full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Artūrs Miksons: The benefits of expressing your emotions (constructively)


Unscramble the Blue Letters


It's a Friday afternoon, I have filnaly finished my workday, and there is just one thing on my mind: I can finally go to the supermarket and get those cookies I've been dreaming about my whole day. I get to the local store which is near my flat, I get near the alise where there's bunch of cookies, and I'm standing there with a gaze, and I notice there's a little girl next to me. She's about four or five, let's call her Lucy. And Lucy has that same slime on her face like, "All of these are going to be mine!" At that moment, I just take one or two packs for myself, she sees how I do this, she's like, "Aha, this is how it works." She takes ten of them, puts them in her armpits and victoriously goes to the cashier's ocfife. And you have that sensation there's like ponies and rainbows and the sun is shining and she's going to have a blastly Friday. I gather my stuff, get to the cashier's, and I notice we are in the same queue. Lucy is there with her mom, she's thrown all the cookies there in the basket and unfortunately, as life is, mom taeks all the ceokios out, just lveeas one pack. And when she takes them out, you notice that the sunshine and rainbows sllwoy start to fade. And that's when Lucy starts to become a bit grim, she becomes a bit angry and starts to say, "Wait, wait, hold on there srpaky, what's going on?" And then she realizes this is not going to end well, and those rainbows and sunshine turn into rainy clouds and a thunderstorm, and that smlal sewet Lucy isn't sweet Lucy anymore. She becomes angry and shouts, and yells, "Why? Why are you doing this to me? Why? I want those cookies!" and so on and starts to cry suddenly. And then there's kind of a fuss around the siuttaoin - everybody looks at how the mom is going to react - and at this mciagal moment, all of you probably know, a magical thing happens. Somewhere from the store, the granny appears. (Laughter) She appears and starts to have an opinion, of course, on the matter. "Oh, in my time, things were different." Yada yada yada. Let's pause for a brief moment here. What you've just heard is basically a part of my daily life. Being a medical doctor and a porypcasihtseht, I hear a lot of sorties which people go through. And there is this myth that you have to, as a doctor, distance yourself a bit from ptniaets in order to not get too involved, too attached and so on, which is not quite true. When you are a psychotherapist, you need to actually let yourself feel to some degree, to some eentxt what the patient feels. How that wroks is not magic, it's smlipe biology. You have a part of your brain that is called the limbic system, which is responsible for how you feel, where your emnoitos, yours and mine, reside. And when you have an emotional reaction, it's never logical, it's neurophysiological, it's boogliy, it could be completely illogical. And when somebody feles something, you can start to feel in a similar mennar. To give you an example, few yares ago, me and my girlfriend were akesd to biyasbt our friend's innfat. Let's call him David. David is about eight, yeah, eight months old. We arrive at their pacle, we go in, and you have like a déjà vu feeling, like sunshine and rainobws and ponies. Everything is graet, you go in, it's going to be a blasty evening. The parents leave; we have a very nice time with David. But the infant who is eight month old is at a very special age. Everything's kind of nice up until one point David notices something. "You're not my real parents, now, are you?" (Laughter) At which point, David strtas to cry, as babies do. For five minutes. "Oh, David, it's going to be fine." "We just have to caress him, maybe put him to bed." Fifteen. OK, then. "Let's cnghae the diaper." "Yeah, sure, let's change the diaper." We change the depair. Twenty five, for Christ's sake. "Let's feed him?" "Yes, let's feed him!" We feed him. frtoy. At this piont, you start to have various ideas in your head, like, for example, "David! Shut up, David! Please shut up!" or that you would just leave him somewhere, or you could just ignore him for the rest of the evening. But you realize you can't do that. An hour. An hour and ten. And I remember so vividly, my girlfriend was holding daivd in her hands, and he's still crying, We're standing in the doorway, we look at each other, and we realize we're screwed! At that monmet, what basically happens on a neurobiological level, you can't act out in this instance when you want to shake David, you want to put him away, you want to do something else. But it's interesting to notice in yourself how you actually feel. And how I actually felt at that moment was completely helpless, angry, in despair, scared at the same time, I don't know what to do. If you think about it, it's the same way how David feels. He's been abandoned by his pnrates - bastards left him