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The WorkWell Podcast™ is back and I am so excited about the inspiring guests we have lined up. Wellbeing at work is the issue of our time. This podcast is your lens into what the experts are seeing, thinking, and doing.
Hi, I am Jen Fisher, host, bestselling author and influential speaker in the corporate wellbeing movement and the first-ever Chief Wellbeing Officer in the professional services industry. On this show, I sit down with inspiring individuals for wide-ranging conversations on all things wellbeing at work. Wellbeing is the future of work. This podcast will help you as an individual, but also support you in being part of the movement for change in your own organizations and communities. Wellbeing can be the outcome of work well designed. And we all have a role to play in this critical transformation!
This podcast provides general information and discussions about health and wellness. The content is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on this podcast. The podcast owner, producer and any sponsors are not liable for any health-related claims or decisions made based on the information presented or discussed.
Jen Fisher: [00:00:00] What if everything we've been told about dealing with our emotions at work is completely wrong? What if the key to better performance, stronger relationships, and actual sanity isn't about managing our feelings, but actually brace yourselves, feeling them, all of them, even the messy, inconvenient, scary ones.
This is the Work Well podcast series. Hi, I'm Jen Fisher and I'm excited to have a very special co-host joining me today from our friends at Lyra Health. Dr. Joe Grasso is a licensed clinical psychologist and the VP of Workforce Transformation and customer marketing at Lyra Health, where he focuses on helping Lyra clients design working conditions that drive sustainable performance and engagement.
Joe brings deep expertise in helping literally all of us promote and protect mental wellbeing for the good of individuals, organizations, and society. Together, Joe and I are talking with Dr. [00:01:00] Mark Bracket, the founding director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence and Professor in the Child Study Center at Yale School of Medicine.
Mark's bestselling book, permission to Feel has revolutionized how we think about emotions in schools and workplaces, and his new book, dealing With Feeling goes even deeper, challenging us to stop running from our emotional lives and start actually living them.
This episode of The Work Well Podcast is made possible because of our friends at Lyra Health. Lyra Health is a premier global workforce mental health solution trusted by leading companies like Starbucks, Morgan Stanley, Lululemon, and Zoom. Lyra provides personalized care to over 17 million people with fast access to evidence-based providers and tools that deliver proven results, including faster recovery and reduced healthcare costs.[00:02:00]
This season Lira and the Work Well Podcast are teaming up to bring you more insights on how to build a thriving work culture for today and the future. We'll be bringing you cutting edge data and research on workplace mental health and wellbeing, and we'll have some lira X. Experts occasionally join us to share their perspectives on workforce mental health and creating psychologically safe and effective work environments.
Find out more@lirahealth.com slash work. Well, thank you to Lira for helping us elevate this season of the Work Well Podcast, mark and Joe, welcome to the show.
JOe: Thanks so much. Thank you.
Jen Fisher: Yeah, absolutely. So Mark, I'm just gonna dive right in. Uh, I wanna start with the elephant in the room because I personally have a lot of feelings and when I mean a lot, I mean a lot.
So like anger, anxiety, excitement, dread, joy. And this is usually all before my morning coffee. So [00:03:00] you're telling me, and maybe my morning coffee doesn't help that sometimes, but you're telling me I'm supposed to feel all of these feelings.
Dr. Brackett: Well, first, I'm not telling you, you're supposed to feel those feelings.
You're feeling them.
Jen Fisher: Well, that's fair.
Dr. Brackett: I think the first step is just basically acknowledge I'm having these feelings and not, you know, you're already, I hate to say this, but you're approaching it as what I call an emotion judge. As opposed to an emotion scientist, so you're already thinking that something is wrong with you when you seem great.
Jen Fisher: That sounds so simple though.
Dr. Brackett: I mean, it's not simple because, you know, we have been brought up in a society and with parents and educators who taught us something differently. You know, we were taught to think that, you know, anger or sadness, fear, disgust, whatever it might be, that we call negative emotions.
That they're bad emotions and we're supposed to get rid of them and life is [00:04:00] gonna be better when you don't have them. And the goal should be to be happy all the time. But, uh, I think we all know that's not realistic. There's no such thing as a bad emotion from our perspective.
Jen Fisher: So then how would you, how, how do you describe emotions?
They just are what they are. They're human. They're part of the human experience.
Dr. Brackett: Exactly. I mean, we don't. Wanna have so-called negative emotions all the time. 'cause then our lives would not be very pretty. Um, but we can't avoid feeling them. And so when we do have them, I think the question is, you know, am I gonna have this forever or is this this, is this just a short term experience?
