The Language of Emotions - 2nd Edition by Karla McLaren (Paperback)

About the Book

Featuring significant updates, the new edition of this beloved book takes us to the heart of each feeling's powerful gifts and messages.

Book Synopsis

Featuring significant updates, the new edition of this beloved book takes readers to the heart of each emotion's powerful gifts and messages.

Every emotion--even shame, anger, and anxiety--brings us vital information and wisdom. Emotions--especially the unwanted and dishonored ones--hold a tremendous amount of energy. "Too often, we either repress our feelings or let them run wild," says researcher and educator Karla McLaren. "What many of us were never taught are the fundamental skills for honoring and understanding our profound, powerful emotions." In this new edition of The Language of Emotions, McLaren takes us much deeper than naming or managing our feelings--she teaches us to listen to the messages within each emotion, reflect on their questions, and incorporate their wisdom into our lives.

Enhanced through more than a decade of research and teaching, this edition offers a time-tested emotional guidebook, including:

- How to safely feel and identify emotions--especially the most intense ones
- Practices for working with feelings--including setting boundaries, grounding, and the healing power of complaining consciously
- Building your empathy--five key skills for awakening your emotional genius
- The role of emotions in the resolution of trauma
- Decoding the unique messages, gifts, and insights carried by each emotion
- New to this edition: insights and practices on anxiety, an exploration of loneliness, and much more

Learning the language of our emotions can deepen our self-understanding, improve our intuition, and enhance our relationships. "Emotions aren't problems to be solved," teaches McLaren. "If you learn their language, your emotions can become an indispensable source of vitality, personal growth, and profound healing."

Review Quotes

"Karla McLaren's revised and updated book, The Language of Emotions, presents a model for understanding emotions and explores the positive aspects of anxiety. Karla uses her lived experience of trauma to inform her readers in ways that may enable them to achieve the emotional understanding necessary to learn from and move beyond their past. There is no doubt that Karla's passion to help her readers understand emotions, and provide them with useful tools to do so, makes this new edition of her book a gift for those who are suffering from or grappling with what they feel." --Mary Lamia, PhD, author of Grief Isn't Something to Get Over and Understanding Myself

"Karla McLaren's book The Language of Emotions is the first I will recommend to survivors of traumatic and abusive environments and relationships. Karla's knowledge of how to understand emotions and engage with them in a positive and healing way is an invaluable resource." --Janja Lalich, PhD, author of Take Back Your Life and Bounded Choice

"Karla McLaren's unique, empathic view of emotions surprisingly revalues even the most 'negative' emotions and opens pathways to understanding the depths of the human soul." --Michael Meade, author of The World Behind the World and The Water of Life

"This book changed the way I relate to others, and to myself, forever." --Gavin de Becker, author of The Gift of Fear and Protecting the Gift

About the Author

Karla McLaren, M.Ed., is an award-winning author, social science researcher, and empathy innovator. She is CEO of Emotion Dynamics, developer of Dynamic Emotional Integration(R), and creator of EmpathyAcademy.org. Karla is the author of Embracing Anxiety, The Dynamic Emotional Integration Workbook, The Art of Empathy, The Power of Emotions at Work, and the multimedia online course Emotional Flow: Becoming Fluent in the Language of Emotions. For more, visit karlamclaren.com.