all alone with these two strangers at home. God knows what they're doing. So he's aedbonand, all alone, heeplsls, hopeless and sraced. And the only thing you can do in this isntnace is to just be there with him and to feel him and to help him in his feelings what he's feeling. It's interesting, when we start to feel something, how our minds change, kind of to some degree tell us what we actually feel. Every single one of us has been born with a completely different set of a brain, how we experience feelings, how intensively that happens - but we experience all the same feelings. The odd thing is while we are growing up we are taught, mostly by our parents, what feelings to feel and not to feel. Stereotypes exist because to some degree, they are true. If we are very open about things, then if I ask the ldiaes of the aienduce you'll probably want your men to be emotional, right? I can just - "No." Someone said no. No? See? Proves my point! So, to some degere you want him to be emotional, but if you're very open to yourself, you don't want the whole emotional spectrum. You want him to be firm and stbale, a man on a high horse - or Mercedes, whatever you prefer. But you don't want that embarrassment, the shame, the fear, the excessive jealousy. You don't want that, do you? The same question would be for the men. You do want your lady next to you to be emotional, right? Of course not. You want her to be on the shy side, maybe be afiard sometimes. You're going again ride on your high horse and your Mercedes, and save them from despair, but ... good girls don't get angry, do they? You don't like the hysteria, you don't like the agner. These are the stereotypes that are taught to kids already from day one, to basically eradicate some of the feelings that they have. And the more the years go by, you start to actually think you don't feel something, and then you put your feelings somewhere else. You start to think you're angry at somebody else, you start to think you're afraid or ashamed of something else, which is not quite true. To maybe not talk so much broadly and saying everything about you, I'd like to share the stroy about me, how my feelings get in the way of my work. Four mhotns ago, I received one of the worst phone calls you can get. In the evening, when I finished my work, my mom called me and told me those words I was always afraid to hear from her: that my father had passed away. And I remember when I came home, how filled with rage I was. I screamed and I yleeld, I broke some furniture in my apartment. And my girflnierd was there to see that thing happening to me. Of course, the funeral goes by and life goes on. Then you start to notice something interesting, that some wekes have passed, and wilnkag on the streets to work, I don't even think about my dad in any way, any shape or form, but I'm looking at the people around me, and I notice a feeling in myself: I hate every single one of them. I hate their smile, even hate babies that I see. You start to notice, What the hell is happening to me? You get to work, you're agnry at your cgeealuols. You want to tell them how important it is to cherish rlinsiatpheos, how important it is to do stuff, to do things on time, not to let things go, and so on and so on and so on. Months have passed, and I was asked to do this TED Talk. I was preparing the speech for my TED Talk, and every single time I did it, I realized it is not good enough. This isn't good enough, that isn't good enough. At some point, I even had the idea I'm going to cancel this whole TED thing. I called up my mom and said, "You know, I think I'm going to give up all this TED thing. I don't want to do it." And she said, "Why?" "Well, because, I don't know, because I am going to santd there and don't know what I'm going to say and so on." And then it hit me, why I didn't want to be here. It's not because I don't know what to say. I give letrecus all the time. I know what I am going to talk about. The reason why I didn't want to be here because I know I would feel something standing right here. What I am actually feeling right now. I notice my herat racing. I nictoe that I'm sad that he is not here. He's not going to call me after this lceutre. I notice that I'm angry that that's an inevitable thing of life. At the same time, I'm to some degree maybe scared or ashamed: What if I drop a tear while I'm talking to you? How awful is that going to look? But I didn't finish the story about Lucy, did I? If we go back to Lucy, Lucy's mom could've done anything. She could've told her, "That's not how a girl beavhes. Look at that garnny who's shouting at you. Look at the man, that tall man behind you, he is looking weirdly at you." I'm looking what was actually happening. And she didn't just keep silent and not say anything. She didn't devalue her, she didn't condemn her, she didn't do anything of the sort. All she did was to get the groceries that she had, took Lucy on her arms, and I haerd her just so vaguely that Lucy