If it's a short term experience, then okay, so high anxiety, good morning and maybe I'll see you later today. Maybe not. Um, if you think it's gonna be with you for a while and it's gonna disrupt your day or your life, or your relationships, or your decision making, then [00:05:00] that's telling you that you have a need to be met and you gotta learn some strategies.
So
Joe Grasso : I love how intuitively you frame it, and I think for a lot of people it makes sense intellectually, but I just know as a psychologist, one of the hardest parts of my job is helping people actually want to feel their feelings or feel like they can feel their feelings. And I'm sure you get that kind of pushback a lot.
So I'm curious how you
Dr. Brackett: speak to that pushback. Well, I mean we only have about 45 minutes, but um, I think the first step is to understand that emotions are ephemeral. That you know, today where I live right now, it is a gorgeous sunny day. It's a bit hot, but it's a gorgeous sunny day the other day. It was a rainy day.
Now I happen to live in a house that has a ton of windows, and so [00:06:00] my, my house feels like, you know, the weather and the rainy days. My house is kind of dark and gloomy, the sunny days. My house is bright and cheerful on rainy days. Sometimes I have this feeling like, is this ever gonna go away? And I think a lot of people feel that way about their strong, unpleasant feelings.
They feel like they're a toothache that won't ever go away.
JOe: Hmm.
Dr. Brackett: But we know, you know, the law of nature is that. Life is impermanent. Feelings are impermanent. And I think we, we have to learn that lesson and, and understand that principle early on. And if we do, then when it's a rainy day, you know, we'll realize, okay, today's a rainy day.
I can do other things on rainy days and tomorrow will be a sunny day. And the same thing applies, by the way, when it's a sunny day. We just want it to be sunny all the time, but it's not gonna be sunny all the time. And so we can appreciate the sunny days and appreciate the, uh, [00:07:00] rainy days.
Jen Fisher: So when I'm feeling all of these things, how, how do we engage in everyday life when we're, you know, feeling these things?
Dr. Brackett: I just wrote a whole new book on emotion regulation and it's called Dealing with Feeling, and it actually was a result of me falling apart. As the expert in emotional intelligence during the pandemic, you know, my mother-in-law was living with us, not by choice. Meaning that she came from Panama for a wedding that we had a close friend of mine.
And lo and behold, the wedding was March 5th, 2020. And then, uh, you know, the world shut down on March 13th and there were no flights back to Panama for eight months. So, um, Iran got stuck with us and love it, Renee, but I don't love living with her. And, um, anyhow, long story short is that it got really ugly in our house.
You know, lot everybody has control issues. Everybody wants coffee. [00:08:00] When they want coffee. They wanna eat what they wanna eat, and they don't want salt or they want salt, whatever the heck it is. And we had a meltdown. And I lost it. And I said to myself, how is it possible that the director of the Center for freaking emotional intelligence cannot regulate?
And it was really a wake up call to me about a here I was like, I have a lot of knowledge and a lot of skill, but I was in a moment in my life where I was really being tested and I just thought, how many people. Don't have the education, I have the clinical training, the background, and like how are they dealing with their feelings?
So I share that with you because then I launched this massive study with thousands upon thousands of people across the world. And I asked people like, how are you feeling? And what are you doing? And people were stressed, overwhelmed, fearful. And they were eating, drinking, yelling, screaming.
JOe: Yeah.
Dr. Brackett: And like, is that what you wanna do?
Um, anyhow, uh. I got this idea that people really [00:09:00] needed a guide to help them regulate. And so that's what I've been working on for the last five years of my life. And going back to the opening point you made about like, mark, I'm filling this and this and this. What my research shows is that the first step in dealing with your feeling is giving yourself permission to feel.
JOe: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Brackett: And so. Okay, so I'm anxious about the upcoming test as a student. Oh, I'm anxious about the meeting with my boss. Okay, well that probably means that you care about the meeting. Because some people wouldn't give a darn if they're having a meeting and they'll probably not be prepared for it. Your anxiety is a signal that you care about this, and so it's telling you to prepare.
Oh, wow. That's interesting. So it's not a bad thing. It means that I actually care about my work. Yeah, it is. Oh, wow. That's cool. Do you see how I'm like reframing kind of immediately where I'm not [00:10:00] saying that anxiety, you know, is bad?
JOe: Mm-hmm. I'm saying
Dr. Brackett: it's information. That makes, that makes
Joe Grasso : sense to me.
And I think for a lot of folks, the way to deal with the discomfort of having to confront that information is often to just avoid it and, and I think that happens a lot, especially in high pressure work environments where. Your buttons are being pushed, you're under deadlines. There's a lot of things to your point that you care about that you're being asked to weigh in on or salvage or problem solve around.
So I'm, I'm curious from your perspective, how do you describe what's happening in our brains when the go-to strategy is avoidance? What's what's happening for us in those situations? What should we do instead when we're in that kind of work environment where we're being provoked, but we have to keep it professional?
