Imagine you and your teenager are sitting down for a nice meal and she/he asks, “What do you know about depression?” and you’re stumped for an answer.

Faced with that question, D. (Doug) Earl Johnston set out to find the answer and, along the way, identified 271 additional and distinct emotional states that formed the basis of his latest book, Choosing Emotions: Thinking with Your Head and Acting with Your Heart.

Doug shares what he learned about the amazing array of emotions all of us feel and how they protect us this week on Spirit Gym.

Learn more about Doug and his work at his website and on social media via Instagram.

Timestamps

4:58 Doug’s daughter asked him a question he couldn’t answer: What do you know about depression?

10:42 Identifying 272 distinct emotional states through famous quotes.

21:41 Our emotions are tools that protect us.

32:15 The fundamental misunderstandings people have about emotions.

43:15 A consilience.

47:35 Name it, blame it and tame it.

56:30 “Fear is a reaction. Courage is a decision.”

1:06:35 Where do you draw the line between an emotion, mood, condition, pattern or life?

1:23:54 “Can you change a default emotion?”

1:33:38 Doug’s reckoning with ego.

1:39:05 Vocabulary and emotions.

1:48:03 The domains of the head, heart and gut.

1:52:55 One of Paul’s guiding principles he learned from a student.

Resources

Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience by Brené Brown

The work of Rollo May, J.K. Rowling, Eckhart Tolle, Dr. Antonio Damasio, Jonathan Heidt, Daniel Kahneman, Niels Bohr, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Charles Kettering, Noam Chomsky, Dan Siegel, Stanley Krippner, Edgar Cayce and Sir Winston Churchill

Paul’s podcast conversations with Rollin McCraty and Keith Witt

How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain by Lisa Barrett

Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard by Chip and Dan Heath

Feelings Buried Alive Never Die by Karol Truman

The Body Keeps The Score: Brain, Mind and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Dr. Bessel van der Kolk

Tao Te Ching: A New English Version by Stephen Mitchell

The Second Book of the Tao by Stephen Mitchell

Find more resources for this episode on our website.

Music Credit: Meet Your Heroes (444Hz), Composed, mixed, mastered and produced by Michael RB Schwartz of Brave Bear Music

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