ctnonieud to tell mom, "I want those cookies so badly," and "I wanted them." And the only thing Lucy's mom said to Lucy was, "I know, honey. I know you did. But it's OK to be angry, it's OK to be sad." And I remember I'm walking home from this very simple scene any one of you has maybe already seen. I go in my apartment. My girlfriend metes me. She asks me, "Well, how was your day?" I said, "I started off with a smile on my face," said, "I just saw a girl not get any cookies." She's like, "What? Are you OK?" I'm probably in a pctiosyhc sttae right now. I said no. I told her the whole story about the store. And at some point I notice that my smile turns into a single tear that I have. She asked me, "Why are you crying? Is everything OK?" I said "No. I miss him, like a lot." And the hardest thing about fgenlies, actually, is that it's easy, to some degree, to think about them in your head. But it's much harder to actually eseprxs them out loud. And all of my patients every single time ask me one of the same questions: "What's the difference that I tell you that I'm angry, I'm scared, I'm helpless, I'm hopeless, I'm hpapy? What's the difference?" And I tell them, "This is the dceenfifre, that somebody's here - this time it's me - who actually doesn't just understand what you are going through, but I feel what you're feeling to a certain amount." Question always is, The experiences we have in life, how will that icpmat your and my ability to, let's say, be there with somebody and feel these feelings? The same way as David needed somebody to be there, the same way Lucy needed somebody to be there, even I need somebody there to be there for me. And I hope every sligne one of you has the experience that not somebody unendtsadrs you, but somebody feels you. Thank you. (auplspae)

Open Cloze


It's a Friday afternoon, I have _______ finished my workday, and there is just one thing on my mind: I can finally go to the supermarket and get those cookies I've been dreaming about my whole day. I get to the local store which is near my flat, I get near the _____ where there's bunch of cookies, and I'm standing there with a gaze, and I notice there's a little girl next to me. She's about four or five, let's call her Lucy. And Lucy has that same _____ on her face like, "All of these are going to be mine!" At that moment, I just take one or two packs for myself, she sees how I do this, she's like, "Aha, this is how it works." She takes ten of them, puts them in her armpits and victoriously goes to the cashier's ______. And you have that sensation there's like ponies and rainbows and the sun is shining and she's going to have a blastly Friday. I gather my stuff, get to the cashier's, and I notice we are in the same queue. Lucy is there with her mom, she's thrown all the cookies there in the basket and unfortunately, as life is, mom _____ all the _______ out, just ______ one pack. And when she takes them out, you notice that the sunshine and rainbows ______ start to fade. And that's when Lucy starts to become a bit grim, she becomes a bit angry and starts to say, "Wait, wait, hold on there ______, what's going on?" And then she realizes this is not going to end well, and those rainbows and sunshine turn into rainy clouds and a thunderstorm, and that _____ _____ Lucy isn't sweet Lucy anymore. She becomes angry and shouts, and yells, "Why? Why are you doing this to me? Why? I want those cookies!" and so on and starts to cry suddenly. And then there's kind of a fuss around the _________ - everybody looks at how the mom is going to react - and at this _______ moment, all of you probably know, a magical thing happens. Somewhere from the store, the granny appears. (Laughter) She appears and starts to have an opinion, of course, on the matter. "Oh, in my time, things were different." Yada yada yada. Let's pause for a brief moment here. What you've just heard is basically a part of my daily life. Being a medical doctor and a _______________, I hear a lot of _______ which people go through. And there is this myth that you have to, as a doctor, distance yourself a bit from ________ in order to not get too involved, too attached and so on, which is not quite true. When you are a psychotherapist, you need to actually let yourself feel to some degree, to some ______ what the patient feels. How that _____ is not magic, it's ______ biology. You have a part of your brain that is called the limbic system, which is responsible for how you feel, where your ________, yours and mine, reside. And when you have an emotional reaction, it's never logical, it's neurophysiological, it's _______, it could be completely illogical. And when somebody _____ something, you can start to feel in a similar ______. To give you an example, few _____ ago, me and my girlfriend were _____ to _______ our friend's ______. Let's call him David. David is about eight, yeah, eight months old. We arrive at their _____, we go in, and you have like a déjà vu feeling, like sunshine and ________ and ponies. Everything is _____, you go in, it's going to be a blasty evening. The parents leave; we have a very nice time with David. But the infant who is eight month old is at a very special age. Everything's kind of nice up until one point David notices something. "You're not my real parents, now, are you?" (Laughter) At which point, David ______ to cry, as babies do. For five minutes. "Oh, David, it's going to be fine." "We just have to caress him, maybe put him to bed." Fifteen. OK, then. "Let's ______ the diaper." "Yeah, sure, let's change the diaper." We change the ______. Twenty five, for Christ's sake. "Let's feed him?" "Yes, let's feed him!" We feed him. _____. At this _____, you start to have various ideas in your head, like, for example, "David! Shut up, David! Please shut up!" or that you would just leave him somewhere, or you could just ignore him for the rest of the evening. But you realize you can't do that. An hour. An hour and ten. And I remember so vividly, my girlfriend was holding _____ in her hands, and he's still crying, We're standing in the doorway, we look at each other, and we realize we're screwed! At that ______, what basically happens on a neurobiological level, you can't act out in this instance when you want to shake David, you want to put him away, you want to do something else. But it's interesting to notice in yourself how you actually feel. And how I actually felt at that moment was completely helpless, angry, in despair, scared at the same time, I don't know what to do. If you think about it, it's the same way how David feels. He's been abandoned by his _______ - bastards left him all alone with these two strangers at home. God knows what they're doing. So he's _________, all alone, ________, hopeless and ______. And the only thing you can do in this ________ is to just be there with him and to feel him and to help him in his feelings what he's feeling. It's interesting, when we start to feel something, how our minds change, kind of to some degree tell us what we actually feel. Every single one of us has been born with a completely different set of a brain, how we experience feelings, how intensively that happens - but we experience all the same feelings. The odd thing is while we are growing up we are taught, mostly by our parents, what feelings to feel and not to feel. Stereotypes exist because to some degree, they are true. If we are very open about things, then if I ask the ______ of the ________ you'll probably want your men to be emotional, right? I can just - "No." Someone said no. No? See? Proves my point! So, to some ______ you want him to be emotional, but if you're very open to yourself, you don't want the whole emotional spectrum. You want him to be firm and ______, a man on a high horse - or Mercedes, whatever you prefer. But you don't want that embarrassment, the shame, the fear, the excessive jealousy. You don't want that, do you? The same question would be for the men. You do want your lady next to you to be emotional, right? Of course not. You want her to be on the shy side, maybe be ______ sometimes. You're going again ride on your high horse and your Mercedes, and save them from despair, but ... good girls don't get angry, do they? You don't like the hysteria, you don't like the _____. These are the stereotypes that are taught to kids already from day one, to basically eradicate some of the feelings that they have. And the more the years go by, you start to actually think you don't feel something, and then you put your feelings somewhere else. You start to think you're angry at somebody else, you start to think you're afraid or ashamed of something else, which is not quite true. To maybe not talk so much broadly and saying everything about you, I'd like to share the _____ about me, how my feelings get in the way of my work. Four ______ ago, I received one of the worst phone calls you can get. In the evening, when I finished my work, my mom called me and told me those words I was always afraid to hear from her: that my father had passed away. And I remember when I came home, how filled with rage I was. I screamed and I ______, I broke some furniture in my apartment. And my __________ was there to see that thing happening to me. Of course, the funeral goes by and life goes on. Then you start to notice something interesting, that some _____ have passed, and _______ on the streets to work, I don't even think about my dad in any way, any shape or form, but I'm looking at the people around me, and I notice a feeling in myself: I hate every single one of them. I hate their smile, even hate babies that I see. You start to notice, What the hell is happening to me? You get to work, you're _____ at your __________. You want to tell them how important it is to cherish _____________, how important it is to do stuff, to do things on time, not to let things go, and so on and so on and so on. Months have passed, and I was asked to do this TED Talk. I was preparing the