summary ofPermission to FeelBook by Marc Brackett, PhD

first KEY POINT

Emotions are information to be processed

The emotions we feel are reactions to the things happening in our internal and/or external environments. For instance, you'll naturally get angry if your child mistakenly broke your laptop screen the morning you're supposed to use it for a presentation. That anger is a natural response from your brain upon realizing the implication of what your child just did.

Psychologists have classified emotion into integral and incidental. Integral emotions are the ones you have because of the situation at hand. For instance, that feeling of anger from our example above is a type of integral emotion.Incidental emotions on the other hand have nothing to do with the current happenings around you. Let's say after the screen broke, you stormed out of the house in a hurry so you could arrive at the office early and find a way to still do your presentation. But what happens in the morning affects the way you drive to work and even how you interact with colleagues. That's incidental emotion — you're being influenced by emotions from an event that wasn't happening in that exact moment.We experience both forms of emotion in our day-to-day life. Integral emotions are easy to understand but displays of incidental emotions in others can be confusing at first. The Barista you're getting coffee from may act rudely for no apparent reason. It may leave you confused and wondering what you did or say wrong, whereas the real reason for his action is the fight he had with his wife before coming to work. Understanding incidental emotions will help you cut people some slack when they act unfriendly for no obvious reasons.Emotions are part of our lives forever. They're not bad in themselves but the way we process and handle them is critical to our overall well being. Some people try to avoid the problems that come with mishandling emotions by refusing to express feelings. But that's not a healthy strategy because you can't suppress emotions for long; they will eventually burst and it's usually not funny when they do.

This summary will not teach you to suppress your feelings but to understand, express them and help others do the same. For the rest of this summary, we shall be considering 5 skills for mastering emotions. They are:
• Recognize
• Understand
• Label
• Express
• RegulateJust remember RULER.