Emotions

General Resources

Your Resonant Self by Sarah Peyton
- Neuroscience-informed practices for moving from internal conflict and savage criticism, to internal spaciousness, self-compassion, fluid action
- You can download free audio meditations that go along with the book, and may also be useful on their own
“Rational approaches to emotions” – Kaj Sotala
- Discusses NVC, which has been a foundational resource for me in working with emotions
“Eleven Techniques For Emotional Awareness” – Agenty Duck

Depression and anxiety

“Things that sometimes help if you have depression” – Slate Star Codex
“Things that sometimes work if you have anxiety” – Slate Star Codex
“How I found & fixed the root problem behind my depression and anxiety after 20+ years” – Kaj Sotala
- He’s also written an 18-month follow-up to that work, and a series on parts work
Adventures with Anxiety! – a free 30-min online game by Nicky Case, where you play as the anxiety wolf, trying to protect your human! It’s based on the game designer’s personal experiences with anxiety, and comes with a page on mental health resources, which describes an approach very resonant with everything else I’ve listed here.

Working with difficult emotions

The Replacing Guilt series – Minding Our Way. The whole series is great, and I reference these especially often:
“The power of vulnerability” – TED talk by Brené Brown (see also “Listening to shame“)
“How to make stress your friend” – TED talk by Kelly McGonigal
“Why you should define your fears instead of your goals” – TED talk by Tim Ferriss

Grief

I am not an expert on grief, in personal or professional experience. I have found these resources, and I hope they might help.

“To Those Who Weren’t As Lucky” – a video by Teafaerie, and here’s the text
- A tribute to alternate selves, written after her partner’s death
“Grappling with the Deepest Mystery,” ch. 16 in I Am a Strange Loop by Douglas Hofstadter
- An exploration of how the academic ideas in his book became deeply personal, after his wife’s sudden death
“The Obliterated Place” – Dear Sugar
- Her response to a letter writer, on the death of his son

Two comics on a theme

Getting in touch with a larger sense of self can help hold compassionate space for emotions, relating to them as the object of our experience (and as valuable indicators of needs), rather than as something we’re subject to.

“Probably the best way to deal with your feelings is to locate them in your body. Feeling your emotions as body sensations takes much of the scariness out of them. Feelings are always located somewhere: a tightness in the throat, a quivery sensation in the solar plexus, a heaviness in the shoulders. But until you pinpoint the feeling as a body sensation it can seem monstrous, bigger than you are. In fact, the first key move in releasing yourself from the grip of a feeling is to locate it in time and space.”

— From Conscious Loving, by Gay & Kathlyn Hendricks

The Guest House

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice.
meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.

Be grateful for whatever comes.
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

— Jellaludin Rumi,
translation by Coleman Barks

Happiness, awe, and ecstatic wonder

“That the natural state of the human spirit is ecstatic wonder! That we should not settle for less!”

– NCSA constitution, New College of Florida (my alma mater!)

“If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands!” But how do you know if you’re happy? Do you only know what it’s like to feel happy in contrast to feeling unhappy, the same way in which you only know sound in contrast to silence, or light in contrast to dark? If suffering is suboptimal, but some contrast is required for a conscious experience of bliss, what is the optimal amount, magnitude, and distribution of non-bliss experiences? (If there’s happiness but no contrast, clap one hand!)

There’s also research on the differences between:

“Experienced well-being” (hedonic well-being, positive vs. negative emotions)
“Evaluative well-being” (life satisfaction), and
“Eudaimonic well-being” (sense of purpose and meaning, human flourishing)