About Understanding Emotion

Emotions are not the enemy of good thinking; they are part of it. We are often told to control our emotions but rarely taught how they actually work.

Understanding Emotion draws on the neuroscience of feeling, including the work of Lisa Feldman Barrett, Antonio Damasio and James Gross on emotion regulation, to make emotional intelligence practical.

What you’ll explore

What emotions actually are. Barrett’s research challenges the older view of a few fixed, hard-wired emotions, arguing instead that the brain constructs emotions from sensations, context and past experience.

Reading your emotions precisely. Being able to name feelings with more precision is linked with handling them better. The book shows how to build that skill.

Regulation skills. Gross’s research compares strategies such as reappraisal (changing how you interpret a situation) with suppression (hiding a feeling). The book explains which tend to help and why.

Emotion and decisions. Damasio’s work showed that emotion plays a central role in good decision-making, rather than simply getting in its way.

Empathy. What empathy is and how to offer it well.

An emotionally intelligent life. Bringing the skills together in everyday relationships and choices.

Emotional intelligence is presented as a set of learnable skills, and the book shows the science behind each one.

Who this book is for

Anyone who feels overwhelmed by emotions, wants to understand themselves better, or wants to respond more wisely to other people.

At a glance

• Series: Psychology for Life, Book 10 of 20
• Author: A.N. Archer
• Publisher: Freyja Publishing
• Length: about 164 pages
• Formats: Kindle eBook, paperback and hardcover
• Kindle edition included with Kindle Unlimited

If you enjoy this book

Each title in the Psychology for Life series stands on its own. You may also enjoy:

• The Courage To Be Human (Book 11)
• Rewrite Your Inner Voice (Book 18)
• How to Build Better Relationships (Book 1)