How Your Emotional Vocabulary Can Affect Your Health

Dec 18, 2020

Discover how honing your emotional vocabulary can boost your happiness and health. Learn about the impact of accurately identifying and labeling emotions instead of simply calling them 'stress.' Uncover how this emotional granularity fosters healthier relationships by enhancing communication and intimacy. Delve into how understanding your emotions paves the way for better mental well-being and informed decisions. Expand your emotional toolkit to improve your relationships with yourself and others!

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INSIGHT

Specificity of Emotions

Labeling emotions broadly as "stress" hinders effective action.
More precise labels, like "disappointed" or "depleted," guide you towards appropriate responses.

ADVICE

Emotional Granularity

Use more specific words to describe your emotions instead of general terms like "stressed".
This practice, called emotional granularity, helps you understand and address the root causes of your feelings.

ANECDOTE

Mislabeling Anger

A client labeled all his and his team's emotions as "anger."
Deeper reflection revealed the team felt "mistrust," while he felt "fear" of underperforming.

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How Your Emotional Vocabulary Can Affect Your Health | This episode is sponsored by Starseed

Having a greater grasp on emotional understanding correlates to increased happiness and satisfaction, along with better management of stress, while a lack of emotional balance has been linked to poorer outcomes with physical health issues. But how can we achieve emotional balance when we don’t fully understand what our emotions are telling us?

Earlier this year, Dr. Hyman spoke to Susan David about how accurately labeling our emotions with a great degree of granularity can help us better understand our emotions, and know what to do about them. He also spoke with Jay Shetty about how expanding our emotional vocabulary can improve our relationship with ourselves and others.

Susan David, Ph.D. is one of the world’s leading management thinkers and an award-winning Harvard Medical School psychologist. Her new #1 Wall Street Journal bestselling book, Emotional Agility, describes the psychological skills critical to thriving in times of complexity and change. Susan’s TED Talk on the topic went viral with over 1 million views in its first week of release. She is a frequent contributor to the Harvard Business Review, New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and guest on national radio and television. Susan is the CEO of Evidence Based Psychology, on the faculty at Harvard Medical School, a Cofounder of the Institute of Coaching (a Harvard Medical School/McLean affiliate), and on the Scientific Advisory Boards of Thrive Global and Virgin Pulse.

Jay Shetty is a storyteller, podcaster, and former monk. Jay’s vision is to Make Wisdom Go Viral. He is on a mission to share the timeless wisdom of the world in an accessible, relevant, and practical way. Jay has created over 400 viral videos with over 7.5 billion views, and hosts the #1 Health and Wellness podcast in the world, On Purpose.

This episode is sponsored by Starseed. Save 20% on your Starseed order at Amazon.com/Starseed by using the code 20MARKHYMAN at checkout. Be sure to try their seeds, Omega oil, and butters.

Find Dr. Hyman’s full-length conversation with Susan David, “Attaining Freedom Through Emotional Agility” here: https://DrMarkHyman.lnk.to/SusanDavid

Find Dr. Hyman’s full-length conversation with Jay Shetty, “Finding Peace And Purpose By Thinking Like A Monk” here: https://DrMarkHyman.lnk.to/JayShetty