Life Kit - Life Kit presents: The power in owning your 'Big Feelings'

Episode Date: April 30, 2022

Our friends at It's Been a Minute speak with Liz Fosslien and Mollie West Duffy about their new book, Big Feelings: How to Be Okay When Things Are Not Okay. They explore seven emotions — uncertainty, anger, burnout, comparison, perfectionism, despair and grief — with hopes to normalize conversations on these "big feelings" and share what they've learned in that process.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi, LifeKit listeners. You probably already know that at LifeKit, we love talking about feelings. So when our friends at It's Been a Minute talked to the authors of the new book, Big Feelings, we knew we wanted to share it with you all. Here it is. You're listening to It's Been a Minute from NPR.

I'm Juana Summers. I think it's safe to say that many of us have been on an emotional roller coaster this last couple years. For me, that's felt a little bit like living in a state of suspension. You know, I had all of these plans for what the next few years of my life would look like. And as the pandemic set in, those plans all got put on hold. It meant messing meaningful time with loved ones, time I can't get back, putting off big decisions, shifting the timelines for other things I wanted to do, burnout, waiting through grief in isolation. And sometimes thinking about all of that,

it just feels overwhelming. We all feel these things, regardless of who you are and where you are in life. You're going to go through difficult periods and have days that aren't as great as others. That's Liz Foslan. She's one of the authors of the new book, Big Feelings. How to be okay when things are not okay. In the book, Liz and her co-author Molly West Duffy explore seven emotions that they found particularly difficult to overcome. Uncertainty, comparison, and anger. Also burnout, perfectionism, despair, and regret. And one of the reasons I wanted to read this book and to talk with Liz and Molly is that, like many people, I'm trying to sort

through everything that happened in the last few years and figure out the person that I am coming out on the other side of it. Liz and Molly first met as friends when they were working in office jobs, and they bonded over long conversations about navigating emotions and conflict in the workplace. This led them to their first book, which focused on how our emotions are in play at work. And in their new book, Big Feelings, they get personal about their own experiences. By the time they finished writing the book, though, last summer, Molly says they weren't sure how the world would respond to it. It was a big question on our mind of what will the world look like in April 2022? Will COVID still be going on?

Will people still be having big emotions in the same way that they were last summer? And, you know, of course, COVID is where it is and people are still having big emotions. And there's so many other, you know, horrifying things going on in the world. In our conversation, Liz and Molly talk about the power in owning and sharing all of these big feelings. And they also talk about what they've gained themselves in exploring their own emotions more deeply. All right, let's get into my chat with Liz and Molly. But before we do, listeners, just a heads up that we do talk about depression and suicidal thoughts later in this episode.

I have to say when I read the book, for me, it made me think about the fact that I spent a good deal of my early life trying to learn how to either suppress or sideline a lot of the feelings that you write about because I thought, perhaps mistakenly, that that would serve me better than being vulnerable, than owning those feelings. And I have to imagine I'm not the only person with that kind of experience. Absolutely. I think we were all raised to feel that especially these more difficult emotions were something that were shameful to share. And I think we still carry that feeling with us as adults. And yet in the conversations that we had with our readers and in the workshops we do, every single person has experienced some subset of all of the emotions that we talk about in the book and are actually so relieved to be able to talk about them. Yeah. And we also, the suppression piece is partially why these big emotions get such

a bad reputation because you suppress and you suppress and that's just not sustainable in the long run. And so, especially with anger, for example, you might just explode over this final last straw that just pushes you over the edge. And that might not have happened if you had, when you first felt those flares of anger, stepped back, said, it's fine that I'm feeling this. What is the need driving my anger? And how can I address that? And then, you know, later down the road, it doesn't become this huge thing that's been festering within you for so long.

