Hilary Jacobs Hendel on How to Process Our Emotions

Hilary Jacobs Hendel is a psychotherapist who switched from practicing traditional talk psychotherapy to accelerated experimental dynamic psychotherapy. She teaches us that our core emotions are automatic and grounded in universal physical experiences. Her new book is called, It’s Not Always Depression: Working The Change Triangle to Listen to the Body, Discover Core Emotions, and Connect to your Authentic Self. In this episode, she goes into great instructional detail about how to identify and process your emotions in the moment. If you’ve ever felt a strong emotion (and who hasn’t), this episode will teach you how to move through it skillfully, rather than having your strong emotions wreak havoc in yourself and with others.

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In This Interview, Hilary Jabobs Hendel and I Discuss…

Her new book, It’s Not Always Depression: Working The Change Triangle to Listen to the Body, Discover Core Emotions, and Connect to your Authentic Self
The 7 C’s of our authentic self
The science and biology of emotions
The change triangle
The Core Emotions: Fear, Anger, Sadness, Disgust, Joy, Excitement and Sexual Excitement
The 3 Inhibitory Emotions: Anxiety, Guilt, and Shame
How core emotions have energy and want to come up and out- to be expressed
Inhibitory emotions dampening our core emotions
The difference between defenses and inhibitory emotions
How to work The Change Triangle
Trauma vs trauma
The power of naming your emotions
Our open-hearted state
When our emotions overwhelm us, it can be helpful to have someone else process them
Grounding and breathing
The role of core emotions is to ready us for action so they are first physical sensations, traveling from the brain down the vegus nerve
All core emotions have impulses associated with them
How harmful self-criticism and self-judgment can be
Relating to ourselves as a small child
Healthy shame vs toxic shame