speech for my TED Talk, and every single time I did it, I realized it is not good enough. This isn't good enough, that isn't good enough. At some point, I even had the idea I'm going to cancel this whole TED thing. I called up my mom and said, "You know, I think I'm going to give up all this TED thing. I don't want to do it." And she said, "Why?" "Well, because, I don't know, because I am going to _____ there and don't know what I'm going to say and so on." And then it hit me, why I didn't want to be here. It's not because I don't know what to say. I give ________ all the time. I know what I am going to talk about. The reason why I didn't want to be here because I know I would feel something standing right here. What I am actually feeling right now. I notice my _____ racing. I ______ that I'm sad that he is not here. He's not going to call me after this _______. I notice that I'm angry that that's an inevitable thing of life. At the same time, I'm to some degree maybe scared or ashamed: What if I drop a tear while I'm talking to you? How awful is that going to look? But I didn't finish the story about Lucy, did I? If we go back to Lucy, Lucy's mom could've done anything. She could've told her, "That's not how a girl _______. Look at that ______ who's shouting at you. Look at the man, that tall man behind you, he is looking weirdly at you." I'm looking what was actually happening. And she didn't just keep silent and not say anything. She didn't devalue her, she didn't condemn her, she didn't do anything of the sort. All she did was to get the groceries that she had, took Lucy on her arms, and I _____ her just so vaguely that Lucy _________ to tell mom, "I want those cookies so badly," and "I wanted them." And the only thing Lucy's mom said to Lucy was, "I know, honey. I know you did. But it's OK to be angry, it's OK to be sad." And I remember I'm walking home from this very simple scene any one of you has maybe already seen. I go in my apartment. My girlfriend _____ me. She asks me, "Well, how was your day?" I said, "I started off with a smile on my face," said, "I just saw a girl not get any cookies." She's like, "What? Are you OK?" I'm probably in a _________ _____ right now. I said no. I told her the whole story about the store. And at some point I notice that my smile turns into a single tear that I have. She asked me, "Why are you crying? Is everything OK?" I said "No. I miss him, like a lot." And the hardest thing about ________, actually, is that it's easy, to some degree, to think about them in your head. But it's much harder to actually _______ them out loud. And all of my patients every single time ask me one of the same questions: "What's the difference that I tell you that I'm angry, I'm scared, I'm helpless, I'm hopeless, I'm _____? What's the difference?" And I tell them, "This is the __________, that somebody's here - this time it's me - who actually doesn't just understand what you are going through, but I feel what you're feeling to a certain amount." Question always is, The experiences we have in life, how will that ______ your and my ability to, let's say, be there with somebody and feel these feelings? The same way as David needed somebody to be there, the same way Lucy needed somebody to be there, even I need somebody there to be there for me. And I hope every ______ one of you has the experience that not somebody ___________ you, but somebody feels you. Thank you. (________)

Solution


  1. manner
  2. ladies
  3. years
  4. sparky
  5. finally
  6. takes
  7. audience
  8. sweet
  9. slowly
  10. psychotic
  11. emotions
  12. degree
  13. magical
  14. psychotherapist
  15. biology
  16. stand
  17. months
  18. granny
  19. david
  20. abandoned
  21. babysit
  22. small
  23. happy
  24. feels
  25. feelings
  26. state
  27. heart
  28. girlfriend
  29. forty
  30. rainbows
  31. moment
  32. starts
  33. weeks
  34. single
  35. meets
  36. anger
  37. works
  38. continued
  39. colleagues
  40. stable
  41. change
  42. situation
  43. smile
  44. express
  45. diaper
  46. afraid
  47. helpless
  48. walking
  49. notice
  50. scared
  51. parents
  52. extent
  53. yelled
  54. lecture
  55. story
  56. behaves
  57. leaves
  58. instance
  59. aisle
  60. cookies
  61. point
  62. applause
  63. lectures
  64. difference
  65. stories
  66. office
  67. angry
  68. asked
  69. infant
  70. simple
  71. heard
  72. impact
  73. understands
  74. great
  75. place
  76. relationships
  77. patients

Original Text