So it's the suppression actually doesn't serve us in the long run and can make a situation far worse. I wonder if each of you can talk a little bit about how you got so comfortable and fluent in exploring and talking about these feelings to the point where you've written books about them now. I would say that, at least personally, I don't feel perfectly fluent speaking about emotions. And this is a big theme in the book is that it's not that you arrive at a place where suddenly you're able to magically dance through every experience and talk about it succinctly and eloquently. It is a lifelong process. And especially from some of these harder emotions, moving through them is a lot that just takes a lot of recovery and thought. But I think it was informed

by both of us in our work lives hitting personal breaking points. We just completely burnt out of jobs that we thought were on paper the jobs we were going to love and would make us successful. And that led to our first book, No Hard Feelings. And then this book came out of us kind of doing the same in our personal lives. We both went through really challenging experiences that involved chronic pain issues, losing people we loved, but just going through these really big feelings and then finally just ripping off the Band-Aid and starting to talk about them. And we hope that in the book, that's also what people get out of it, is that we share other people's stories from such a range of

backgrounds in service of showing people that you're not alone in doing this and there's not always a perfect way to communicate a big feeling we do give some tips in the book about what to do if someone shares one with you how to talk about them but ultimately it's just starting that process of like climbing over that initial hurdle of feeling so much shame that you bottle it up. I think it does take practice and it helps to start off in safe spaces. So in the chapter on despair, I talk about having suicidal thoughts. And that wasn't something that when I first was feeling them, I said, oh, I want to write a book about this. I mean, it was hard for me to even share those with my

therapist and with my husband. And I think as you find safe spaces and you find communities who can listen to you, friends who you trust, you build up that muscle of sharing it. And you also get good feedback around, thank you for sharing this. That was really helpful for me to hear. I've had similar thoughts and it goes from there. One of the things that you suggest in the book that people do is to do less to help resolve their burnout, whether it is leaving that job or as you've written, getting comfortable living at that 80%. And to me, when I read that, I think about the fact that that is also a privilege and one that some people may not have depending on

what support systems they have, what type of job they have, what types of care they may have access to and things of that nature. Not everyone can leave a job to resolve their burnout. Yeah, absolutely. And we address that in the book too. So it's very easy to say, just find another job, no big deal. But some people have to work three jobs and they can't, they maybe don't even have the emotional capacity or time to look for another job. just like take things off your plate or do less. And so some of it is finding support in community. So maybe there's one person in your workplace that you really connect with and investing in that relationship. The answer might be you should look for a different role, but that's a much longer term endeavor for you. And so we definitely don't want to just say, snap your fingers, get a new job, problem is gone. That's very much a theme that we do not have in the book. It's like, these are hard things to work through.

And sometimes just acknowledging like, okay, for the next year, I don't have capacity to look for something new. What can I do within this year to make myself feel better? And what are kind of the very small steps I can take? Maybe it's once every month, they're signing up for a class, you know, in a couple months when I maybe have a little more time. We hope that the book offers people an opportunity to give themselves some grace, and it's not just piling on like, here's another self-help tip that you should immediately take,

and that will, you know will change your life overnight? We have both experienced burnout and it is something that is very common. And yet often we miss all of the warning signs. So I think some of the early warning signs are that you don't have time to do, or you're burned out're too burned out to do life activities. So things like going to the store on the weekends or doing laundry, that sort of thing. A big one that I've talked to Liz about before is when you feel that getting sick and being forced to shut down for a bit sounds kind of nice. We've all been there and you're like, I'd love to be sick for a little bit. So it does impact self-awareness. And one of the things we talk about is that oftentimes our society puts the weight of dealing with burnout on the individual. So as you mentioned, people in more underrepresented groups, women, especially in the workplace, do experience it

more. And it's something where our society tells us or sort of capitalist society tells us, you know, Hey, you have to be better at this. You have to not schedule so many meetings when in reality, we are all within an environment that is helping us make these decisions to not take enough time for ourselves. And so we were trying in the book to shift the perspective, like, yes, there are course things that you can do, but also what can organizations and managers do as well. Coming up, the stress cycle and how to break it. Like I think many people over the last couple of years, I got a new therapist. And one of the

