John M.

“Interior turmoil arises when we realize that we may have hurt, degraded, or frightened someone with our many outbursts. We’ll feel some sense of release with the expression of our strong emotions, but we’ll be disappointed about our poor relating skills or ashamed about our lack of control. Expressing strong emotions at others can damage our ego structure and our sense of self-esteem. Then, our lowered self-esteem tends to make us less able to manage our emotions properly the next time, and we tend to slide into an almost uncontrollable habit of flinging our strong emotions all over the place. We become trapped in a cycle of attacks and retreats, enmeshment and isolation, and explosions and apologies. Our internal checks and balances seem to get broken, and we become emotionally volatile.”
― Karla McLaren, The Language of Emotions: What Your Feelings Are Trying to Tell You: Revised and Updated

“intelligences. If we subscribe to the false idea that being emotional is the opposite of being rational, we’ll set up”
― Karla McLaren, The Language of Emotions: What Your Feelings Are Trying to Tell You: Revised and Updated

“cry as often as you need to. It’s the all-purpose healing balm of the soul.”
― Karla McLaren, The Language of Emotions: What Your Feelings Are Trying to Tell You: Revised and Updated

“If we ignore and repress an emotion, we won’t erase its message—we’ll just shoot the messenger and interfere with an important natural process. The unconscious then has two choices: to increase the intensity of the emotion and present it to us one more time (this is how unresolving moods or escalating emotional suffering may be activated), or to give up on us and stuff the emotional energy deep into our psyches. Now, that instinct will no longer be readable as itself—as fear or anger or despair—but it will still contain all its original intensity and information. Usually, this squelched intensity mutates into something else, like tics, compulsions, psychosomatic illness, addictions, or neuroses. Repressing our emotions is a perilous way to manage them.”
― Karla McLaren, The Language of Emotions: What Your Feelings Are Trying to Tell You: Revised and Updated