It's a Friday afternoon, I have finally finished my workday, and there is just one thing on my mind: I can finally go to the supermarket and get those cookies I've been dreaming about my whole day. I get to the local store which is near my flat, I get near the aisle where there's bunch of cookies, and I'm standing there with a gaze, and I notice there's a little girl next to me. She's about four or five, let's call her Lucy. And Lucy has that same smile on her face like, "All of these are going to be mine!" At that moment, I just take one or two packs for myself, she sees how I do this, she's like, "Aha, this is how it works." She takes ten of them, puts them in her armpits and victoriously goes to the cashier's office. And you have that sensation there's like ponies and rainbows and the sun is shining and she's going to have a blastly Friday. I gather my stuff, get to the cashier's, and I notice we are in the same queue. Lucy is there with her mom, she's thrown all the cookies there in the basket and unfortunately, as life is, mom takes all the cookies out, just leaves one pack. And when she takes them out, you notice that the sunshine and rainbows slowly start to fade. And that's when Lucy starts to become a bit grim, she becomes a bit angry and starts to say, "Wait, wait, hold on there Sparky, what's going on?" And then she realizes this is not going to end well, and those rainbows and sunshine turn into rainy clouds and a thunderstorm, and that small sweet Lucy isn't sweet Lucy anymore. She becomes angry and shouts, and yells, "Why? Why are you doing this to me? Why? I want those cookies!" and so on and starts to cry suddenly. And then there's kind of a fuss around the situation - everybody looks at how the mom is going to react - and at this magical moment, all of you probably know, a magical thing happens. Somewhere from the store, the granny appears. (Laughter) She appears and starts to have an opinion, of course, on the matter. "Oh, in my time, things were different." Yada yada yada. Let's pause for a brief moment here. What you've just heard is basically a part of my daily life. Being a medical doctor and a psychotherapist, I hear a lot of stories which people go through. And there is this myth that you have to, as a doctor, distance yourself a bit from patients in order to not get too involved, too attached and so on, which is not quite true. When you are a psychotherapist, you need to actually let yourself feel to some degree, to some extent what the patient feels. How that works is not magic, it's simple biology. You have a part of your brain that is called the limbic system, which is responsible for how you feel, where your emotions, yours and mine, reside. And when you have an emotional reaction, it's never logical, it's neurophysiological, it's biology, it could be completely illogical. And when somebody feels something, you can start to feel in a similar manner. To give you an example, few years ago, me and my girlfriend were asked to babysit our friend's infant. Let's call him David. David is about eight, yeah, eight months old. We arrive at their place, we go in, and you have like a déjà vu feeling, like sunshine and rainbows and ponies. Everything is great, you go in, it's going to be a blasty evening. The parents leave; we have a very nice time with David. But the infant who is eight month old is at a very special age. Everything's kind of nice up until one point David notices something. "You're not my real parents, now, are you?" (Laughter) At which point, David starts to cry, as babies do. For five minutes. "Oh, David, it's going to be fine." "We just have to caress him, maybe put him to bed." Fifteen. OK, then. "Let's change the diaper." "Yeah, sure, let's change the diaper." We change the diaper. Twenty five, for Christ's sake. "Let's feed him?" "Yes, let's feed him!" We feed him. Forty. At this point, you start to have various ideas in your head, like, for example, "David! Shut up, David! Please shut up!" or that you would just leave him somewhere, or you could just ignore him for the rest of the evening. But you realize you can't do that. An hour. An hour and ten. And I remember so vividly, my girlfriend was holding David in her hands, and he's still crying, We're standing in the doorway, we look at each other, and we realize we're screwed! At that moment, what basically happens on a neurobiological level, you can't act out in this instance when you want to shake David, you want to put him away, you want to do something else. But it's interesting to notice in yourself how you actually feel. And how I actually felt at that moment was completely helpless, angry, in despair, scared at the same time, I don't know what to do. If you think about it, it's the same way how David feels. He's been abandoned by his parents - bastards left him all alone with these two strangers at home. God knows what they're doing. So he's abandoned, all alone, helpless, hopeless and scared. And the only thing you can do in this instance is to just be there with him and to feel him and to help him in his feelings what he's feeling. It's interesting, when we start to feel something, how our minds change, kind of to some degree tell us what we actually feel. Every single one of us has been born with a completely different set of a brain, how we experience feelings, how intensively that happens - but we experience all the same feelings. The odd thing is while we are growing up we are taught, mostly