
Thanks for listening to The Fat Psychologist Podcast. Join me to decode wellbeing research so it can have a real impact in our lives. Let's make decisions based on information we understand, not based what others say we should think of ourselves. I will explore themes that have been important in my life, as I search for happiness and belonging. This is our journey, I would love you to contribute too!
The Fat Psychologist Podcast
Feel It to Heal It: Emotions with Juan Pablo Kalawski
“We can all fool ourselves, but we don’t have to. We can pay attention. The unmistakable answer is going to be inside.” Juan Pablo Kalawski
Season 1 Episode 9
In this episode
Welcome to another episode of The Fat Psychologist Podcast. This week, I am joined by psychologist and Alba Emoting master teacher Dr Juan Pablo Kalawski for a deep and heartfelt conversation about emotions—what they are, how we experience them, and how we can use them to heal and grow. We explore:
What emotions really are (and why defining them is so tricky)
The connection between body, breath, and feelings
Why anger isn’t bad—and how it can fuel positive change
The Alba Method: how breathing patterns can evoke real emotions
How to listen to your body and uncover emotional truths
Why therapy matters and how to reclaim your emotional power
Whether you're a psychology enthusiast or just trying to make sense of your own emotional world, this episode is for you.
Guests
Juan Pablo Kalawski holds a PhD in Clinical Psychology from the University of North Texas, USA. He is Assistant Professor of Psychology at the Autonomous University of Chile in Temuco. He is an experienced clinical psychologist and psychotherapist, certified by the International Society for Emotion Focused Therapy. Juan Pablo is a founding member and past co-president of the Alba Method Association. He has pioneered the application of the Alba Method in psychotherapy, leading Alba Method workshops in Chile, the United States, and Mexico. His articles include: “Is tenderness a basic emotion?”, “Using Alba Emoting™ to work with emotions in psychotherapy”, and Irarrázaval and Kalawski’s “Phenomenological considerations on empathy and emotions in psychotherapy”.
Find Juan Pablo on Facebook, ResearchGate or LinkedIn
Ninna Makrinov, aka The Fat Psychologist, is a teacher, trainer, coach and the author of The Fat Psychologist Podcast. A critical thinker by nature, Ninna is an activist who questions knowledge from a feminist, fat inclusive, disability informed, anti-racist perspective. By day, Ninna works as Assistant Professor (Research Methods) at the University of Warwick and Chair of Governors in two Birmingham Primary Schools. She has been an academic in Chile, Mexico and the UK. Ninna is passionate about the development and well-being of people and the organisations they are part of.
Ninna is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. She holds a BSc Psychology and Professional Title in Organisational Psychology from Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, an MSc in Occupational Health Psychology from The University of Nottingham and a Masters in Business Administration from Tecnológico de Monterrey. She has most recently completed the Postgraduate Award (PGA) Curriculum Design in Higher Education and the PGA Technology Enhanced Learning at The University of Warwick.
In this episode, we talked about:
Alba Method (Alba Emoting) - Alba Method Association
The movie Inside Out, by Disney PIXAR
Academic Articles
Kalawski, J.P. The Alba Method and the Science of Emotions. Integrative Psychological and Behavioural Science. 54, 903–919 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12124-020-09525-4




Transcript
[00:00:05] Hello. I am Ninna Makrinov. I am a psychologist, and yes, I am fat. I am The Fat Psychologist. I love who I am. In fact, I want everyone to embrace who they are. Just be you saying, this sounds easy, but doing it can be hard. That's where my podcast comes in. So welcome to the Fat Psychologist Podcast.
[00:00:28] In this season, I explore happiness at every size. I hope my journey can guide yours. You can also contact me to work together. Visit my website the fat psychologist.com to learn how I can help you become the hero in your personal story.
[00:00:44] Inclusivity is at the heart of everything I do. I capture every word with care. You will find precise transcripts on my website and human check captions wherever you listen.
