Big Feelings

“Writing (and drawing) with their signature insight and humor, Liz and Mollie dispense the wisdom and compassion we all need for working through our most difficult emotions.”
—Susan Cain, author of *Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole

• “Over the past few years, our emotions have often gotten the better of us. This book will restore your sense of control—and make you feel less alone in the world. Liz and Mollie do an outstanding job bringing your fuzziest feelings into sharp focus.”
  —Adam Grant, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Think Again and host of the TED podcast *WorkLife
• “Big Feelings is a work of tremendous heart. Filled with vulnerability, humor, and hard-won insights, it offers concrete tools to help us move through difficult emotions.”
  —Lori Gottlieb, New York Times bestselling author of Maybe You Should Talk to Someone and cohost of the Dear Therapist podcast

“The rise of stress, burnout, and anxiety is one of the most urgent issues of our time. Big Feelings is a vital guide to not only handling complex emotions but learning to thrive through difficult times—and emerge even more resilient.”
—Arianna Huffington, founder & CEO, Thrive Global

“Big Feelings is not another self-help book. It is an intelligent, empathetic, and often delightful guide to navigating life’s most difficult moments and emerging from them with a new-found sense of meaning.”
—Daniel H. Pink, #1 New York Times bestselling author of When, Drive, and A Whole New Mind

“This book is witty, insightful, and filled with brilliant, signature cartoons about work, life, and everything in between. Big Feelings is just the honest, funny, and useful read we all need right now.”
—Katy Milkman, bestselling author of How to Change

“A timely gift as we collectively struggle with tendencies to despair, to compare ourselves, and to overwork ourselves into burnout. As always, Liz and Mollie have nudged us in the direction of becoming more informed, more empathetic, and more whole, so we can show up in the world with more bravery.”
—Mari Andrew, New York Times bestselling author of My Inner Sky and Am I There Yet?

“Combining compassion with their trademark visual wit, Liz and Mollie deliver a message we all need to hear in our current unsettled moment: feeling bad isn’t bad.”
—Cal Newport, bestselling author of A World Without Email and *Deep Work

"A candid, warm, and practical guide to navigating difficult emotions. Liz and Mollie's work is full of wise ideas, expressed both through storytelling and memorable illustrations. This book will absolutely enrich many lives."  
—*Tara Mohr, author of Playing Big: Practical Wisdom for Women Who Want to Speak Up, Create and Lead

Auteur

Liz Fosslien and Mollie West Duffy

Texte du rabat

From the duo behind the bestselling book No Hard Feelings and the wildly popular @LizandMollie Instagram, an insightful and approachable illustrated guide to handling our most difficult emotions.

We all experience unwieldy feelings. But between our emotion-phobic society and the debilitating uncertainty of modern times, we usually don't know how to talk about what we're going through, much less handle it. Over the past year, Liz Fosslien and Mollie West Duffy's online community has laughed and cried about productivity guilt, pandemic anxiety, and Zoom fatigue. Now, Big Feelings addresses anyone intimidated by oversized feelings they can't predict or control, offering the tools to understand what's really going on, find comfort, and face the future with a sense of newfound agency.

Weaving surprising science with personal stories and original illustrations, each chapter examines one uncomfortable feeling-like envy, burnout, and anxiety-and lays out strategies for turning big emotions into manageable ones. You'll learn:

How to end the cycle of intrusive thoughts brought on by regret, and instead use this feeling as a compass for making decisions

How to identify what's behind your anger and communicate it productively, without putting people on the defensive

Why we might be suffering from perfectionism even if we feel far from perfect, and how to detach your self-worth from what you do

Big Feelings helps us understand that difficult emotions are not abnormal, and that we can emerge from them with a deeper sense of meaning. We can't stop emotions from bubbling up, but we can learn how to make peace with them.

Résumé
From the duo behind the bestselling book No Hard Feelings and the wildly popular @LizandMollie Instagram, an insightful and approachable illustrated guide to handling our most difficult emotions.

We all experience unwieldy feelings. But between our emotion-phobic society and the debilitating uncertainty of modern times, we usually don't know how to talk about what we're going through, much less handle it. Over the past year, Liz Fosslien and Mollie West Duffy’s online community has laughed and cried about productivity guilt, pandemic anxiety, and Zoom fatigue. Now, Big Feelings addresses anyone intimidated by oversized feelings they can't predict or control, offering the tools to understand what's really going on, find comfort, and face the future with a sense of newfound agency.
 
Weaving surprising science with personal stories and original illustrations, each chapter examines one uncomfortable feeling—like envy, burnout, and anxiety—and lays out strategies for turning big emotions into manageable ones. You’ll learn:
 
  •  How to end the cycle of intrusive thoughts brought on by regret, and instead use this feeling as a compass for making decisions
  •  How to identify what’s behind your anger and communicate it productively, without putting people on the defensive
  •  Why we might be suffering from perfectionism even if we feel far from perfect, and how to detach your self-worth from what you do
 
Big Feelings helps us understand that difficult emotions are not abnormal, and that we can emerge from them with a deeper sense of meaning. We can’t stop emotions from bubbling up, but we can learn how to make peace with them.

Échantillon de lecture

Chapter 1

 

Uncertainty

 

Liz: The first headache hit like a jackhammer. I stumbled toward the bathroom, dizzy and gagging.

 

A week later, the second sent me to the emergency room. After a barrage of blood draws and scans, the doctors ruled out a list of life-threatening issues-pulmonary embolism, brain aneurysm, tumor-and categorized me as a medical mystery.

 

Searching for a diagnosis is excruciating. "Don't worry until you have something to worry about," a coworker told me. But I worried all the time. I yo-yoed between imagining the worst possible outcome and feeling like a drama queen. Was I dying? Or was it absolutely nothing?

 

That was my life for months. I shuttled between neurologists; ear, nose, and throat specialists; and ophthalmologists. One neurologist gave me thirty-six injections of Botox in my head, shoulders, and back to prevent neurotransmitters from sending pain signals to my brain. An ophthalmologist thought the muscles around my eyes might be inflamed, and prescribed steroid medication that skyrocketed my blood pressure and made my cheeks flush a dark pink.

 

Then an internist suggested that I had an atypical case of migraines and put me on a high dosage of Topamax, an antiepileptic drug. The clanging in my skull finally quieted, but the side e…