The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Encyclopedia of emotions: Using your feelings as a navigation system towards a happy life by Vera Helleman

Episode Date: August 12, 2025

Encyclopedia of emotions: Using your feelings as a navigation system towards a happy life by Vera Helleman Emotioncodex.com https://www.amazon.com/Encyclopedia-emotions-feelings-navigation-towards/dp/1097173968 THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF EMOTIONS covers 350 emotions and their interpretations, as well as a helping hand on how to use this information constructively.Emotions guide us, help us recover or take next steps, and give informationabout what our true self needs.Emotions give us feedback on how our inner world is dealing with the outer world. By understanding this, we learn to communicate with our deepest self and we can tune our belief system to who we truly are.By doing this we attract a life that is more and more aligned with our deepest being, freeing the way to live our full potential.With this work, Vera is giving us tangible guidance to help us discover uncharted areas. Not just for ourselves, but also to use as a diagnostic tool.What participants in the training say:“A unique and ground-breaking vision”“This should be included on every social education syllabus"VERA HELLEMAN is a popular inspirational speaker, trainer and writer of the bestseller ‘Eff ortlessly being Yourself’ and above all an expert on feelings. Her work comes from an awake and very precise consciousness which lovingly and lightly confronts people with their own self-sabotaging patterns. She has the gift of translating the emotional world into our daily reality in a down-to-earth-way.Vera has a background in integrative psychotherapy, but, as she puts it, “my greatest teacher has always been life itself.” In her work she explains how a human being functions, how the world of creation works and how to attract a life that suits who you truly are.

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Because you're about to go on a moment. monster education rollercoaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Good folks, Voss here from the Chris Voss Show.com. Well, ladies, young, and the hour. I see because of the mix official, welcome to 16 years and 24 episodes of the Chris Voss show and the most amazing minds and people who come on the show and share with their journeys, et cetera, et cetera.

Go to Goodrease.com, Fortress, Chris Voss. LinkedIn.com, 4thus, Chris Voss, 1 on the TikTokity and all those crazy places. Opinions expressed by guests on the podcast are solely their own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the host or the Chris Foss show. Some guests of the show may be advertising on the podcast, but it is not an endorsement or review of any kind. We have an amazing young lady on the show today where we're talking to her about her book and some of the wares and things that she does to help people get better connected with themselves and their emotions. Our latest book, May 7, 2019, is called Encyclopedia of Emotions. using your feelings as a navigation system towards a happy life. Vera Heleman joins us on the show with us today.

We're going to be talking to her about her insights, her experience in life, and she's going to give you advice on making your life better, and you're going to take it, durn it, because you want your life to be better. Vera is the discover of the Emotion Codex, author of the bestseller is the Encyclopedia of Emotions and effortlessly being yourself

and founder of Emotion Expertise Center. She's a well-known speaker in the Netherlands and an icon in the field of emotions. Her fundamental and energetically logical approach to feelings has already transformed many lives. According to her, understanding and integrating our feelings tool is the missing piece in today's problems. She tries to work to restore emotions to their rightful function, our compass. Welcome to the show. How are you, Vera? I'm very excited and joyous to meet you.

It's a pleasure to meet you as well. Give us your dot-coms. Where can people find out more about you on the interwebs? Emotioncodex.com, very simple. So give us a 30,000 overview. What's the site of your book? Well, the Encyclopedia of Emotion contains 350 emotions. Wow.

Yes. Explains what, why they arrive. and what they want to tell you because emotions are feedback mechanism and every emotion, yeah, has a message for us. So it is, when there's something going on emotionally, you take the Emotionopedia, you look the emotion up and I'm speaking to you. That's very simple. Ah, so you look at the emotion, you're like, I'm feeling for clumped right now or I don't know

what emotions are, but 150 emotions, that's a lot of emotions, isn't there? What did you say? They don't know what emotions are. Well, I know I'm a man, so we don't do emotion. My husband said, this is a book for women, for women, because emotions, a man only have two emotions. Does he say what? So I'm good or it sucks? Good or it sucks?