[00:00:55] If you like my podcast, subscribe and share with your friends. You can also find me [00:01:00] on Blue Sky and Instagram at the Fat Psychologist.
[00:01:03] In previous episodes I've been talking a lot about emotions. Even choosing the theme happiness at every size for this series, 'cause happiness is an emotional state. A couple of episodes ago I mentioned a specific technique called Alba Emoting, a method that I learned some years ago. I invited a great psychologist, Juan Pablo Kalawski, to join me in Mexico to do some training with other people who were doing professional development, and I'm super, super happy that Juan Pablo's agreed to join me today.
[00:01:38] Juan Pablo, would you like to introduce yourself to our listeners?
[00:01:41] Hi, thank you for inviting me. Uh, This is the first time we've spoken in English .
[00:01:45] It is the first time we've spoken in like 10 years.
[00:01:47] Right. But before that, we spoke in Spanish only, you know?
[00:01:50] That is true. Yeah.
[00:01:51] I went to Mexico in 2013 to do that Alba Method training.
[00:01:56] My name is Juan Pablo Kalawski. I'm Chilean, I'm a clinical [00:02:00] psychologist. I have a PhD from the University of North Texas. I am a professor at University Autonoma de Chile, Autonomous University of Chile, in Temuco, Chile. And I've been interested in emotions for a very long time. I am a master teacher of the Alba Method. It's also called Alba Emoting. I am also certified in emotion focused therapy. So for a long time I've been interested in emotions as a psychologist and as a person.
[00:02:29] The person to talk to when we're thinking about emotions.
[00:02:32] Because some of our audience are just listening, they won't see you.
[00:02:35] Yes.
[00:02:36] For inclusion could you describe yourself physically?
[00:02:39] I'm 51 years old, I guess that's important. I have brown hair, right now it's short. I have a short beard right now, it's not always on, but it's on today , it's red with some white in it. I have green eyes. I'm wearing glasses. [00:03:00] I'm wearing a purple shirt. Uh, I don't know if you need anything else.
[00:03:05] I leave it to each person to describe themselves as they like.
[00:03:07] My skin is, is fair. People would say white. I have European ancestry for the most part.
[00:03:14] Just before meeting you today, I was looking again at some of your recent publications. How would you define emotion?
[00:03:21] So if you are an emotion scholar, an emotion scientist, you will know that there's countless ways to define emotions, and that's part of the problem in terms of research and theory, that there is no agreement on what an emotion is on how to define it. People use terms in very different ways. For now, an emotion is a state of the whole being. So it's not just one thing, it's the whole system. So our motivation is involved, meaning there are some things we care about, some things we [00:04:00] want to do. Clearly our physiology is involved, there's many different things happening in our bodies and our brain. And one characteristic that we often focus on, but it's not the only one, is the subjective experience. We feel the emotion, but sometimes we can have the emotion without realizing it, but if we pay attention, there is a specific feeling of the emotion. And there's actions involved and there's an expression, often you can notice that somebody's experiencing an emotion by observing them. So that's a reasonable definition for this podcast, I hope.
[00:04:36] Brilliant. So I think that makes a lot of sense to me. What I'm hearing is this debate of what an emotion is in terms of are there loads of emotions, are there some emotions? And also how it presents.
[00:04:46] Right, right. And I guess thoughts per se could be associated with emotions, but I would not say they're part of the emotion because I think if we start including thoughts, then everything is an emotion.
[00:04:58] Yeah.
[00:04:59] [00:05:00] Thoughts can trigger emotions and also emotions trigger thoughts. So it goes both ways.
[00:05:05] And that reminds me of CBT, cognitive behavioral therapy, this idea of cognition, emotion, and behavior. And they're linked together.
