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Common emotional experiences such as anger, frustration, sadness, or anxiety can impact well-being and decision-making. In fact, research suggests emotional experiences can both offer beneficial drives for decision making but can also undermine or harm decision-making.1 “When it comes to problem solving, emotions that run high or are intense may not enable us to be mindful,” says Deborah Serani, PsyD, professor … Read more

Alexithymia, also known as, “emotional blindness” refers to a difficulty or an inability to identify, experience, and describe your emotions. Alexithymia is not listed as a mental health condition in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5). However, it’s a symptom frequently seen by mental health professionals and is linked to psychiatric conditions … Read more

Anguish is an intense and complex emotional state caused by mental or physical suffering. When people experience anguish, they often feel extreme distress, sadness, torment, turmoil, and inner pain. While such feelings are often associated with losses or trauma, other overwhelming life challenges can also trigger this emotional state. tl;dr Anguish feels like deep sorrow … Read more

True to its name, emotional flooding is a surge of intense emotions that can quickly overwhelm you. In this overstimulated state, your body can shut down and it becomes difficult to manage your feelings or think clearly. This can cause you to mentally withdraw, experience emotional outbursts, or go into a flight, fight, or freeze … Read more

We all have that one person in our lives who pushes all our buttons. You know the one—they’re an expert at guilt trips, and instead of supporting our choices, they make us feel bad for putting our own needs first. It could be a parent, partner, friend, or colleague—anyone who uses our emotions against us to … Read more

Some of us have an easy time believing and understanding that other people love us even when they aren’t physically present, and for others, that idea can feel hard to fathom. The notion of being able to have faith in how others feel about us is called emotional permanence. At a Glance Emotional permanence is … Read more

You’ve likely heard the expression, “smiling is contagious,” and instantly smiled back when someone flashed a grin at you. Or maybe the phrase, “misery loves company,” and watched as someone else’s sour disposition affected an entire group of people. Or perhaps you’ve noticed that if someone you care about is hurting, you feel pain right … Read more

None of us like to be told to smile more, but there is little denying that smiling does have benefits, both for the smiler and whoever is being smiled at. Smiling can convey that we like someone, or that we’re happy or friendly, and is generally correlated with positive emotion. Research shows that smiling can even strengthen … Read more

We’ve all heard the phrase “It’s OK to not be OK.” And sometimes, pretending like you’re OK just feels impossible. But what if someone greets you with an innocuous “How are you?” You might not feel like responding with a simple “I’m fine,” but coming up with a response that is both appropriate for the … Read more

We all feel ashamed of ourselves now and again—maybe we turned in a project for work that we knew could have been better, or we were unkind to someone we should have treated with more patience. But these understandable and relatively short-lived feelings of shame are very different from toxic shame. Toxic shame is the chronic feeling … Read more