Those are men's two emotions? I suppose it's all right, yeah. I don't think of it. But that's not good, of course. Well, you know, I feel sad every now. And then if I think about my dog dying, but other than that, we do pretty good. So you have an encyclopedia of emotions. What prompted you on to write this book?

Well, I always let me guide by my intuition. And actually, I was under the shower and some thoughts come into my mind. You have to write about emotion. I thought, oh, what's a good idea? And I did. So this book of six-month pages came out in eight weeks. But after that, I developed more and more about emotions and an emotion coaching method and recently a new structure about emotions, yes, came to me as the emotion codex.

And yeah, what I find so interesting about emotions is that it is the most recognizable entrance for human being to become aware of energy. and energy sounds very woo-hoo but what's so interesting about energy is that for example when we are talking I feel very joyous inside of me because I think you are a very funny man and you didn't make a joke yet but I'm very funny looking also that's not it but I feel some kind of echo coming from you which makes me love and that's not because I look not because what you say but it's it is some kind of vibrant you have around you and that is what we all perceive and that that is very invisible of course but emotions actually are the very raw examples yes perceiving that information

yeah most people when they're looking at me especially children they're just it's mostly horror is the emotion that they feel like what happened to him anyway really might be that ugly when I grow up yes you will uh at least So anyway, I wouldn't curse my looks on a woman, you know. I've seen Jill's daughter, and boy, she did not get Christy Brinkley's looks. When you say believing that maybe then it becomes true. I would want to curse women with my looks. No one wants to see that.

How did you, how did your own journey with emotions shape the way that you wrote the book and kind of were the prelude to the book? Well, when I look at my youth, I was very emotional. I had a very difficult adolescence, and I was a very quiet child, very sensitive. I never spoke until I was maybe 13 years old. Really? Yes, I observed, observed, observed, observed what a strange creature's people are. Oh, yeah. So I perceived everything. I saw everything, also the adult things. And, well, so I observed, I experienced, and I worked myself through it, and I became very happy.

And afterwards, I was going out with all my insights, and I attracted rooms full of people who wanted to know how to become happy, because they saw some kind of example. And so I became a teacher. And, well, now I'm here. in English because I did it all in Dutch for 14 years, but in Motion Codex, I got all this information in my head, was thinking about it in English. I thought that's true. I was thinking about it in English. Well, let's make it in English and offer it in English. Now, brand new in English, but proven in Dutch. And so how did you choose the format of an encyclopedia for emotions instead of like just talking about them why why did you go the encyclopedia way

i actually don't remember because it's a few years ago i wrote it i actually don't remember but i have this uh this amazing fabric of good ideas in my head and uh yes when a good idea comes into my head i immediately go for it so yes i have a guess but not a break So I think it came to me, and I just did it. Oh, okay. Just, yeah, drove by intuition. So that's also, of course, because I'm a sensitive woman. I'm not always finding things true.

Yeah. But when I go and look back, I think, oh, I did that good. And something I didn't. Yeah. So you talk about using emotions as a navigation system. It is something I can use in my memory. maps, my way is GPT that maybe I can get

downtown, but on the map. That's a joke I'm trying to set up. It's not working. Chetty is not so good in emotions. I try to scramble with Chetty and practice my English, but I always hit a very surface

bottom, so that's a thing you cannot do. So I remain, you human. We all remain human. And so I structured it in a map. It's all, by the way, looked like this. This is the emotion codex for the one who's watching it on YouTube. Uh-huh. Oh, wow. Actually, it is, it is made of an ancient symbol. Uh-huh.