[00:05:15] Right. Cognitive behavioral therapy most of the time is really cognitive therapy. You may know this, but people who are not psychologists, back in the day there was behavior therapy and cognitive therapy and they were like opposite and now they're often blended. Right? But in CBT or cognitive behavioral therapy the idea is that thoughts produce emotions, and that is true. However, the thing that I disagree with and many others disagree with is that they say that thoughts are necessary to produce an emotion. That you have to have a thought first before you have an emotion and common experience tells us that's not the case. You don't need a thought. For [00:06:00] example, you know, like if I'm walking down the street and all of a sudden a dog starts barking right next to me, I'm gonna feel scared and there's no thought there. I just, feel scared immediately. In daily life, we have a lot of emotions that are produced by thoughts, and we also have some emotions that are not produced by thoughts. So it's a combination.
[00:06:24] The psychologist is coming there, but it's like that limbic system response. So there's something in our bodies that responds much quicker. Than our brain rational thinking when you're thinking about emotions that are not created through thought. So they're starting a different way.
[00:06:40] Right, right. So in terms of therapy, that's important because, you know, like in cognitive therapy they try to change your emotions by changing your thoughts. And that works sometimes, but not all the time. Sometimes the emotion you have is not based on thought and you cannot change it rationally. You need to change it with another [00:07:00] emotion. And that's in emotion focused therapy, which is the approach that I use, we talk about changing emotion with emotion.
[00:07:06] In order to change emotions, sometimes thoughts help, but sometimes what really you need to do is to feel a different emotion.
[00:07:15] I think that makes a lot of sense to me as a person rather than as a psychologist. In terms of my own experience. I've shared in the podcast before that I, currently, I'm in a state where I'm feeling a lot of tension in my body. I am happy. Like I don't feel tension in my thinking,
[00:07:35] Okay.
[00:07:36] it's still there.
[00:07:37] And some of the techniques that I learned with you, like step out or even using laughter can help me let that go a bit and feel better.
[00:07:45] Yes.
[00:07:46] I do feel that that's kind of that connection of emotions that are not linked to necessarily thoughts, but I'm still feeling in my body .
[00:07:54] Right.
[00:07:55] Does that make sense?
[00:07:56] yes.
[00:07:56] It makes sense. We are whole organisms and we are a [00:08:00] product of evolution, and we evolved for millions of years together with our environment. From our earliest ancestors, we are really attuned to what's happening around us. And that is not just our brain, but our whole bodies. So in emotion focused therapy in particular, we use a technique developed by a philosopher Eugene Gendlin. And the technique is called focusing, and it utilizes the wisdom of the body. So for example, if you say, "I've had tension, but I don't have tense thoughts". That happens. Right? And that tension is about something, but it's not something rational, at least not at this moment, based on what you said. And it's like about something.
[00:08:47] So one thing we can do. Is for example, use the step out technique, which is a body lead technique to kind of like bring it down to calm down. Another thing we can do is focusing on the [00:09:00] body and let that physical sensation speak and tell me. Okay. What, what's your deal here? We can find... I found it in my personal life when I used this, and actually, this is a technique, but people can do it, you know, not as a technique, kind of like, even not realizing, it's a natural thing that we often do. If I pay attention to this physical sensation, it can tell me something. But we don't know what it is. It could be, for example, this tension is, it's like my bed. My bed is not comfortable and I need to do something about that, for example. But going into paying attention to the feeling, I don't know what I'm gonna find, and it's not rational. The physical sensation tells me it could be the bed or it could also be really about, I don't know, the podcast that I need to get ready for, and that's what getting my body tense, right? The cool thing about this is that you can [00:10:00] ask questions to your body and you know when you get an answer. So for example, if I just slow down and pay attention to my physical sensation, right now I have like a little pain in my back and I can say, okay, are you about the podcast? And if I slow down enough, which I won't do because we're kind of like talking right in this conversation, i'm not gonna be able to fool myself. Like, if, if it says yes, it's like, oh, yeah, I can feel it. Or if it says no, and it's not gonna be a voice necessarily, you know? Uh, but I can like tell, uh, okay, no, no, no, it doesn't really fit. So I can negotiate, or like dialogue with that physical sensation and gives me information.
[00:10:47] I don't know if that makes sense.