things that reminded me of her in your book is she used to always ask me, how do you plan to manage your stress? Like at some point during every session. And I used to kind of put my head in my hands because like many people, my solution to solving stress is often to like solve the problem and figure out how to feed the people in my house or whatever work needs to get done. And I kind of found myself thinking about this when you all talk about this idea of breaking the stress cycle and how sometimes some of the solutions we take mean that it never gets broken. Talk about that. Yeah. So breaking the stress cycle actually comes from the Nagoski sisters

who wrote a book called Burnout, which we highly recommend. And they share that when we were back in more ancestral days, we would be running from a lion or whatever it is, and then we would have a moment for recovery. But in our modern day environments, we have stress all day long. We're in back-to-back meetings or NPR interviews, and we don't take the time to complete the stress cycle. And they list in their book there's seven different ways to complete the stress cycle, including hugging someone, taking a walk, taking some deep breaths, crying. There's a bunch of them. Laughing. And so having an awareness of, hey, I'm stressed, and it's okay that I'm stressed.

Humans can deal with stress, but how do I build in moments in my day to complete the stress cycle? And as you said, I mean, I think it's something that we have to plan in advance for because otherwise we just keep, you know, bulldozing right through our days. But knowing, you know, like after this interview, this is something that Liz and I are excited for, but it does cause a little bit of stress. You know, we're being interviewed for an NPR podcast. And so I should not go straight into another meeting, but I should instead go take a walk, take some breaths.

I'd love to talk about the idea of anger and specifically how people experience anger when it's coming from another person. I think it's fair to say in some situations that I, as a Black woman, my anger is going to be read differently than yours or other people that I talk to because of my race. And I would just love to hear you talk a little bit about how you thought about the intersection of race and these big feelings that you've written about. Yes. Thank you for bringing that up. It's such an important topic. We acknowledge in the book, and we'll acknowledge here, we are two white women, similar background, and so our lived experience is not that of everyone. And so we tried in the book

to interview people who had different backgrounds. We have a big readership, and so we talked to folks and tried to get their perspective. That being said there are stereotypes um that we talk about in the anger chapter that are due to race and they're they go both ways so both black people black women expressing anger also people in the asian community feeling like they are expected to never express that and how that comes up. And I think when we think about this from a societal lens or a workplace lens, it's really important to just be aware of those stereotypes because we all have them. We all have biases. All that we can do is try to be aware of if I am with someone and I'm not aware of that, then I may be interpreting their emotion differently than they are meaning for it to be interpreted. Yeah. So we talk about how anger has been shown to boost confidence and creativity, and it also can help you become motivated to advocate either for yourself or for other people. So one of the

stories we share in the chapter is Pixar executive Brad Bird, who would intentionally recruit frustrated animators to work on new films. And one of these groups of kind of angry animators essentially came up with the idea for The Incredibles, which was a movie at the time that broke box office records. So really nice example, again, of how often we're angry because we care a lot. And so that can motivate us to try and form a movement or do something different. Anger is evolution's way of just ringing a warning bell in our head and saying like, something is wrong that I would like to change. And then, you know, thinking about how can I channel all this energy that's within me productively to change things for the better. Up next, how friends can help

you work through your big feelings. Stick with us. Molly, you mentioned earlier and you wrote really openly about your own experiences with despair and depression. And I found myself wondering, did writing about it, did you learn anything new about your experiences? Yes, I, it was therapeutic to write about it. Definitely. It had been long enough. This is the part of the book that is the scariest for me to put out into the world. When I think about, you know, like my distant cousins, let alone the public reading about this thing that I experienced, it's quite difficult. But again, my main motivation for writing about it was to try to remove some of the stigma around this. Moving through despair, I mean, when you're in it, it

feels endless, like you will never get out of it. And I wanted people to know that you can move through it and you can come out the other end of it. And I wish that there were more stories of that because in the middle of feeling that I was grasping for any stories that I could find of people who had been through such a difficult emotion and made their way out the other side and I tried to share it in a way that was narrative enough so that people could follow what was going on but that also wasn't trying to wrap it up too neatly because you know I still deal with not as intense thoughts, but I still deal with depression and, you know, it's okay for not everything to be resolved.