Dr. Brackett: Sure. Well, I think number one [00:11:00] is that emotion regulation is a hundred percent learned. So I would say that somehow, like I grew up in a family where. My parents. One was an avoider, one was an attacker. And so what did I learn? What are my go-to strategies as an adult? I can't handle this, you know, locking myself in my room or whatever it might be.
Or it's like, who do you think you are talking to me? That way you're fired. You know, like it's kind of reactive or like run away. That's all learned. And so I just wanna say that it's a really important point because I think it's also encouraging because that means you can unlearn it and then learn something that's more helpful to your wellbeing and your relationships and your workplace performance.
So that's my take on it, is that it's learned. In my research I talk about there are people who are these emotion scientists versus the emotion judges. And so we have to ask ourselves at some [00:12:00] point in our lives is how I'm dealing with my feelings working for me or against me. Is that avoidance helping me achieve my goals?
Or am I not getting the raise because I'm afraid to ask my boss is, you know, my anxiety getting in the way of me, you know, asking for the promotion or whatever it might be.
Joe Grasso : Mm-hmm. I, I love that because in that example, you're highlighting it's not just the avoidance of the emotion, it's the avoidance of behaviors that are gonna move you potentially in the direction of where you want to go.
Dr. Brackett: Correct. And it's the behavior that's causing the feeling. It's the anticipation, right? So it's the uncertainty. Around the outcome that I'm afraid of, which creates the anxiety, which then creates the avoidance. It, it's this big circle because I'm imagining that's an anticipatory kind of emotion where I've conjured up in my head that I'm gonna be rejected, or I'm gonna be told no.
Who do you think you want? Well, you're gonna get a raise. Like you don't even, you're not even doing a good job [00:13:00] now. And so if that's your mindset and what your kind of, the behavior, if you wanna call it that, that's in your brain. Then that's gonna inhibit you because the anxiety has overcome you.
Jen Fisher: Mark, I am really interested in, in, and I hope I get this right, you talk about, uh, emotion judges versus emotion scientists or feeling judges versus a feeling scientist.
Can you tell me a little bit more about that?
Dr. Brackett: I certainly can. So, um. I came up with this idea actually when I wrote my book called Permission to Feel because. I realized that people walk around with mindsets about emotions and either they approach them with curiosity or they approach them with judgment or fear, and I started breaking it down.
So what would an emotion scientist versus an emotion judge really look like in specifically? So the first [00:14:00] is that the emotion scientist recognizes that emotions are data, their information, the emotion, judge. Right. Sees emotions as something to be avoided or ignored, suppressed, denied the emotion.
Scientist is very curious and wants to get granular about their feelings, like is it anger or is it disappointment? Is it anxiety or overwhelm? The emotion judge is like, I feel like crap. I feel fine. There's no difference, you know, in terms of granularity within positive or negative emotions. And then another big one.
Is that the emotion scientists, because they're researchers about their emotional lives. When they mess up, they're curious about why they mess up. Like the story I gave about my mother-in-law, my mother-in-law who we had a meltdown with, and you know, the night, that night after we had this huge fight, I went to bed and I'm like, mark.
You're the director of the Center for Emotional Intelligence. You know, you could probably do better, you know, what was [00:15:00] the reason why you were so reactive and what might be your strategy moving forward. And so the scientist is kind of thinking about what, what's possible. And the judge is saying, this is who you are, mark.
You know, there's nothing you can do about it. And I think that's an important distinction. So it's the kind of, uh. Curiosity. It's the granularity and it's the growth mindset as opposed to the critical judge who has a fixed mindset.
Jen Fisher: And are there some specific strategies of, 'cause I would imagine that we all have moments of being the judger.
Mm-hmm. So are there things that we can do, maybe not in the moment, but in the aftermath of. Helping ourselves switch from being the judger to becoming more of a scientist. [00:16:00]
Dr. Brackett: I think it's awareness, you know it's education. Yeah. Because if you were raised by the emotion judge, like my father was an emotion judge, he would say things like, son, this is the way I do with my anger.
You're gonna have to learn how to get over it. I'm like, oh now as an adult I'm like, oh dad. So like you're not willing to do anything. It's all about everybody else changing, you know, to make you happy. Like that's not really that cool. Um, and so, you know, my learning, 'cause I am an emotion judge too sometimes, and I have had anxiety my whole life.
And I worry about everything. And I worry about why. I worry. And sometimes I even worry about why. I worry about why I worry.
Jen Fisher: You and me both. Okay,
Dr. Brackett: good. And then I'm like, mark, like really? What are you worried about? You have a good life. Oh yeah. But something might go wrong. And that was kind of the message that my grandparents and my parents had growing up.