And you can also be distracted into different parts. Looks like a star, maybe? Yes. Or you see a star David. Yeah. Yeah. two-dimensionally, but it is three-dimensionally. They call it also a merkaba. It's contained of two tetrahedons, mathematical figures. And the eight balls, you see, on each counter,

those are emotional forces. So there are eight different kinds of emotional forces, which are called emotion groups, and they all contain positive as well as negative emotions. They also correlate to life teams, and they all have certain kind of pitfalls, but also they gave messages to climb the ladder of those emotion groups and feel better. So there are all kinds of traps for people fall in when this life circumstances is speaking to them,

and then emotions are going to feedback. So when we, for example, we have this contracting emotion of self-nothing. That's me every day. A lot of people have that. That's emotional group shame speaking. So when we actually, when we lose ourselves in self-loathing and we become, we think we are less worthing than we truly are, our emotions say, it's not true.

You have to look. You have to look. You are far away from your true self. So it's like these rubber bands that hurt. Oh, yeah. And this is the way, how they feed them, it's the rubber bird, bands that hurt the moment we, yeah, walk away from our center. There you go. And, you know, emotions are a big thing.

Do you find that most of your clients are men or women? No, actually, 80% is women. Okay. Okay. Now, women come to you because they're having trouble with their emotions, because you guys are, you guys are, you guys are. are emotionally based and filter through everything through emotions, is, is there a lot of women that are trying to understand their own emotions? Because I thought you guys had that down better than us because you guys live in it. No. I think women suffer more from emotions because the

difference between what I see and I generalize, because there are a lot of sensitive men, which we all have access to all emotions. Men, women, he, she, her, it doesn't matter. But men are better in distinguishing the different kinds of problems in their heads. So you have a long hallway. You've probably heard about this. And men can easily put all these troubles behind doors. But women throw it all on one mountain.

Yeah. so behind every door an emotion is giving feedback so the man can close a door and open a door and hear one emotion but women hear all the emotions shouting to them and they don't know the difference because it's one added on the other added on the other so it's huge so they kind of get like a stack of emotions then and that can be overwhelming yes like sometimes women will say i'm too up in my emotions and that you see indicates they're kind of at a frantic sort of stage of their emotions yes yeah yes and then i'm a woman with a with a bit of a male brain so i managed to divide all the emotions that's what i do also with the women try to divide all the emotions so you can

listen to one message each time and then it's easier to understand what it asks from you So even though women live in their emotions, they still struggle to identify them, or maybe there's, like you said, too many of them coming at them, that it's hard for them to figure out what the real emotion is that they're having or experiencing? Yes, and you can, maybe it's easy to understand that when you have physical pain, for example, pampal, you have a stomach ache and it really cramps. this is actually how emotions also feel for some people or a migraine sometimes head explodes and all the emotions are adding to it oh yes or sometimes you're angry that means you're hungry and you're angry and you're just angry because you're hungry maybe sometimes angry yes do you experience that emotion no but women tend to you know you're like Anytime a woman gets upset, you always check you in.

You'd be like, what's last time you wait? I don't think there's, I'm sorry. That's a big thing here in America. Angry, being angry. Angry, hangary, yeah. I used to be that way. I don't know if I had a little butcher or if I just ate a bunch of crap, but now I kind of can recognize stuff.

But, yeah, I'm not, you know, with men, with men, I'm not sure that we, so much that we put emotion behind doors. I suppose you could put it that way, but we just don't have to emote our emotions women women it seems have to emote their emotions they have to revel in them feeling them roll around in them you know you can correct me if I'm wrong here but men we just we don't have to feel it and emotive I mean I can feel a little bit I can I can feel sad for my dog right now okay great I felt that done I don't have to emote it I don't have to roll it and I have to feel it you know maybe I'll cry every now and then over my dog

And that's okay. I'll have a little cry. I'm done with it. Can I ask you a question? Yeah. I find it very interesting. This distinguish between men and women because I believe there's not that much distinguish when it comes to emotion.

But what do you find beautiful about women? And I don't speak about the physicality. They're femininity. Their softness, but their softness is their power. their ability to nurture, their ability to love, their ability to be kind. They don't make those in the U.S. anymore, but I hear they're in other places. Everyone's really masculine here. They don't even wear dresses anymore.