I really loved a piece of advice that you wrote about in the book that your friend Julia gave you. And she told you, I'm paraphrasing here, that she doesn't believe in comparing levels of suffering. And if you're in a low place, that's just the place you're in. And I just really loved that. It was such a nice, affirming, real thing to say to someone who's going through it. Yes, absolutely. I think about that a lot. If you're suffering, you're suffering. And don't judge yourself for that. We talk about this in the book, but when you're in the middle of such an intense emotion, being really careful about who you speak with in the beginning, because not everyone will understand or say the right thing. And it's not their fault. But trying to find

people who you can have conversations with that you know that you will not face any judgment and they will be supportive. And then, you know, I go back and I really thank those people and I tell them how important they were in my life and help them know that they can be that for others too in the future. I think we also do this to ourselves a lot where if you're feeling low, you then beat yourself up because you say, well, relative to others, I have this amazing life. Why should I feel bad? And I was doing that to a friend. And she said, you just need to stop when you're having a great day and you're really excited about something. I'm not going to come in and say, yeah, but look at like

Jeff Bezos. He has so much more money than you. And so I think sometimes it can be useful to say, like, look at all the good things in your life, but you also, it's so important just to acknowledge life is hard and you're going to go through hard moments and you can be in a good situation and still emotionally be feeling devastated or low. It could be the chemicals in your brain. It could be whatever that's just really meaningful to you. So I think, again, just remembering that when someone comes to you and is going through something hard, not immediately being like, oh, you know, look on the bright side, because you wouldn't do that to them if they came to you and said, like, I just got promoted. I'm so excited. So just like letting them feel what they need to feel and talk about that with you.

You know, that reminds me of something else that really just shone through in this book, and it's the importance of having good people in your corner and strong relationships and friends that you can call and express those feelings that even are really scary to say out loud. And I wonder, did you guys have friends like that that you called while you were writing this book or people who you know you can turn to? I mean, some of them I think you've written about in the book. Yeah, I will speak for myself. I am lucky to have many friends who I can call. And the interesting thing is they aren't always the folks who you would sort of expect. And the people who, once you share

with them about big feelings, the people who continue to check in are also so, so valuable and helpful. And again, not always the ones who you would expect. So when I was going through despair and burnout also, I mean, there are people who I sort of let in a little bit and then they would call me every couple of weeks. How are you doing? Or I had one friend who texted me every single day and that made such a big difference to not feel alone. And I try to pay that forward now. And there's a story that I share in the book where I had a friend who many years ago went through a period of depression and I said to her something like, well, can't you just look on the bright side? And I felt so bad about that, that I had

said that to her, but I didn't know. I had not gone through a significant period of depression myself. And I actually reached out to her and apologized, um, like a year ago. So it's like 10 years after this event. And I said, I'm really sorry that I said that to you. I couldn't relate. And I was trying to make you feel better, but that's the last thing that you wanted to hear. And she said, thank you. So I'm glad you brought this up because I think this, the intersection of being able to talk about big feeling with friends can be difficult. But it, things can change over the course of a friendship. So what you can talk about with someone now may be different than later on. And the people who show up to support you may be those who, who surprise you. All right, we are going to leave it there. Liz Foslian and Molly West Duffy

are authors of the new book, Big Feelings, How to Be Okay When Things Are Not Okay. Thank you both for joining us. Thank you. Thanks. Yeah. Thanks for having us. If you or someone you know is in despair and having thoughts of dying, contact the National Suicide Prevention Hotline at 1-800-273-8255 or the Crisis Text Line by texting HOME to 741-741. Thanks again to Liz Foslan and Molly West Duffy. Their new book is called Big Feelings, How to Be Okay When Things Are Not Okay, and it's out now. You can check out more of Liz and Molly's work on Instagram. They're at Liz and Molly. This episode was produced by Janet Ujung Lee, and it was edited by Tamar Charney.

Listeners will be back in your feeds as usual on Friday. Until then, thanks for being here. Be good to yourselves. I'm Juana Summers, and this is It's Been a Minute from NPR.