Mark: Michelle, I'm going to list some new emotion characters for the next Inside Out movie, based on this book. You tell me which historical figure should voice them. First up: "Suppressed Rage." Michelle: Oh, that's easy. A 1950s dad who just got yelled at by his boss. Next: "Vague, Unnamed Dread." Mark: My bank account. Michelle: (Laughs) Okay, last one: "Performative Happiness." Mark: The orthodontist who needs everyone around him to be in a state of constant bliss, even while he's rearranging their jawbones with metal wires. Michelle: You are learning! Well, if you've ever felt more than just Joy and Sadness, our book today is definitely for you. Mark: It is. We're diving into Permission to Feel by Marc Brackett. And this book is a powerhouse. It’s been highly rated by thousands of readers and praised by everyone from Brené Brown to the U.S. Surgeon General. Michelle: And Brackett isn't just a writer; he's the founding director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence. This book comes from over two decades of rigorous research, but what makes it so compelling is that it’s also born from his own incredibly painful childhood, which he's very open about. Mark: Exactly. It's that blend of hard science and raw, personal story that makes it so powerful. And that personal story is key, because it kicks off the book's first major idea: the immense, often invisible, cost we pay for ignoring our feelings.

Michelle: Cost? That sounds a little dramatic. I mean, we're all taught to be tough, to have a stiff upper lip. What's the actual harm in just saying "I'm fine" and getting on with your day? Mark: Well, the book argues that the harm is staggering. Brackett calls it going into "emotional lockdown." We think we're just pushing a feeling aside, but what we're really doing is building a dam. And the pressure behind that dam—the anxiety, the stress, the sadness—it doesn't just disappear. It builds. Michelle: And eventually, the dam breaks. Mark: Precisely. And the book is filled with data that shows this isn't just a metaphor. He points to skyrocketing rates of anxiety and depression, especially among kids. One study found anxiety disorders affect 25% of children between thirteen and eighteen. At work, Gallup polls show over half of employees are disengaged, with 13% of those being actively "miserable." This isn't just a few people having a bad day; it's a societal crisis. Michelle: Wow. Those numbers are huge. It’s not just an individual problem, it’s a systemic one. Mark: It is. And Brackett’s own story is one of the most powerful case studies in the book. He talks about growing up with intense bullying and, even more traumatically, sexual abuse from a neighbor. He was a child dealing with immense fear, shame, and anger. But he couldn't express it. His parents, though loving, were dealing with their own unresolved emotional issues and didn't have the tools to help him. Michelle: That’s awful for a kid to have to carry alone. Mark: It was. And the cost was very real. He developed a mysterious gastrointestinal ailment, and later, an eating disorder. The unexpressed emotions were literally making him sick. He was in complete emotional lockdown, feeling numb just to survive. Michelle: Okay, but that's a very extreme and tragic case. For most of us, isn't it just... inconvenient to be emotional? I think of that orthodontist you mentioned, forcing happiness. We do that to each other all the time. "Don't worry, be happy!" Mark: We do, and that's the core of the problem. We treat emotions as an inconvenience to be managed away. There's a fantastic, if grim, quote from Emily Brontë that fits here: "The tyrant grinds down his slaves and they don't turn against him; they crush those beneath them." Michelle: Oh, that's dark. But I see the connection. Mark: It's that classic 1950s dad example. He gets yelled at by his boss all day, so he "sucks it up." He doesn't have the permission to feel his anger or humiliation. So he comes home and that suppressed emotion doesn't vanish. It leaks out. He snaps at his kid for dropping a plate. The emotion is transferred, and the cycle continues. Michelle: He crushes the one beneath him. Mark: Exactly. The book makes it clear that denying our feelings doesn't make them go away. It just ensures they'll come out sideways, often hurting ourselves and the people we love most. The cost of emotional suppression isn't just personal discomfort; it's broken relationships, toxic workplaces, and a society struggling with its mental health. The book projects that by 2030, the global economic cost of mental health problems could be up to $16 trillion. Michelle: Sixteen trillion? That's an unbelievable figure. So, the strategy of "sucking it up" is officially a failed experiment. Mark: A catastrophically failed experiment. We've been taught that being strong means being stoic, but Brackett argues that true strength lies in having the courage to feel.