[00:10:48] It does make sense. At least to me. And I think it also makes sense with other practices that are quite common. And I've gone to, so for example, in some approaches to mindfulness meditation, they [00:11:00] do body scannings, which I suppose has similar effects. It's like focus how, what's your body feeling? Just take the time to focus on that. And also, I was wondering , and this is based on experience rather than on knowledge from literature, but I imagine that in our current society as well, we spend a lot of the time hiding or masking emotion
[00:11:19] right,
[00:11:20] ' Cause it's inappropriate to show emotion in different environments.
[00:11:23] So I wonder if that is also then in the body and allowing that space for letting the emotions show can help us process them?
[00:11:33] Right, right. So, I would say that from the beginning of social life, millions of years ago, our ancestors have always at some points had to hide their emotions.
[00:11:44] Fair.
[00:11:45] Sometimes there's this myth of like, oh, like back in long time ago we were letting it all hang out and No, look at documentaries about like chimps for example. Yeah. There's a lot of politics going on and sometimes you need to exaggerate [00:12:00] your emotions, they do that too, sometimes you fake emotions and sometimes you hide them.
[00:12:04] And as human beings in the 21st century, we're even more sophisticated than that. The problem is when you hide them to yourself. Sometimes you really need to express emotions to others, but oftentimes that's not a good idea, uh, in real life, right? But the problem is when we hide them to ourselves, we don't know how we feel.
[00:12:28] That again, makes a lot of sense to me because it's not necessarily about acting out on the emotion, but it's about having a response that is informed by an emotion...
[00:12:42] exactly.
[00:12:42] in a more rational way.
[00:12:44] Right, right, right. So one of the emotions that is most problematic for people is anger. There's two traps that people could fall into: one is just impulsively act out on anger, most of the time that's not gonna be good; the other one is ignoring [00:13:00] it, ignoring anger because often we're angry for a reason. What we need to do is: okay, this anger, what am I going to do about it? You know, and then we can use our rational minds to figure out. There are times, maybe, when violence might be called for, most of the time it's not, right? So " I'm not gonna do violence, what do I do? Do I talk with this person? Would that be a good idea? Sometimes it is, sometimes it's not. Do I walk away?" If it's like somebody with power over me, do I try to get out of this relationship, for example? Or if it's like abuse at work, if it's bullying, do I punch them in the nose? Probably not, but maybe I need to file a complaint or maybe I need to look for a different job. So this anger can be very helpful. And of course the same is true with grief and love, even sexual attraction. Well, do we always act on sexual attraction? Eh, not necessarily a good idea.
[00:13:57] Probably not.
[00:13:58] So what do we do with those [00:14:00] things?
[00:14:00] I think that leads to another thing that I hear a lot from people and it gets to me, it's this idea of positive and negative emotions, I personally believe that all emotions are positive. So they're there for reason.
[00:14:11] Right,
[00:14:12] they might not be great acted out, but they're useful.
[00:14:15] right,
[00:14:15] When I hear positive, I mean useful, I suppose, which is why I see it that way.
[00:14:19] The word positive is very common, and I think it's misleading. Emotions in general, like the categories of emotions like anger and sadness and so on, they're all positive in the sense that they're all useful. Sometimes it could be that there's an emotion that in this context is not useful in that specific situation, but in general they are. Some people, it's a minority, but some psychologists use the word enjoyable emotion. And I think
[00:14:50] I never heard that one.
[00:14:51] that's better because Oh, you enjoy that feeling. It's not, the other ones are negative, the other ones, there's not so much a word that is [00:15:00] commonly used, but I call them aversive or unpleasant emotions.
[00:15:04] Yeah, for most people, 'cause again, some people might enjoy emotions that other people find unpleasant...
[00:15:09] well, that's a good question. For example, like you'd say, some people enjoy anger, but I don't think they really enjoy anger per se. I think, they may enjoy what anger gives them.
[00:15:23] Okay. Yeah, like the feeling of power over others, for example .
