Summary
In this short, fast-moving lesson, Joe Hudson defines eleven core human emotions and gives a practical instruction for working with each. His framing throughout: most of us were never taught what emotions are, and were actively or passively taught to avoid them — yet the more we’re with them, the better our lives become. Each emotion is treated as a signal carrying useful information, not a problem to suppress.
He walks through them one by one. Fear is excitement without the breath, or a signal that something needs taking care of — so distinguish the two and either breathe into the excitement or pause and ask what the fear is pointing to. Anger at its core is clarity and determination, telling you what boundary to draw and what you care about. Guilt means you’ve stopped listening to your deepest wants. Sadness is closing a door, saying goodbye to something that no longer works. Shame is a felt sense of disconnection that keeps you inside the tribe’s rules, so the move is to reconnect somewhere. Jealousy is wanting something while pushing it away — a road map to what you really want. Anxiety means there’s something you know needs doing that you’re not doing. Disgust means you’ve been forced to swallow something toxic. Contempt reveals a blind spot — the trait you disdain lives in your own shadow. Joy is the matriarch who won’t enter unless all her children (the other feelings) are welcome. And love is an emotion of such safety that it lets attachment wounds surface and heal.
Key Concepts
- Every emotion is a signal pointing toward an action or a need
- Fear is either excitement without the breath or a signal to take care of something
- Anger at its core is clarity and determination
- Guilt means you’ve stopped listening to your deepest wants
- Joy won’t come unless all the other feelings are welcome
Key Quotes
“Most of us were never taught what emotions were. We were actually actively taught or passively taught to avoid them… The more we’re with them, the better our life is.”
“Fear is excitement without the breath, or it’s a signal that there’s something that you need to take care of.”
“Anger at its core is clarity and determination.”
“Guilt just means that we’ve stopped listening to our deepest wants.”
“Shame is a felt sense of disconnection that makes us stay inside of the tribe’s rules, and often freezes our emotions.”
“Contempt is when you think you’re better than somebody else and hint at your essence you’re not. And so what it’s doing is it’s showing you a blind spot.”
“Joy is the matriarch of a family of emotions and she won’t come into a house unless her children are welcome.”
Transcript
Love is an emotion that allows us to feel so safe that we can play out and heal our attachment issues. >> So, most of us were never taught what emotions were. We were actually actively taught or passively taught to avoid them. So, here we’re going to look at what the emotions are, how to work with them, and what the upside of being with them is. The more we’re with them, the better our life is. >> Fear is excitement without the breath, or it’s a signal that there’s something that you need to take care of or a way you need to take care of yourself. >> So, the first thing is to sense into the distinction. If the fear is that you’re about to get on stage or raise money for your company or do something new that you’ve never done before, then most likely that’s excitement. And if it’s excitement, the job is to breathe, feel into it. Woo! >> [gasps] [panting and sighs] >> Ha! I’m excited. I’m excited. I’m excited. And feel the excitement. And then you have that fear gives you energy to get on stage, to raise money, to take on that new activity. If the fear is at work and you’re making a big decision and you’re actually not sure which way to go, then the job is also to pause and breathe. And to think, how do I take care of myself here or my company? How do I take care of this situation here? And look for what the signal is that the fear is giving you that you need to make a change around. >> Anger at its core is clarity and determination. Think of it as a tube, and if that tube gets kinked or blocked, it might come out as “Nice dress.” Or, “You son of a da da da da da da.” Or it might turn out as “I’m not angry.” But unblocked, it’s just clarity and determination. >> Anger points you to an action. What’s a boundary you want to draw? What’s something you want to say no to? What isn’t working for you? What do you care about? It’s telling you what you want to protect. >> Guilt just means that we’ve stopped listening to our deepest wants. >> So, when guilt comes up, you can get in touch with your wants in two different ways. You can ask yourself, “If I couldn’t feel guilty right now, what else would I notice? What else do I want? What else do I feel?” Or, you can ask yourself, “How do I want to do that thing differently next time?” >> Sadness is closing the door. It’s saying goodbye, and it’s recognizing that there’s something that isn’t working for you anymore. >> So, when sadness comes up, the simplest thing is just to bring your attention to your heart and honor your heart and hang out with whatever is happening there. Sometimes tears, sometimes achiness, often times it feels like it’ll go on forever, and it won’t. It will It will take you on a journey through the heart, and you’ll come out feeling much better on the other side eventually. >> Shame is a felt sense of disconnection that makes us stay inside of the tribe’s rules, and often freezes our emotions. >> So, when shame comes up, the first thing you can do is figure out what can you connect to right now. If you’ve disconnected from the tribe, disconnected from your emotions, disconnected from yourself, how can you create connection anywhere first? That might be a connection to your heart, or yourself, or your partner, but the first thing is creating uh finding connection somewhere with anything, anybody, yourself, another person. >> Jealousy is when you want something and you’re pushing it away at the same time. >> So, with jealousy, first of all, it feels terrible. So, the biggest thing is not to buy into that this is terrible, and I’m terrible for feeling it. And is then to start to feel the longing, the want, and that fear of loss under jealousy. It’s a beautiful road map to show you what you really want if you can let yourself feel it. >> Anxiety isn’t that you have too much to do, or that your life is overwhelming. It just means that there’s something that you know needs doing and you’re not doing it. >> So when anxiety comes up, it means taking that action step, finding out what’s the thing you need to do to put the anxiety at rest. And it might be an action step around work. It might be an internal action step in terms of what is it you need to feel. Often there’s a feeling of I haven’t been allowing my anger or my grief or my fear or other emotions under the anxiety. So the step can be an internal step. Sometimes it’s I’m just not allowing my authentic expression here and I’m not actually showing up as who I truly am. And sometimes it’s I’m not allowing myself to feel calm, peace, and bliss right now. >> Disgust happens when you’re forced to swallow something that you didn’t really want to take down. >> So if you’re feeling disgust, which can be that uh sense, you can ask yourself what have I been forced fed that’s toxic for me. Could be a movie that wasn’t the right movie, an ideological principle, having witnessed abuse or seeing other people being abused, anything that’s toxic, not just technically like a food toxic, but conceptually toxic. What did I take in that I don’t want to take in? And then how do I take care of myself so that I remove myself from an environment that’s not healthy or take care of my community, take care of people around me, get rid of the thing that’s toxic. >> Contempt is when you think you’re better than somebody else and hint at your essence you’re not. And so what it’s doing is it’s showing you a blind spot. >> So when contempt comes up, your job, which is not going to be comfortable, is to see how you have those exact traits of the person you have contempt for. They’re usually in your shadow and we usually don’t want to look at it or own it. >> Joy is the matriarch of a family of emotions and she won’t come into a house unless her children are welcome. >> If you want to feel joy, the job is to feel all the feelings and welcome all the feelings and all your feelings and all parts of yourself and other people. And joy is an inherent part of who we are. So all of us have access to joy. >> Love is an emotion that allows us to >> So what to do when love comes up? Feel love. It can be pretty juicy and yummy and delicious. And [music] lean into the fact that all the mishigas that’s going to come up around love is a way for attachment patterns to be healed. Make an agreement with your partner and your friends and your community that oh, our our shit’s going to come up here and we’re going to use it as ways to heal. And we have a longer video on how you can work with your attachment issues and you can find it below.