Like, you laugh now. You cry later. [00:17:00] And I'm like, that is not healthy, like I'm telling you. And so. I didn't know that, you know, until I went for therapy, until I studied, you know, meditation until I got a PhD in psychology. And so now I know that like that way of thinking is not helpful. There's gotta be a better way.
And then you start learning helpful strategies, like giving yourself permission to feel like breathing exercises, like going from blaming to reframing, and you realize that. Life is better, your relationships are better. You feel better when you use those strategies as opposed to the other ones.
Joe Grasso : I, I liked your point from earlier, mark, about how these strategies are learned.
You can, you can learn them. And when I think about who probably needs to learn these strategies the most, I think about men because of all the research on masculinity that shows adhering. This [00:18:00] idea of real men stay stoic. Is both very common and very harmful. You know, you see higher rates of depression, substance use suicide in men, and that message just continues to get reinforced from all sides, so, mm-hmm.
I'm curious if you can kind of apply this approach to how it can help men to unlearn some of this emotional restriction, uh, in, in ways that could. Support their mental health and that, and un learning some bad habits and, and learning some better ones.
Dr. Brackett: Again, you know, it's interesting that you bring this up because that's developmental too.
Mm-hmm. In my work, uh, I do a lot in school systems. I work with superintendents and principals and teachers and students themselves and. It's funny because if you put me into a kindergarten classroom or a first grade classroom and you ask kids to talk [00:19:00] about emotions, the boys and the girls are willing to do it.
Although it's starting to change, uh, there's the toxic masculinity has leaked into our early years. Gosh. Yep. I had a boy tell me recently, I don't wanna burden you with my feelings. I'm like, burden me? You're five years old. Um, but it's there. Um, or like, you know, be a tough boy, you know, toughen up kiddo.
My father was that way. Um, he would always say things to me like, son, you gotta toughen up. And here I'm, by the way, I'm 55 now. I have a fifth degree black belt in the martial arts. I became a martial arts instructor and I still do not think of myself as a tough guy. I mean, I can beat people up, but I choose, I choose the emotionally.
It depends on your
Jen Fisher: definition of tough. Right,
Dr. Brackett: exactly. Um. But I, it's an important point because the mindset, I'll give you another example. I gave a speech a while back and a dad came up to me and he's like, [00:20:00] man, you're vulnerable. And I said, yeah. And like, what do you think? He's like, I can't even begin to go where you went in your presentation.
Wow. And I said, tell me more. He's like, well, you talked about all the bullying you had as a kid. And I said, yeah, I did. And it was tough and it was awful and nobody did anything about it. And he is like, yeah, I get that. But like I would never let my son know that I was bullied as a kid. And Wow. Said, well, tell me more.
And he said, well, because then my son would really think I'm weak.
JOe: Hmm.
Dr. Brackett: And so that was where the discussion began. I just asked him some questions. Why do you think that? And then I said to him, do you think that maybe kind of your mindset around this could impact if your kid was being bullied? Maybe they wouldn't feel comfortable reaching out to you to tell you, would you wanna know if your kid was being [00:21:00] victimized or you know, someone's, you know, being someone was being mean or cruel to your kid.
He's like, yeah, of course. I said, well. Think about it, you know, what are the message you're sending toughen up. Your kid might think, I can't tell my dad because my dad will think I'm weak. Wow. And so, I mean, I'm, I have the courage to do that now. I didn't have that courage, you know, 10, 15 years ago. But, um, I think that politely challenging people on those beliefs is the way to go.
That,
Joe Grasso : that makes a lot of sense. And I, I see this a lot in working with men in therapy that mm-hmm. There's just been this chronic avoidance of emotion over their lifetime because of the developmental reasons that you mentioned. And gosh, you, you did such a great job of showing how this is just like a generationally passed down set of norms Exactly.
That get perpetuated, but [00:22:00] it feels like. More recently, it's intersecting with this loneliness epidemic and, and I can't help but wonder how this internal disconnection from your emotions is coinciding with external disconnection. Like we're losing the social clubs and the civic groups and the bowling leagues.
So if you're disconnected from your emotions internally, you're disconnected from other people externally. How, how you see kind of a link there in, in driving this kind of, um, emptiness or disconnection among men?
Dr. Brackett: I do, and I think, you know, you're making me think about a few things. The first is how we define emotion, and so I think a lot of men see that when you're having a.
An emotion like anger or disappointment, which is a feminine emotion [00:23:00] per right. That he would, you know mm-hmm. Easy. If you're meant to be angry, not disappointed, you know, it's easy for them to be angry and not be ashamed because there's a masculinity associated with the anger, you know, the frustration, right.