[00:15:27] right? Because anger can be actually useful in helping us achieve a goal. So for example, if I am angry and then I get to what I wanted with my anger. Then after that I feel good, but it's not during the moment where I'm angry. It's later.
[00:15:44] Yeah. And then I suppose like you're saying that, and I'm thinking actually for example, me starting this podcast
[00:15:49] Uhhuh.
[00:15:49] has to do with me being angry. 'cause I'm really angry at the fact that people are discriminated against because we are fat
[00:15:56] right.
[00:15:57] and that we are seen as less [00:16:00] valuable and we are seen as stupid and slow and disorganized and all of these things.
[00:16:05] So I put that anger into something that I hope
[00:16:10] Right,
[00:16:10] is productive rather than going and, kicking the doctor when he tells me I need to lose weight, you know, which would be not productive, I suppose.
[00:16:19] Yes. Don't kick your doctor.
[00:16:21] No, that's probably not a good idea, although my current doctor does not tell me to lose weight .
[00:16:25] Right.
[00:16:26] Okay. That makes, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So I'm, I'm trying to kind of link it to experiences. So again, our listeners are linking to their own experiences too.
[00:16:34] I have two roles. In terms of emotion science, I try to be very, precise in my terms,
[00:16:42] very important.
[00:16:43] but also I'm a therapist and then, that's really not relevant when I'm doing therapy. For example, sometimes I can feel excited when a client expresses anger in session because it's needed, it's important, it's healthy anger. So I can [00:17:00] encourage that and I understand this podcast is more for how it applies to my life, right?
[00:17:05] Exactly. 'cause I don't know who's listening, but I imagine it's not people who are experts. Psychologists or, I mean there might be some, I have no idea,
[00:17:13] right,
[00:17:14] but I imagine it's just anyone who might be interested in what's the evidence behind and what can I do in my own life?
[00:17:20] right,
[00:17:21] What can I take from this?
[00:17:22] And I suppose another thing to me is really important, and you've mentioned you are a therapist, and I think it's really important also for people to know that asking for help and going to therapy is very important. And it has been really important in my life.
[00:17:37] right,
[00:17:37] Sometimes we can cope with some of these things on our own, or sometimes social support from friends might be enough and sometimes we can take action.
[00:17:45] But then also sometimes we can't and that's also fine. So finding that help to process what's been happening or to give us the courage to act when, for example, I mean, again, I share my life openly on the podcast. So [00:18:00] I went through a period of partnership abuse where it wasn't physical abuse, but it was very much emotional abuse with my partner telling me I was a really bad mom and I didn't think when I didn't do things in his way and. I was really scared of that scenario and what would happen, and all my power was kind of really low and I didn't take action.
[00:18:22] And suddenly, I mean, with therapy and with support
[00:18:26] Right.
[00:18:26] I went like, you know, I need to talk about this and face it. And I ended up leaving the situation.
[00:18:31] It's really important that asking for help is not weakness, I think. ' Vulnerability I don't think is weakness and, and there are people like you or many other therapists out there that can help
[00:18:44] right,
[00:18:44] us in navigating these issues.
[00:18:46] Exactly. Yes, of course. It's important to know that we figure things out on our own and sometimes we can't, you know, and sometimes we need help, we need somebody else to help us. Yes.
[00:18:57] Yeah. Okay. I'll go nerdy again. [00:19:00] I contacted you the first time and the second time again,
[00:19:02] yes,
[00:19:03] Because I really like the Alba method. I look at it and it makes so much sense to me in theory. Can you just give us an intro and then we can talk about the experience.
[00:19:13] So what is the Alba method?
[00:19:15] It's based on the research by Susanna Block and her colleagues. This is something that started in 1970, so a long time ago in Chile, and they studied what happens in the body when people experience different emotions and specifically they focus on breathing. And they studied six emotions which they considered basic emotions. And they noticed that there's a particular way of breathing that is specific to each of those emotions. So, for example, if you're angry, you breathe in a specific way that is different from when you are scared, for example.
[00:19:52] A couple episodes ago, I demonstrated that I can still use the laughter pattern to laugh.