They just wear pants like men. Exactly at the right time. I'll hear that. But all the things that you explain about women have to do with emotions. So, in modem, we have a negative way of coping with emotion, but there's also a really positive thing about having emotions, and that also comes from them, because when you integrate emotions, you can experience and enjoy life on a far more profound level than on the surface most people seems to live at.

Yeah, and I think most men need to be able to identify their emotions and think about them You know, a lot of men today were emasculated as they were raised in schools and by activists. And, you know, here in America told all sorts of stupid narratives. And so a lot of them operate and they're feminine core. And so they live in their emotions, but they don't fully understand them because, you know, women are, we're good at this sort of gymnastics. We're not. And so, you know, usually men have to find stoicism, masculinity, and learn those sort of aspects. and then they can control their emotions.

But, you know, even as a man, being able to identify emotions, okay? Why am I sad right now? Okay, well, great, my dog died. Or, you know, I don't know, I drop my phone. I feel bad now. Okay, great, whatever. Just keep going. It's, you know, we don't have time for a lot of stuff in our lives.

But so we just keep moving and stuff. But women have to connect with children, and children are based in emotion. And so they're the bridge between men and women, or men and children. They're the bridge to help nurture and identify them. And we're actually designed to be disconnected slightly emotionally from that on purpose because we've got to go out and do the hard things in the caveman world and go kill things and likely die and stuff or be separated from our families and slavery. So, you know, we've learned to over the years of medieval and caveman shit,

we've learned to have that disconnect. But it's there, it's there for a reason. Otherwise, we just sit around a home and play with our kids and we want them to go out and spear things and do cave and shit. What an only thing point of view. Yes, when you are raised in the idea of there are so many difference between men and women, which I see, by the way, I see a lot of men heard the, the message of

suppressing emotions because and right now it's still still true when a child of one years old when a boy falls they say oh dry your tears stand off because you're a boy

and when the girl falls you say oh come here give me a hug so still treats boys and girls differently so from a very young age men here, emotions are wrong. I cannot show them. I cannot feel them. But intuition is also a component of feeling. So emotions are one point, but instincts also belong to

them. Intuition belong to them. Feeling, just feeling, if someone resonates with you, also feeling in sexuality, chemistry, it's all part of feeling. And also, it's so beautiful. that we have to connect with children, but also connected with nature, comes through our feeling mobility. So when I look at the, actually the forces of creation and look at the human part phase, we have four parts that we need to walk through this reality. And that is our mind, our body, our consciousness, and our feeling. And when you look at how people have developed these four components, yes, mind is overdeveloped right now, body we know a lot about, but it's still difficult. Consciousness, yes, is beginning

to become a hype, but emotions are still so difficult that we are all left-handed, but actually we need to address all this human equipment equally 25% because we are in this. balanced and that mirrors in the outer world. So when I look at people they're totally unbalanced. Mind and body way very different

and consciousness and emotions aren't and that is mirrored in the outer world when I see the overconsumption of information, the green about one of the things, but the connection with nature, the connection to each other, to

it becomes silent, Being in silence with ourselves, we all scroll, scroll, scrolls, and one second of silence is scary for a lot of people because then the box of Pandora opened and emotions come out. What do we have to do with that? Yeah, yeah. You're right, more people need to identify emotions, even men, you know, and the other, I mean, the other thing is men need to learn. You don't need to moat emotions. You are allowed to. You're allowed to, sure, yeah.

If you want to sit and cry, cry, man. No, but that's not what it's about. It's not about that we need to cry. It's about that we notice that a feeling comes up. For example, disgust. That is, that is, or emotional disgust, or not feeling at ease with something, or feel a little bit stressed or fearful about it,

it's also an alarm signal that we don't head in that direction. So if we close those alarm signals. Yeah, yeah. So tell us about the codex. How does the system work, the emotion codex? Yes, so the codex, and I showed it this is a map. This is a very structured map that explains why emotions do as they do. these are like a magnetic field which vitalize us.