Uh, the rage. That's one. And, but what I was going with, where I was going with that was that there's all the, there's also this belief. That when I feel these kinds of unpleasant emotions and I react to them, I'm emotional. Mm. And. That's a weird way to think about it. 'cause that's kind of go, going back to the femininity of like hysterical and the kind of the origins of the word hysteria.
You know, that it's a woman's thing to be hysterical and that when you have feelings it means you're not in control of your life.
JOe: Mm-hmm. And I
Dr. Brackett: just wanna tell people like, this is a, that's a big problem to have that mindset. It's why there's fear of learning and teaching these skills. 'cause people have that weird conception of it.
And That's [00:24:00] right. Um, like, oh, I'm anxious so I can't go to school today. No, you're anxious and you can still be a good learner. It's okay. You're gonna school, you're gonna school, honey. Um, I'm depressed today. It's like, okay, so is 97% of the population, they're all working. So are you. Um, and it sounds like I'm not empathic to people with anxiety, depression, and I'm being facetious here, but my point here is that just because you're feeling strong emotions doesn't mean you're not capable.
Doesn't mean you're not strong. Life is about emotions. If someone who you love dies, you should feel sad. But just because that person is no longer with you and you feel these strong emotions, doesn't mean you can't have wellbeing. It doesn't mean that you can't be productive. And so I think that messaging is really important.
I dunno if that resonates with you or not. It does. It
Jen Fisher: absolutely resonates with me. And, and that's right. You, Joe, something that you and I talk about. Often, of course, so too, and that we focus on [00:25:00] is, is the workplace. And so I wanna dig into that mark, because I mean, you just said, you know, a few things, but like, so overall, we're, we're, we're sending all these mixed messages, especially to men, right?
To be more vulnerable. But then when they actually show emotions at work, they often get penalized for it, kind of in the same way that. Women have in the past mm-hmm. Of like, he's too emotional. He can, you know, these kind of, these things that have been labeled feminine but that aren't.
JOe: Yes.
Jen Fisher: So, you know, what needs to change in our workplace cultures?
Like what do we need to do differently from things like performance reviews. Promotion criteria, the things that reinforce these kind of traditional masculine behaviors and don't enforce feeling your feelings or mm-hmm. Emotional expression or emotional, you know, emotion regulation. 'cause [00:26:00] I think men are afraid, you know, like they're afraid generally, but especially in the workplace that, you know, these being too emotional is a liability.
Dr. Brackett: Yeah. Yeah, again, this like even the way you're phrasing it being too emotional, you know? And so like the assumption is that if you feel an emotion that you're emotional and I want to put that, you know, I'm gonna call that out because.
Jen Fisher: Thank you.
Dr. Brackett: This reminds me of, um, so I had an, an executive director at my center and he's given me permission to gossip about him.
Um, he, uh, is a friend and he's now the chairman of our board. But, uh. He came from the, uh, banking world and then he got to Yale where he worked at the Center for Emotional Intelligence. And he said, you know, mark, how much time do I have to dedicate to talking to people about feelings? Like, I'm not used to this.
Like, you never do. He's like, I wouldn't, when I have somebody who's disgruntled, I just give him a raise and tell him to shut up. [00:27:00] And I'm like, guess what? That doesn't work here. Um, and so it was really interesting for us to have these conversations because again, his perception was that. He was at his like timer out in his office, like, I'm giving you two minutes.
And, um, I think work is for work. And I just wanna say that I believe that when you're at work, you should be working. It doesn't mean you don't have feelings at work, but when you have strong feelings. What we have to do is have the courage A, if it's about something, you know, if I'm frustrated with something I'm working on, I've gotta take a deep breath.
I gotta go for a walk, I gotta talk to someone. Hey, hey man, can you help me out with this? Like, I'm really just losing it. Like I can't figure it out. Have the courage to ask for support and help. It doesn't mean you're weak, it just means you're curious about how to do a better job if it's interpersonal.
You know, this is where, you know, we gossip endlessly, you know, where we avoid people in the hallways, you know, where we do eye rolling in [00:28:00] meetings. And my theory around this is very straightforward. Deal with your feelings. Hmm. You know, and that doesn't mean that you have to sit in your office and eat your feelings.
It means why don't you have the courage to tell the person who said something that was kind of unkind to you, that you didn't like the way they spoke to you. And I think again, it comes out that we have not, we have not taught people the skills to, you know, have these conversations. You know? And 'cause again, they think, oh, you know, oh, they're gonna think I'm weak.