[00:19:57] Right. So with laughter is [00:20:00] more known because people say, oh yeah, they can tell there's breathing involved
[00:20:04] Yeah. Yeah.
[00:20:04] And so they studied anger, sadness, fear, laughter -joy as a combination slash the same thing, eroticism or lust and tenderness. There's a very specific breathing cycle that you can see on something called a pneumo graft, which is a recording of the shape of your breathing. Based on these discoveries, they taught people to intentionally do those breathing patterns. And I have to say, in addition to the breathing patterns, different emotions have a different facial expression, and that's more obvious, right?
[00:20:44] Different body positions. Yeah.
[00:20:46] Right, but, but there's a face involved
[00:20:48] Yeah.
[00:20:49] there's a body posture, but the most important element is the breathing. So they taught actors to intentionally do these breathing, [00:21:00] not just spontaneously because they were feeling the feeling, but on purpose breathing a specific way. And what happens when you do that if you do it well, which is not that easy to do well, is that you actually feel the feeling. You breathe in a specific way and that makes you feel the emotion.
[00:21:16] That's what training you did with us, and we spent like, this, was it like three, four days practicing these techniques, wasn't it?
[00:21:23] The training is, you know, very, it's physical, it's physical training.
[00:21:26] Yeah, very physical. Yeah,
[00:21:27] your body to breathe in specific ways and to move in specific ways. And if you do it right, you can access the emotion. then there's also a technique called the step out, which is also physical to bring you out
[00:21:40] which is we were mentioning before.
[00:21:41] Of the emotion, right? It's called Step out because you step out of the emotion and it's all done through the body. It's a cool application of research, this was discovered in the lab. Then you apply it and it's a way to get in touch with feelings, not through your mind or through your [00:22:00] stories or thoughts.
[00:22:01] You can get in touch with the pure version of sadness. Some people that don't know the method or have not experienced it, think, oh, that's not possible. That's not possible. Emotion is always about something and from experience, I would say most of the time it is, but it's also its own thing.
[00:22:20] I've been there with the training with you and we were all doing the emotions just from the postures. We were not thinking of anything, and I remember I didn't, even, when I was already in the emotion,
[00:22:30] Uh
[00:22:31] I wasn't having thoughts related to that emotion.
[00:22:33] right,
[00:22:34] I was sad, but I wasn't thinking, oh, when this happened in my life. Potentially that might be a next step in terms of therapy and linking those ideas and whatever. But then also having that experience from, of practicing them, which I haven't used much in my life except for laughter and step out.
[00:22:51] But it's really helpful to then start identifying when things are happening in my life. That I might not recognize an emotion happening, [00:23:00] but I can focus on my body again and go, oh, I lashed out because what was happening, what was happening was that actually I was getting sad because I thought you were going to not like me anymore. And I was feeling angry because of that. And then instead of being kind and saying, "you know what, it would be really nice if you did this. I just go, yeah, because you always do this with me."
[00:23:24] Right,
[00:23:25] and I lashed out and I was not assertive because of the emotion, if that makes sense.
[00:23:30] A lot of people, when you ask them how they feel, they tell you how they think they should feel, but they're not actually feeling the feeling. it's like, well, in this situation it would make sense that I would feel angry or sad or whatever. And most of the time we guess, right? But it's a guess. One of the uses of having this training is that you can really forget about the thoughts and just pay attention because you know what [00:24:00] anger feels like, what it feels like, what sadness feels like.
[00:24:04] Then it's like, do I feel like that? And you can say, oh, I feel scared, and then you can go why do I feel scared? But if you don't know that, you may think, I'm not scared because there's nothing dangerous.
[00:24:16] And maybe it's true. There's nothing dangerous, but if you go inside, oh, maybe I am scared.
[00:24:21] And maybe there's something else happening.
[00:24:24] The other thing that I think might be of interest to people is the Alba Method's clear idea of a series of emotions that are these basic emotions.
