The Human Upgrade: Biohacking for Longevity & Performance

Emotion Commotion in Trying Times: Showing Up to Pain & Accepting What Is – Susan David, Ph.D., with Dave Asprey : 709

Jun 5, 2020

In a compelling discussion, Susan David, an award-winning Harvard psychologist and author of "Emotional Agility," emphasizes the importance of embracing difficult emotions rather than suppressing them. She explains how emotional agility can lead to personal growth and authentic living, especially during times of uncertainty. Sharing a poignant personal story, she reveals how grief and societal expectations influenced her journey. The conversation also touches on parenting and the necessity of validating children's feelings to boost their emotional resilience.

Ask episode

AI Snips

Chapters

Books

Transcript

Episode notes

INSIGHT

Evidence-Based Psychology

Societal narratives about emotions often undermine resilience.
Evidence-based psychology offers pragmatic, science-backed strategies for well-being.

INSIGHT

The Cost of Brooding

Brooding over job loss leads to lower mental well-being and hinders problem-solving.
It impacts relationships and prevents effective handling of the situation.

INSIGHT

The Cost of Bottling

Bottling emotions, or suppressing them, leads to similar negative consequences as brooding.
It hinders emotional processing and can result in leakage and relationship problems.

Get the Snipd Podcast app to discover more snips from this episode

Get the app

In this episode of Bulletproof Radio, I’m excited for you to hear from my guest Susan David, Ph.D., who knows all about emotions and what to do with them. Susan challenges the prevailing attitude that we should “fix” our difficult emotions through positive thinking and chasing happiness. Instead, she teaches people how to thrive in an uncertain world.

After some hard-charging months focused on the science of coronavirus, and how to stay physically well and financially afloat during the pandemic, it’s time to put some attention on our emotional health.

“Fundamentally, the way we deal with our inner world drives everything,” Susan says. “It drives how we love and come to our relationships, how we live, how we parent and how we lead.”

Susan is an award-winning Harvard Medical School psychologist. Her bestselling book, “Emotional Agility: Get Unstuck, Embrace Change, and Thrive in Work and Life” is based on 20 years of research and describes the psychological skills critical to thriving in times of uncertainty and change.

“At its most basic level emotional agility is about the capacity to be with ourselves,” Susan explains. “That includes our difficult thoughts and emotions and stories and past experiences in a way that's compassionate and curious and that doesn't hold us back from being the people that we most want to be. Because often we get stuck in our thoughts, our emotions and our stories, and we aren't living in a way that's intentional and values congruent and so it's about these different aspects.”

And whether we’re caught in a brooding trap or bottling up our emotions, it takes work to unpack what we’re feeling.

“For people to be healthy with themselves, with the inner worlds, these are not soft skills,” Susan says. “These are the most fundamental skills that we can have as human beings.”

So listen on to find out why trying to control what is uncontrollable wreaks havoc on our emotional health and what you can do to improve your inner landscape in spite of the world’s turmoil.

Enjoy the show! And get more resources at https://blog.daveasprey.com/category/podcasts/.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.