'cause I thought they were unkind. Well, no. You're brewing about it, you're, you're not being productive. You're wasting a lot of the time at work because you're just ruminating all day about how you can't stand this person. They're off, you know, not knowing that they treated you in a weird way. So can you write the email saying, Hey, can we grab a cup of coffee and can you say, you know, Hey John, I just have to let you know, this may seem strange, but.[00:29:00]
I just, the, the way, you know, we communicated in that meeting, it didn't go well for me. I felt like you were kind of not giving me the opportunity to say what I wanted to say and you were kind of like eager to kind of like get your perspective, you know, seen, heard. And so I just need to let you know that.
'cause next time I really want the opportunity to be able to give my perspective. I don't know. Does that seem feminine to you or emotional? No.
Joe Grasso : Well, I, what, what stands out to me is, you know, the, you have this framing of feel, your feelings, but it's actually a really active set of skills that you're describing it.
Correct. First step is feel your feelings. Then figure out what to do with those feelings in ways that are very action oriented.
Dr. Brackett: That's why it's called emotional intelligence episode, not emotional reactivity. Mm-hmm. Like, like emotions are on a continuum. There's a little bit of anger, which is annoyance, and there's a lot of anger, which is enraged.[00:30:00]
There's a little bit of sadness, which is kind of. Uncomfortable and there's a lot of sadness, which is hopelessness and despair. By the way, for people listening, I don't know if you know this, but I built this free app with the co-founder of the company Pinterest called How We Feel, and it's an app that's available on iOS and Android for free to help people build their emotional.
So everybody should check
Jen Fisher: downloading now.
Dr. Brackett: It's amazing. I hate to be so self-congratulatory, but, um, you know, because we had just incredible software engineers and designers, graphic designers, and also like a team of scientists work on it. It really is both beautiful and kind of evidence-based.
Jen Fisher: No, I'm not.
And I like self-congratulatory things when it helps others. So, so feel free. Yeah. Um, I, I, I do wanna loop back here about anger. Yep. Because, you know, and we've been talking about [00:31:00] men's emotions and feminine masculine. Mm-hmm. And so, you know, to me, anger, I guess, traditionally has been something that is. I don't know if allowed is is the right word, but kind of more acceptable for men in the workplace.
Not for women, but there is, is there healthy anger versus toxic anger? Like, you know, when anger is directed at other people, like can we unpack that a little bit?
Dr. Brackett: The, I think you know, what you're getting at here is a, is this notion that anger is a destructive emotion. That when we're angry we can't be rational, and that is just simply untrue when we are experiencing anger and we don't have effective strategies to manage it.
Yes, we can be out of control, but many of us can be angry. And still have a really [00:32:00] healthy conversation if we have the strategies to do it. And so a lot of it is self-talk in my research, um, I think about. A tool that I co-developed with a colleague Robin, called The Meta Moment, and it's this four step process to helping people regulate.
The first step is sense. You're aware that you're having this feeling pretty straightforward, but a lot of people are not even aware, right? You start, these facial expressions start leaking in your, you know, and you start pouting or you know, whatever it might be, but whether it's a body sensation or something that's going on, you know, in your head.
You sense it. The second is that you recognize your patterns. Like Mark, every time you feel this way, you say something that is not helpful. So you're gonna pause. You're gonna stop and breathe and build a space which is stimulus in that response. The third step is the unique piece of the meta moment, which is seeing the best version of yourself.[00:33:00]
And what does that mean? Well, mark. Mark, the husband. Is ready to like have a meltdown. Mark, the son-in-law is ready to like throw his mother-in-law outta the house, but Mark, the director of the Center for Emotional Intelligence is like Yoda, like he's amazing. Like he just, he knows how to take really difficult situations and he's a creative genius and managing those experiences.
And what the research shows is that when you can literally see yourself through that light, you'll come up with better solutions to the problem. So everybody's got like a free lesson in emotion regulation because it really works. And there's Mark, the professor, there's Mark. You know, 'cause I have students, for example, professor bracket, I've gotta question you, but I'm not sure you're gonna know the answer.
And I'm like, okay, thank you. You 18 year old's not, you know, and it's like, mark, don't go there. Don't say it. Don't do it. [00:34:00] How would the director of the Center for Emotional Todds respond to this kid? And it's amazing when I literally take myself out of it and I distance mark from the situation and I envision Mark the director, it's like all of a sudden, like the wisdom comes out and I'm skillful at dealing with it.
Does this resonate with you? Oh, yes.
Joe Grasso : Oh yes. And, and, uh, I like the workplace example because there's so many instances where I'm being. Pushed or provoked in a way that is forcing me to do motion regulation ideally.
Dr. Brackett: Exactly. I was in a, I was in a situation about a while back where it was, I was doing like, um, it was kind of like an open call for like proposals, but it was a weird moment where I and a bunch of other people were pitching somebody and there was one person there who just really was quite arrogant.