[00:24:32] We might have mixes of these emotions that create bigger. Patterns. When I looked at other research, that doesn't make as much sense to me as a person. So for example, I really like the work of Brené Brown. I don't know if you know her at all.
[00:24:47] Uh, yeah.
[00:24:49] Yep. So, uh, she's recently published a book called The Atlas of the Heart, where she goes through 87 human emotions and experiences.
[00:24:56] yes,
[00:24:56] I'm like, it's really hard to follow. I mean, it's really interesting.
[00:24:59] But [00:25:00] then also are there that many and what's the mix there?
[00:25:03] There are some other people that I suppose are more cognitive people that would be saying it's really important that we're able to accurately label emotions. So having this big vocabulary of emotions could be really helpful. I don't know what your views are on that.
[00:25:17] My thinking has evolved over the years, based on the evidence. I'm counting the scientific evidence that I read about, but I'm also counting my own experiences, they count too. Probably in 2013 when I did the workshop in Mexico, I bought into the whole approach that Susana Block had about emotions. And she said there's six basic emotions, and that's that. And now I think it's more complicated than that. The idea of basic emotions has been around for a long time and the most popular version is what you saw in the the movie Inside Out One. Five emotions, those [00:26:00] emotions are not just there because the writers thought of them, they were based on a survey of emotion experts.
[00:26:06] I'm surprised that disgust is an emotion.
[00:26:08] And yes, I, I know . That's debatable, but a lot of people think it is. And so it made it into the movie. A lot of scientists think it is. And in fact most non-scientists or non-experts would not say it's an emotion, but that's something else. And, and I think they're right.
[00:26:25] But, but anyway, so there is like, disgust, anger, sadness, fear, and joy. And that's the five in the movie. Right? In the Alba method, there is no disgust and there is tenderness and eroticism. And a long time ago I thought, well, why are these other two not included? Why are they not more popularly considered basic emotions, especially tenderness. So I did an experiment in the United States, but providing evidence that tenderness is a basic emotion. And that was a long [00:27:00] time ago. But then I was thinking, if I did this for tenderness, why can't be done for other emotions? For example, I used to believe that shame was not a basic emotion, or that curiosity was not a basic emotion and so on. Right now my reading of the science is that there's over 20 distinct emotions. And they really have a different flavor, each of them. Now 80 , I'm not familiar with that, or 80 something. That seems a bit too much. But there's a bunch of different distinct emotions.
[00:27:36] And I imagine that for most of us who are not academics in this field, it doesn't really matter if they're six, 20 or 87, as long as our understanding is helpful for our lives and we can make sense of our experiences and help us grow into... I chose the word happiness, but I again, don't expect everyone to be happy. It could be contentment, it could be whatever works for [00:28:00] us.
[00:28:00] Right. The academic discussion is not needed for most people. But what we do need is telling emotions apart. So for example, pride, we can tell, we know when we feel pride, we know when somebody else is feeling pride, we can tell. The general public knows more about emotions than the scientists because they experience them every day.
[00:28:20] What is important is it is telling me something. What is pride telling me and what do I do with that information that pride is giving me?
[00:28:27] And related to happiness? Happiness is a word that can mean different things. And if we look at the enjoyable emotions , they're not all the same. So I think this variety of emotions helps us understand, happiness better. Because happiness is not just about feeling this generic joy.
[00:28:47] There's different aspects: sometimes you need to feel pride, sometimes you need to feel contentment, which is quite different. Sometimes you need to feel amusement . Susana Block, for example, in the Alba [00:29:00] method, she sometimes uses the word happiness more often, joy, but the breathing pattern is laughter. Well, laughter is not generic happiness. Laughter is amusement
[00:29:11] Absolutely. Yeah, it's, yeah.
[00:29:13] But sometimes you need to feel content and that's not necessarily going to be haha laughing. It's a different kind of feeling that it's also important for your wellbeing. So it's helpful to have a variety.
[00:29:25] There's an article based on research published years ago in Psychology Today about eight different types of happiness and how it is important for you to have all those different types in your life.
