Have you ever wished you had flash cards for your emotions? In this video Karla introduces her Language of Emotions card set. This card set is a quick and easy way to reference the skills in each of the 17 emotions and each of the 5 Empathic Mindfulness practices.
In our Emotion Dynamics Facebook group, we search for images or messages that treat emotions and empathy with respect, but we don’t find many. So we create our own! This meme about sadness celebrates its gifts, and it challenges a lot of the messages we receive about avoiding sadness at all costs. Feel free to share this Better Meme. If you’ve read The Language of Emotions … Read More
A New Approach to Understanding and Managing Alcoholism and Other Addictive Behaviors, by Lance Dodes, M.D. This month’s Great Read is a groundbreaking and empathic way to view and treat addictions, not as a character flaw or a disease, but as an attempt to address emotional pain. Lance Dodes is a retired clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard who watched people repeatedly fail sobriety programs — … Read More
How can you speak about emotions with people who don’t want to talk about them? In this video, Karla McLaren introduces the concept of “stress” as a weasel word that people use to avoid or hide from their emotional awareness. “Stress is an emotional reaction. To use the word stress is a way to hide emotional awareness from ourselves.” Luckily, you can increase your vocabulary … Read More
In our Emotion Dynamics Facebook group, we try to find memes and posts that are respectful toward emotions and empathy, but they’re hard to find. Especially about anger! So we made our own. Feel free to share this Better Meme about anger. This one helps people understand that anger is about setting boundaries, and that we can do that with strength and love. Excellent! If you’ve read … Read More
The Practical Guide for Discovering the Genius in Your Emotions, by Karla McLaren, M.Ed. This month’s Great Read is a workbook that can help you understand each of your 17 emotions and learn the Empathic Mindfulness practices that can help you work directly with your emotions in surprising new ways. Based on Karla McLaren’s The Language of Emotions, this workbook helps you understand the ideas behind Dynamic … Read More
This month, we’re focusing on your emotional vocabulary, and how it can help you understand and regulate your emotions. In this video, Karla McLaren explores the importance of having a large emotional vocabulary to describe how you’re feeling. Understanding and being able to describe your emotions in their different intensities can help you become more emotionally aware, and more emotionally skilled. You can download this … Read More
In our Facebook group, The Language of Emotions and Empathy, we search for images and and posts that treat emotions with respect, but it’s difficult! Emotions tend to be treated badly, as if they create problems. They don’t. They bring you the energy and intelligence you need to address the problems. Your emotions are brilliant and they can change your life, so we created this Better … Read More
A Complete Guide to Life’s Most Essential Skill, by Karla McLaren, M.Ed. This month’s Great Read is an in-depth exploration of empathy — what it is, how it works, how it develops, and how you can develop your own healthy empathy. Karla McLaren grew up as a hyper-empathic person who once thought that empathy was a psychic skill (it’s not). She realized her mistake, and dove into … Read More
We’re starting a monthly series to share videos from our YouTube page that can help you explore emotions and empathy through the Dynamic Emotional Integration framework. In this video, author and social science researcher Karla McLaren talks about her books The Language of Emotions and The Art of Empathy. She introduces emotions as essential to everything we think and do, and focuses on empathy as … Read More