And the person says something like, I don't know even know why we're all here. Because clearly this [00:35:00] is the model that you should adopt. And I'm thinking, I'm gonna like take that model and like slam it on the floor, you know? And like, and I cannot believe I have to sit here and listen to you with that arrogance.
And so I took my breath and I just, you know, I didn't rush into respond. And I said, how would. Again, mark, the professor of emotional intelligence, respond to this. Like, what are you gonna say, mark? That's gonna be so clever that the person who was arrogant is gonna be caught up in their own craziness and you're gonna win over the person who you're actually trying to get, you know, to deal with.
JOe: Hmm.
Dr. Brackett: And so by not allowing my anger, frustration, rage to have the best of me, you know, and react, I was able to sit, not rush into my response and come up with a response that actually was really, if, if I can be humble, like it really worked, um, because I [00:36:00] gave myself the permission to have my anger, but I also knew that I had to.
Again, create the space to deactivate and problem solve.
Joe Grasso : That's such a powerful example of both you benefiting from practicing emotion regulation and then also you modeling emotion regulation. Yeah. So when I think about managers and their responsibility for shaping team dynamics and culture on the team, obviously modeling is one way that they can shape that kind of, uh, emotion.
Mm-hmm. Regulation, behavior. Are there other ways in which you think managers can be imparting these skills or making this kind of. Practice a priority on their team so that it's, it's integrated into their, their culture. 'cause there's so many benefits to the business and to [00:37:00] individuals for this practice.
Totally.
Dr. Brackett: I mean, I have a million ideas, but um, I think the first, and this takes courage, is you can do like. A quick emotion check-in. It doesn't mean that Yeah, yeah. You know, go around the circle and talk for five minutes about, you know, what their feelings, but it could be teaching. You'll see my app, which is there's a mood meter tool that we built there and just literally saying, let's check in.
How's everybody feeling this morning? Where are we at? Are we ready? We're gonna be doing some brainstorming about a new project. We're gonna be cri, cri, you know, critiquing something. We're gonna write, we have to write a persuasive argument, you know, to get people to take this product seriously, whatever it is.
And then you ask people how are they feeling? Are they ready for that task? If they're not ready, what's their strategy to shift how they're feeling to be in the right place. This here to be the best possible, you know, um, collaborator in that moment. [00:38:00] I think that's. So important because here's something interesting, what our research shows is that if you come to work, let's say you know you had a fight with your wife, your husband, your kids, and you're just like so irritable on the way to work, you're like, I can't take this anymore.
This is bullshit. Sorry for that. Can you swear on your podcast? Yes, you can. It wasn't so extreme, right? It's part of
Jen Fisher: the human experience. There you
Dr. Brackett: go. Alright. So like, I'm really like in a bad place. I open the door to my office and then someone in my work, in my work, I'm always reading people's, you know, research articles or grant proposals or they're asking me an opinion about a presentation.
And if I'm in the wrong place and I'm not self-aware, I'm like. It's terrible. I hate it. You know, it's like, really? That's what you're gonna do? Whereas if I get in the habit of checking in with my emotions before I go into the meeting [00:39:00] and I'm like, how am I feeling? I'm irritable. Why are you irritable?
Because of the fight you had with your kid at home. Oh, okay. So you're not angry at everybody at work. You're angry, irritated at the kid. Yes, I am. Oh, okay. So now with that newfound self-awareness, where I've attributed my emotion to, its real cause. Just that will eliminate the subconscious influence of my emotion on my next task at hand.
When we pause to check in with our feelings and we acknowledge them and understand where they came from. When we move into another aspect of our life, like making a phone call at work or having another meeting, the anger won't leak into that meeting. It'll be. Separated from it, which is healthy regulation and and healthy compartmentalizing.
Joe Grasso : Mm-hmm. I, one thing that Jen and I love to nerd out on is how organizations can scale the teaching of [00:40:00] important skills for supporting better wellbeing and better performance. And so you framing all of these skills as teachable learnable. Yeah. Uh, I'm sure you're very familiar with. Emotional intelligence programs in the workplace.
Mm-hmm. I'm, I'm curious your perspective on which ones actually work and which ones are, just check the box corporate initiatives that will be forgotten.
Dr. Brackett: Yeah. Unfortunately a lot of them are, you know, not great because it's like, you know, the keynote or the workshop and then it's like, here you go. Um, yeah.
I've done this now. So just to give you an example, um, where, for example, this huge company that I work with, um, I did this book study with them. They literally, every employee reads a chapter, they make it personal, and [00:41:00] then they set professional goals. They read it, they go personal, they go professional.
And teaching people how to kind of build the skill in my work of recognizing emotion, understanding their emotion, labeling their emotions precisely. Being comfortable expressing those emotion emotions and having the strategies to regulate. Ruler is the name of my framework, um, enormously helpful. And so, but it really has to be personal, professional.