by our parents, what feelings to feel and not to feel. Stereotypes exist because to some degree, they are true. If we are very open about things, then if I ask the ladies of the audience you'll probably want your men to be emotional, right? I can just - "No." Someone said no. No? See? Proves my point! So, to some degree you want him to be emotional, but if you're very open to yourself, you don't want the whole emotional spectrum. You want him to be firm and stable, a man on a high horse - or Mercedes, whatever you prefer. But you don't want that embarrassment, the shame, the fear, the excessive jealousy. You don't want that, do you? The same question would be for the men. You do want your lady next to you to be emotional, right? Of course not. You want her to be on the shy side, maybe be afraid sometimes. You're going again ride on your high horse and your Mercedes, and save them from despair, but ... good girls don't get angry, do they? You don't like the hysteria, you don't like the anger. These are the stereotypes that are taught to kids already from day one, to basically eradicate some of the feelings that they have. And the more the years go by, you start to actually think you don't feel something, and then you put your feelings somewhere else. You start to think you're angry at somebody else, you start to think you're afraid or ashamed of something else, which is not quite true. To maybe not talk so much broadly and saying everything about you, I'd like to share the story about me, how my feelings get in the way of my work. Four months ago, I received one of the worst phone calls you can get. In the evening, when I finished my work, my mom called me and told me those words I was always afraid to hear from her: that my father had passed away. And I remember when I came home, how filled with rage I was. I screamed and I yelled, I broke some furniture in my apartment. And my girlfriend was there to see that thing happening to me. Of course, the funeral goes by and life goes on. Then you start to notice something interesting, that some weeks have passed, and walking on the streets to work, I don't even think about my dad in any way, any shape or form, but I'm looking at the people around me, and I notice a feeling in myself: I hate every single one of them. I hate their smile, even hate babies that I see. You start to notice, What the hell is happening to me? You get to work, you're angry at your colleagues. You want to tell them how important it is to cherish relationships, how important it is to do stuff, to do things on time, not to let things go, and so on and so on and so on. Months have passed, and I was asked to do this TED Talk. I was preparing the speech for my TED Talk, and every single time I did it, I realized it is not good enough. This isn't good enough, that isn't good enough. At some point, I even had the idea I'm going to cancel this whole TED thing. I called up my mom and said, "You know, I think I'm going to give up all this TED thing. I don't want to do it." And she said, "Why?" "Well, because, I don't know, because I am going to stand there and don't know what I'm going to say and so on." And then it hit me, why I didn't want to be here. It's not because I don't know what to say. I give lectures all the time. I know what I am going to talk about. The reason why I didn't want to be here because I know I would feel something standing right here. What I am actually feeling right now. I notice my heart racing. I notice that I'm sad that he is not here. He's not going to call me after this lecture. I notice that I'm angry that that's an inevitable thing of life. At the same time, I'm to some degree maybe scared or ashamed: What if I drop a tear while I'm talking to you? How awful is that going to look? But I didn't finish the story about Lucy, did I? If we go back to Lucy, Lucy's mom could've done anything. She could've told her, "That's not how a girl behaves. Look at that granny who's shouting at you. Look at the man, that tall man behind you, he is looking weirdly at you." I'm looking what was actually happening. And she didn't just keep silent and not say anything. She didn't devalue her, she didn't condemn her, she didn't do anything of the sort. All she did was to get the groceries that she had, took Lucy on her arms, and I heard her just so vaguely that Lucy continued to tell mom, "I want those cookies so badly," and "I wanted them." And the only thing Lucy's mom said to Lucy was, "I know, honey. I know you did. But it's OK to be angry, it's OK to be sad." And I remember I'm walking home from this very simple scene any one of you has maybe already seen. I go in my apartment. My girlfriend meets me. She asks me, "Well, how was your day?" I said, "I started off with a smile on my face," said, "I just saw a girl not get any cookies." She's like, "What? Are you OK?" I'm probably in a psychotic state right now. I said no. I told her the whole story about the store. And at some point I notice that