Mark: And that's the perfect transition. We treat emotions as these inconvenient problems to be judged and dismissed. But Brackett's whole argument is that we should approach them like scientists. And he gives us the lab equipment to do it. Michelle: A lab for feelings? I'm intrigued. Is this where we get into the self-help part of the book? Mark: In a way, but it's incredibly practical and evidence-based. He introduces a framework he developed at Yale called RULER. It's an acronym for the five skills of what he calls an "emotion scientist." Michelle: Okay, RULER sounds a bit like a corporate acronym. Break it down for me. Mark: It's simple but profound. R-U-L-E-R stands for: Recognizing, Understanding, Labeling, Expressing, and Regulating. Michelle: Alright, let's walk through that. Recognizing seems straightforward. Mark: It is, but it's the crucial first step. It's just pausing to ask, "What am I feeling right now?" He introduces this tool called the Mood Meter, which is basically a graph with two axes: one for pleasantness, from negative to positive, and one for energy, from low to high. It helps you plot where you are. Are you in the high-energy, unpleasant red zone, like anger? Or the low-energy, unpleasant blue zone, like sadness? Michelle: So the Mood Meter is like a GPS for your feelings. I like that. What about Understanding? Mark: Understanding is asking "why?" Why am I feeling this way? What triggered this? This is where you become a detective of your own inner world. Michelle: And Labeling? I've heard that phrase, "If you can name it, you can tame it." Is that the idea? Mark: That's exactly it, and he quotes that directly. The science behind it is fascinating. Studies show that when you put a precise word to a feeling, it actually reduces the activity in the amygdala—the brain's alarm center—and increases activity in the prefrontal cortex, the part responsible for rational thought. You're literally moving from reacting to thinking. Michelle: Wow. So it's not just a cute rhyme. It's neuroscience. Mark: It's neuroscience. And this is where one of the most moving stories in the book comes in. Brackett talks about his own father, who in his late seventies, was having these terrible rages at his wife, Jane. Everyone thought he was just an angry old man. Michelle: A classic emotion judge, not a scientist. Mark: Exactly. But Brackett, using his skills, started asking questions. He realized his dad's anger always flared up when Jane was babysitting her grandson. He wasn't angry; he was jealous. He felt he was losing his wife's attention. When Brackett gently labeled it for him—"Dad, do you think you might be feeling jealous?"—his father broke down and cried. He'd never had the word for his feeling. Michelle: And naming it changed everything? Mark: It created an opening. It allowed him to understand his own behavior. A month later, Jane called to say he was a different person. That's the power of labeling. It gives you authorship over your own life. Without the right words, we're just reacting to a script we don't even know we're following. Michelle: That brings us to Expressing. I can definitely relate to this one. I once told a friend a worry I'd been holding onto for weeks, and I physically felt a weight lift off my chest. It was shocking. I thought, "Oh, I should have been doing this the whole time?" Mark: That's a perfect example. James Pennebaker's research, which Brackett cites, shows that expressing emotions—either by talking or writing—has incredible health benefits: improved immune function, lower blood pressure, better moods. But we're so afraid of it. We don't want to be a burden, or we fear judgment. Michelle: Or we think it makes us look weak. Mark: Right. Which leads to the final step: Regulating. This isn't about suppressing the emotion. Now that you've recognized, understood, labeled, and expressed it, what are you going to do? This is where you choose a strategy. It could be mindful breathing, cognitive reframing—like telling yourself a different story about the situation—or even a healthy distraction. Michelle: I'm very good at the distraction part. My Netflix queue can attest to that. Mark: (Laughs) We all are. But the point of RULER is that regulation is the last step, not the first. For most of our lives, we skip straight to "regulate" by trying to ignore or distract ourselves, without ever doing the work of understanding what we're actually feeling. RULER gives us a process to do that work, to become scientists of our own hearts.

Michelle: So if we can learn these skills individually, what happens when we start applying them together—in our families or at work? Does it actually change the system? Mark: That's the final, and most hopeful, part of the book. He calls for an "Emotion Revolution." It's about taking these skills and building them into the fabric of our institutions. Michelle: That sounds ambitious. How does that actually work in practice? Mark: He gives some amazing examples. My favorite is the story of a family where the father had a huge outburst at his six-year-old son, David. The dad was a classic "emotion judge," yelling and sending the kid to his room. But his ten-year-old son, Jason, had been learning RULER at his school. Michelle: Oh, this is going to be good. Mark: The next morning, the father finds a note Jason wrote for his little brother. It was a script. It said, "When Dad yells, you feel scared. You should tell him, 'Dad, when you yell, I feel scared, and what I need is for you to speak calmly.'" And at the bottom, Jason wrote, "I think we should make a Family Charter." Michelle: A ten-year-old coached his own father on emotional regulation! Mark: Exactly! The father was floored. He realized he'd been a terrible role model. The family sat down and created a charter, a written agreement about how they all wanted to feel in their home—supported, safe, respected—and what they would do to make that happen. The skills the son learned at school started a revolution in their home. Michelle: A 'Family Charter' sounds amazing, but also a bit formal. How does a family actually start that conversation without it feeling weird or like a business meeting? Mark: Brackett suggests starting simply. Ask two questions: "How do we want to feel in our home?" and "What can we do to help each other feel that way?" It's not about creating rigid rules, but about co-creating an emotional environment. It gives everyone, even the kids, a voice and a sense of ownership. Michelle: And what about the workplace? It feels like the final frontier for emotions. We're all supposed to be professional, which usually means robotic. Mark: It's a huge problem. He cites studies showing that supervisors with strong emotion skills have teams that are 50% more inspired and 40% less stressed. Yet so many workplaces are emotionally barren. He talks about the importance of what researchers call "companionate love" at work. Michelle: "Companionate love?" That sounds like something you'd get fired for at most companies. Mark: (Laughs) It sounds that way, but it just means genuine affection, compassion, and caring for your colleagues as human beings. And the data shows that in workplaces with this kind of culture, employee exhaustion and absenteeism plummet. People don't leave jobs, they leave bad bosses and toxic cultures. Emotionally intelligent leadership isn't a perk; it's a competitive advantage.

Mark: Ultimately, this book isn't just about feeling better. It's about being more effective, more connected, and more human. Brackett makes a powerful case that emotional intelligence isn't a "soft skill"—it's the foundational skill for everything else. Michelle: It’s the operating system that runs all the other programs. Mark: That's a perfect way to put it. And the stakes are incredibly high. When you look at the data he presents—the $16 trillion projected global cost of mental health issues, the 120,000 deaths a year that may be attributable to workplace stress in the U.S. alone—you realize that ignoring our emotions is literally killing us and costing us a fortune. Michelle: It’s a public health crisis that we're all contributing to every time we say "I'm fine" when we're not. Mark: Exactly. The "permission to feel" isn't an indulgence. It's a necessity. It’s the first step in a revolution that needs to happen in our schools, our companies, and most importantly, within ourselves. Michelle: It really makes you wonder, what's one feeling you've been avoiding this week? And what might happen if you just gave yourself permission to actually feel it, even for a minute? Mark: A powerful question. We'd love to hear your thoughts. Find us on our socials and share one word that describes how you want to feel this week. Let's start the conversation. Michelle: This is Aibrary, signing off.