[00:29:39] Great. As a finishing thing, what would be your key message to listeners. If they can take something from everything you've learned in your life or from what you've shared today, what would be a key?
[00:29:52] I think the main message is that if you pay attention, we can all fool ourselves, but [00:30:00] we don't have to and we can pay attention. We know inside what's the deepest thing that I'm feeling? and it could be any kind of feeling, sometimes sadness, anger. But most of the time it's a more complicated thing. It is true that we are feeling it. Sometimes we're feeling, for example, like nobody's ever been there for me. Is that an emotion, a basic emotion? No, it's not a basic emotion, but you're feeling it.
[00:30:25] And we could name it in a different way that is more emotionally based.
[00:30:28] Sometimes we feel uncared for, we know, okay, does that fit? And we feel like it clicks. And maybe sad, which is kind of similar, but it doesn't click as well. We can ask that to ourselves. We have that wisdom inside. That's one big message that I want to give to people is that we have that wisdom, but we need to listen to it. We need to listen to it and listen to me and whatever experts and your therapist and all that stuff. But in the end the [00:31:00] unmistakable answer is gonna be inside.
[00:31:01] If we are willing to believe that we have those answers, then we get our power and our ability to take charge of our lives.
[00:31:09] Exactly.
[00:31:10] and it's really important because it feels different. I can say from my life when I have sometimes felt powerless and sometimes I felt powerful and it has a lot to do with owning what's happening in my life and taking action.
[00:31:23] Right. The other thing, is that some emotions are more helpful than others. For example, whenever I am with this person, I have an uneasy feeling. That emotion may be helpful. It may be telling me something about that relationship. But what if every time you meet somebody new, you have an uneasy feeling. Maybe it's not about that relationship. Maybe it's something that you learned in your past and maybe that emotion then is not helpful in the moment because it's an overlearned thing that is not giving you information. So it's once you get in touch, [00:32:00] you can start finding out if this emotion is giving me information about what's happening at the moment, or it's more an emotion that I always have and it's more about me and my habits.
[00:32:11] Thank you very much. It's been such a lovely conversation. Thank you for your time. I really, really appreciate that.
[00:32:16] it's been a pleasure.
[00:32:17] It has been, and I am sure listeners will love hearing from you./
[00:32:22] Can you please let our listeners know where they can find you, follow you, and know about your work?
[00:32:27] yes. Thank you. My most public facing social media is a Facebook page: Juan Public Kalawski, PhD.
[00:32:36] Juan, J-U-A-N space Pablo, P-A-B-L-O, space Kalawski, K-A-L-A-W-S-K-I space and PhD. You should be able to find it if you search for it on Facebook.
[00:32:53] I also have a Research Gate page if somebody's interested in my research. But in terms of my communications [00:33:00] with the, with the public, it's mostly on that Facebook page, mostly in Spanish, but it has some information in English too.
[00:33:07] If anyone wanted to contact you, they can always contact you through there in English and you'll understand.
[00:33:12] I will put those links on the show notes so people can find you.
[00:33:16] And that takes us to the end of the episode. I have loved talking about emotions with Juan Pablo. Look out for upcoming episodes where I'll also be talking about counseling, so if you wanna follow up on some of the things we've talked about here.
[00:33:29] If you like my podcast, please follow, subscribe and engage. That's really important for me as I keep growing this idea. Share with your friends, let others know, and let's keep changing the world together.
[00:33:46] I am on YouTube on any of the podcast places you listen to. So Spotify, apple, et cetera. Look at my website @ thefatpsychologist.com and you can find me on [00:34:00] Instagram, Threads and Blue Sky @theFatPsychologist. Get in touch if you want to appear as a guest or if you'd like to contribute to my vision by buying me a coffee.
[00:34:12] I am actively looking for sponsors. So please get in touch if you know someone or if you can sponsor yourself.
[00:34:19] Keep listening for the next episode of the Fat Psychologist coming out next week.
Show Notes
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