Most of us treat emotions as weather: something that happens to us, moves through us, and leaves on its own schedule. But there is a growing body of work in psychology and affective science suggesting that how we describe a feeling — the actual words we reach for — can change what that feeling does inside us. The difference between “I feel bad” and “I feel ashamed that I snapped at my partner” is not just poetry. The second version carries information the first one hides, and that information appears to matter. One of the central ideas in this field is…
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