You can't just apply this, you know, like professionally. I hate to say that. Yeah. Because most people are bringing emotions with them to work and they're taking emotions from work back home. Oh, true.
Jen Fisher: I'm actually really glad that you say that. Right. 'cause I think a lot of people think there's this separation between the two, right?
That we don't, there, there, there's this invisible door that we walk through, um, that, that separates those two.
Dr. Brackett: Correct. And people say things to me like, I just leave my emo i, my emotions at the door. I'm [00:42:00] like, guess what? You know you're full of it. Yeah.
Jen Fisher: So I, uh, I have, I have one final question, and I'm not gonna ask you the same question in a different way this time, mark. I promise. Okay. What am I, what am I not asking you about my feelings that I should be asking you?
Dr. Brackett: I. Gosh. Well, let's see. Um, we, we got through the concept of permission to feel that this mindset, that all emotions are data.
There's no such thing as a bad emotion. Emotions are ephemeral. They're impermanent. I think that's, that was good. We got through, um. This idea of labeling emotions and being self-aware about emotions. I think that was good. And people I think will, you know, take that away. We got through some of the strategies.
Um, obviously, you know, I was thinking about this. I teach [00:43:00] courses on emotional intelligence and um. For example, this new book, dealing With Feeling is a whole book just on one skill set of regulation. And I realize that every chapter could be its own book. I mean, it's endless, right? How much stuff there is, as you know.
And so I think if I were to give people the shortcut in terms of your question, it.
Emotional intelligence in, in in particular emotion regulation, as I've shared, is a hundred percent learned that it is life's work. It's not like math and science and other subject areas that you learned it and you got it. This is life's work. So just see yourself as a beginner every day. Give yourself the permission to fail, um, and that just building that space between stimulus and response.
Taking that breath. I know people think, oh, mark, keep telling me to take a deep breath. It does work. [00:44:00] And so giving yourself that space to just breathe and not react, but build in this space to respond carefully. What I found in my work, um, and I've done a lot of writing about this and research, is that when you do pause to take a moment to think about.
The best version of yourself as a boss, a colleague, a parent, you know, whatever your role is. Um, and just think about that for a minute. Like, what does it look like? What does my, like for example, with my mother-in-law, it was compassionate and patient. Like I just said, mark, you've gotta be more compassionate and you've gotta be more patient with her.
But by the way, she doesn't wanna live with you either. Just so you know. She's 80 years old, I think she wants to be stuck in your house with you. She wants to go home. Yeah. And so my compassion and my patience, I was like, every morning I'd come down the stairs and I'd be like compassionate and patience, compassionate, patience.
And it really helped now with someone else. [00:45:00] At work, it might be something completely different. It might be interestingly enough inspirational. I think about that a lot in the workplace. I don't think that we have enough inspiration and creativity. And so oftentimes I think, how am I gonna show up as that inspirational leader today?
Um, so there's this less of a need for people to regulate. So that my, my take, you know, my, what you didn't, what we didn't really get to is. We got to it now, which is the process of, yeah. Sensing those feelings, pausing to really, um, kinda give yourself the space and building out, you know, that best self.
And, and then of course you have to behave in alignment with that best self. And that's, that's where it takes practice. And I'll just say one last thing 'cause I can't help it. Um, I'm a preventionist as opposed to an interventionist.
JOe: So
Dr. Brackett: what I recommend people do [00:46:00] is be forward looking about the things that trigger them.
So for example, my mother-in-law was that trigger. And so when I would come home from work, um, before I entered my house, I would pause to see the best version of my son-in-law self. And then it would enter the house through that lens. If, when you go to work, if there's someone who you're really having, with whom you're having a difficult time, think about what does your best self look like, you know, with that person.
And before you enter into a meeting with that person, remind yourself of the self you want to be. And then enter through that lens.
Jen Fisher: I love that. Joe, any final words from you?
Joe Grasso : No, I, I learned a lot. I think my main takeaway is these are skills. That give people advantage in their personal life and their professional life.
And what we're talking about is, yes, feel your feelings, but also learn the skills for how to deal with them effectively [00:47:00] and avoid them at your own peril. So. I, I would, I lead inspired and also, uh, a good reminder that all feelings are data. And so it's better to pay attention than to ignore.
Jen Fisher: Well, thank you both.
Thank you, mark. Thank you, Joe.
Joe Grasso : Thank
Dr. Brackett: you both.
Jen Fisher: I'm so grateful Mark and Joe could be with us today to explore the critical role emotions play in our workplace wellbeing and mental health. Thank you to our producer and our listeners. You can find the Work Well podcast by visiting various podcasters. Using the key word work, well, all one word to hear more.
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