emotion you have.

The original 2010 version of The Language of Emotions was the first book to approach the emotions in terms of how they function, what they do, and how to work with them. Instead of treating emotions as problems to be solved or eradicated, I focused on them as essential aspects of meaning-making, behavior, and intelligence (which is what they truly are). I approached the emotional realm as an intelligent system that requires all of its members, including tragically disrespected emotions such as shame, anxiety, depression, jealousy, envy, panic, and the suicidal urge (among others). And in so doing, I discovered the healing messages inside all emotions.

But because most of us have been taught to distrust emotions, I was working without a net as I wrote the original version of this book, and I missed some things. Now, after more than a decade of further research and practice, and with the support and camaraderie of an international community of colleagues and friends, I’ve had the opportunity to understand the emotions more deeply.

For centuries, emotions have been repressed, idealized, distrusted, and even despised, yet they were never truly understood. I’m honored to share this updated celebration of the brilliance, ingenuity, healing power, and jaw-dropping genius of our emotions.

Welcome!

Karla McLaren, M.Ed.

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The Power of Emotions at Work

Karla McLaren — August 17, 2021

Karla McLaren is an award-winning author, social science researcher, and renowned expert in emotions and empathy. Her work focuses on her grand unified theory of emotions, which reconsiders how we think of “negative” emotions and opens new pathways into self-awareness, communication, and empathy. With Sounds True, Karla is the author of the landmark book The Language of Emotions, a book on The Art of Empathy, and a new book called The Power of Emotions at Work: Accessing the Vital Intelligence in Your Workplace. In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Tami Simon speaks with Karla about why the full range of emotions is necessary for us to bring forth our best thinking. They discuss the “toxic positivity bias” that has become the norm in the contemporary workplace, how this leads to widespread suffering and dysfunction, and how we can achieve an “emotionally well-regulated” workplace that works for all of us.

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Karla McLaren:Making Friends with Anxiety … and All ...

Karla McLaren — June 23, 2020

Karla McLaren is an award-winning author, social science researcher, and empathy pioneer. Her work focuses on a “grand unified theory of emotions,” in which she moves us beyond looking at some emotions as negative and some as positive, and instead helps people see the genius that lives inside every single emotion. In this podcast, Tami Simon speaks with Karla about managing the multiple emotions that many of us are experiencing as we navigate both a pandemic and a time of societal transformation. Tami and Karla also discuss the importance of creating a community that shares an “emotional vocabulary,” the four keys to unlocking the wisdom of our emotions, and much more.

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Anita Moorjani: Embodying Love in a Fear-Based World

Anita Moorjani — March 12, 2024

How do we stem the tides of fear and aggression sweeping over our divided world? How can we spread the love that heals and uplifts everyone? Sharing insights from her bestselling book, Dying to Be Me, and her latest work, Sensitive Is the New Strong, Anita Moorjani offers her hope-giving answers to these questions of compelling urgency for our times.

Tune in for this remarkable teacher’s inspiring (and in many ways utterly mind-blowing) conversation with Sounds True’s founder, Tami Simon, as they discuss: a nonlinear understanding of time; living fearlessly; how to attune to the helping beings that surround us at all times; raising your vibrational frequency; the practice of asking for signs; following your intuition; how humanity’s belief in scarcity is contributing to our self-destruction; the root cause of the divisiveness in today’s world, and why we need a new way of defining “strength”; moving beyond limitations inherited from our families and cultures; the consequences of repressing oneself; becoming unapologetically who we are; the body as a reflection of our state of consciousness; multiple lives, one soul; embracing your gifts as an empath; and more.

Note: This episode originally aired on Sounds True One, where these special episodes of Insights at the Edge are available to watch live on video and with exclusive access to Q&As with our guests. Learn more at join.soundstrue.com.

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Lisa Marchiano, LCSW: When You Need to Be Shrewd and R...

Lisa Marchiano — February 20, 2024

Women across every age and culture have struggled with the pain of repressing essential aspects of themselves. There may be no misery greater than when we bury our vital spark beneath a dense layer of niceness that society insists upon. With her book The Vital Spark, Lisa Marchiano, a Jungian analyst, author, and podcaster, offers readers a breakthrough guide filled with insights, practices, tales, and teachings to unleash your “sizzling spirit” and live life to the fullest.

Get ready to reclaim your “outlaw energies” in this powerful podcast on: transformation through fierce feminine initiations; the protective quality of shrewdness and ruthlessness; breaking out of an “innocence complex”; allowing ourselves to know what we know; why “too much kindness defangs us”; discernment; the metaphor of the central fire within us; Carl Jung’s teaching on the unlived life and the “glowing coals under gray ashes”; the vehicle of story and fairy tales to convey wisdom; the tale of “Fitcher’s Bird”; squinting and symbolism; the unsentimental quality in nature; the story of Lilith; the role of greed and selfishness in the quest for wholeness; growing confidence; cultivating the qualities that help us stay connected with ourselves; and more.

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Judson Brewer: Ending Worry Addiction and Unwinding An...

Judson Brewer — February 13, 2024

Do you have a habit you just can’t break no matter how hard you try or how badly you want to? Renowned addiction psychiatrist, neuroscientist, and bestselling author Judson Brewer—or Dr. Jud, as he’s widely known—has helped millions of people find freedom from excessive worry, overeating, cigarette smoking, and many other challenging behaviors. In this podcast, Tami Simon speaks with Dr. Jud about his life-changing books—The Craving Mind, Unwinding Anxiety, and most recently, The Hunger Habit—and his compassionate and respectful approach to habit change.

Enjoy this empowering and “aha!-inducing” conversation about breaking the cycle of anxiety; the process of negative reinforcement; fear of the future vs planning for the future; the three elements of a habit loop: trigger, behavior, reward; the pros and cons of distraction; distress tolerance—a survival skill for our times; changing the reward value of a behavior; karma and reinforcement learning; exploring gratification to its end; the brain as a smoke detector; recalibrating the nervous system after trauma; the concept of dependent origination; the superpower of interest curiosity; hedonic hunger vs homeostatic hunger; paying attention to your “pleasure plateau” when it comes to food; awareness as the key ingredient for behavior change; the mantra “What’s this?”; and more.