So these are all magnetics that is like a breath of life. They go out and go in. So some emotion contracts, that is the breath, the inhale of life and some emotions leave us in space. Like panic, it's all over the place. And so we lose ourselves to the outer world when we are in fear. we are in, when we are in a self-hate, for example, then we are contracted. So actually, these are like magnetic fields, which are continuously, yeah, balancing us. It's a moment.

It's interesting. Yes. Yes. So, now I notice on your website you've got several offerings. I think you have your own podcast. Do you want to get a plug in for that? yeah I'm just starting and you're welcome you're welcome to join it everybody with because I'm going to do live coaching sessions on that that is not something that I do one-on-one I only do groups but in the podcast I will give you yes I will show it how it goes

and I give you through live examples of people who are really struggling with emotions I give feedback on my emotions do what they do. So this is yes, I did in the Netherlands for quite a while and now only also in English. And you've got some upcoming events, nice and different things. I don't know if you want to plug some of these, a free webinar, YouTube Live,

a class quarterly case lab for real emotions and insights. Do you want to tease out some of that? Yes, I do my weekly queue on emotion and you can attend that when you are a member of our community and in this community I have an emotion mastery program and that is very interesting.

It is almost a therapeutic program which we go through all these emotion groups and actually go from the unknown to the pain, to the healing, to the mastery of every life theme because these eight-life theme actually completes everything that we experience in life. So it's like we say in the Netherlands, we buy the free. We re-groom through our lives and you lift it up to a higher level. So people who don't that say, well, you really changed my life. And I'm there to guide it. And you do lectures, retweets as well.

Retreats as well. Did I say retweets? Yes. That's not, you get on Twitter. I'm not giving up Twitter yet, so I'm still having Twitter. Now, you've written several books, too, as well. We should plug them. There's a book coming out soon called the Emotion Codex in Book Form.

Do you want to tease out a little bit about that, maybe? Yes, maybe it's too early. So it's now only available as an online course. You can find out on the website. The other books are, yes, available for Amazon. Be yourself, the Encyclopedia, of course. And I wrote a book also about autism. Because I come from an artistic family also for artistic children.

And I was very naughty and came up with a different way of looking at it. And that became very viral also in the health care companies that work with people with autism. The power of autism. We've had lots of folks that are on the spectrum on the show. And usually they're brilliant. They consume their, you know, all the best of aunts are usually autistic on the spectrum. And I mean, they have the ability to really specialize on. certain things and do them extremely well.

And I'm also artistic. This is why I could distract all these structures in our emotional landscape. Effronously being yourself. So how do people reach out to you? How do they interact with you? How do they get on board with your systems and programs? Find out if they're a fit for you and you're a fit for them? Just look the website.

Look at the website. There are all kinds of free gifts also. free gifts also that you can attend and there's also a seven-day free trial on the emotion mastery program so you can get free access for seven days to all courses so you can just feel how it is and join the Q&A and ask your questions and meet me and well so if you're struggling with emotions yeah that's the place so give us your final pitch out tell people where they can order the book your dot coms as we go out yes you can order it on amazon bowl.com that's a european business and just uh just type into google vera heleman and you'll find a lot of me

well thank you very much vera we certainly appreciate it yes thank you for having me was a very interesting conversation and going to ponder about it for a while and uh thanks Thanks for honest for tuning in. Order up various books, wherever fine books are sold. The Encyclopedia, well, there's no the there. Let me recut that. Encyclopedia of emotions, using your feelings as a navigation system towards a happy life out May 7, 2019. Thanks for us for us for us for us Chris Voss. Go to Goodreads.com, Fortress, Chris Voss, LinkedIn, dot, for just Chris Foss. Chris Voss won, the TikTokany, and all those crazy places in the internet. Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you next time.

And that's what I'm saying.