my smile turns into a single tear that I have. She asked me, "Why are you crying? Is everything OK?" I said "No. I miss him, like a lot." And the hardest thing about feelings, actually, is that it's easy, to some degree, to think about them in your head. But it's much harder to actually express them out loud. And all of my patients every single time ask me one of the same questions: "What's the difference that I tell you that I'm angry, I'm scared, I'm helpless, I'm hopeless, I'm happy? What's the difference?" And I tell them, "This is the difference, that somebody's here - this time it's me - who actually doesn't just understand what you are going through, but I feel what you're feeling to a certain amount." Question always is, The experiences we have in life, how will that impact your and my ability to, let's say, be there with somebody and feel these feelings? The same way as David needed somebody to be there, the same way Lucy needed somebody to be there, even I need somebody there to be there for me. And I hope every single one of you has the experience that not somebody understands you, but somebody feels you. Thank you. (Applause)

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations


ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
sweet lucy 2
high horse 2
single time 2



Important Words


  1. abandoned
  2. ability
  3. act
  4. afraid
  5. afternoon
  6. age
  7. aisle
  8. amount
  9. anger
  10. angry
  11. anymore
  12. apartment
  13. appears
  14. applause
  15. armpits
  16. arms
  17. arrive
  18. ashamed
  19. asked
  20. asks
  21. attached
  22. audience
  23. awful
  24. babies
  25. babysit
  26. badly
  27. basically
  28. basket
  29. bastards
  30. bed
  31. behaves
  32. biology
  33. bit
  34. blastly
  35. blasty
  36. born
  37. brain
  38. broadly
  39. broke
  40. bunch
  41. call
  42. called
  43. calls
  44. cancel
  45. caress
  46. change
  47. cherish
  48. clouds
  49. colleagues
  50. completely
  51. condemn
  52. continued
  53. cookies
  54. cry
  55. crying
  56. dad
  57. daily
  58. david
  59. day
  60. degree
  61. despair
  62. devalue
  63. diaper
  64. difference
  65. distance
  66. doctor
  67. doorway
  68. dreaming
  69. drop
  70. déjà
  71. easy
  72. embarrassment
  73. emotional
  74. emotions
  75. eradicate
  76. evening
  77. excessive
  78. exist
  79. experience
  80. experiences
  81. express
  82. extent
  83. face
  84. fade
  85. father
  86. fear
  87. feed
  88. feel
  89. feeling
  90. feelings
  91. feels
  92. felt
  93. fifteen
  94. filled
  95. finally
  96. fine
  97. finish
  98. finished
  99. firm
  100. flat
  101. form
  102. forty
  103. friday
  104. funeral
  105. furniture
  106. fuss
  107. gather
  108. gaze
  109. girl
  110. girlfriend
  111. girls
  112. give
  113. god
  114. good
  115. granny
  116. great
  117. grim
  118. groceries
  119. growing
  120. hands
  121. happening
  122. happy
  123. harder
  124. hardest
  125. hate
  126. head
  127. hear
  128. heard
  129. heart
  130. hell
  131. helpless
  132. high
  133. hit
  134. hold
  135. holding
  136. home
  137. honey
  138. hope
  139. hopeless
  140. horse
  141. hour
  142. hysteria
  143. idea
  144. ideas
  145. ignore
  146. illogical
  147. impact
  148. important
  149. inevitable
  150. infant
  151. instance
  152. intensively
  153. interesting
  154. involved
  155. jealousy
  156. kids
  157. kind
  158. ladies
  159. lady
  160. laughter
  161. leave
  162. leaves
  163. lecture
  164. lectures
  165. left
  166. level
  167. life
  168. limbic
  169. local
  170. logical
  171. lot
  172. loud
  173. lucy
  174. magic
  175. magical
  176. man
  177. manner
  178. matter
  179. medical
  180. meets
  181. men
  182. mercedes
  183. minds
  184. minutes
  185. mom
  186. moment
  187. month
  188. months
  189. myth
  190. needed
  191. neurobiological
  192. neurophysiological
  193. nice
  194. notice
  195. notices
  196. odd
  197. office
  198. open
  199. opinion
  200. order
  201. pack
  202. packs
  203. parents
  204. part
  205. passed
  206. patient
  207. patients
  208. pause
  209. people
  210. phone
  211. place
  212. point
  213. ponies
  214. prefer
  215. preparing
  216. proves
  217. psychotherapist
  218. psychotic
  219. put
  220. puts
  221. question
  222. queue
  223. racing
  224. rage
  225. rainbows
  226. rainy
  227. react
  228. reaction
  229. real
  230. realize
  231. realized
  232. realizes
  233. reason
  234. received
  235. relationships
  236. remember
  237. reside
  238. responsible
  239. rest
  240. ride
  241. sad
  242. sake
  243. save
  244. scared
  245. scene
  246. screamed
  247. sees
  248. sensation
  249. set
  250. shake
  251. shame
  252. shape
  253. share
  254. shining
  255. shouting
  256. shouts
  257. shut
  258. shy
  259. side
  260. silent
  261. similar
  262. simple
  263. single
  264. situation
  265. slowly
  266. small
  267. smile
  268. sort
  269. sparky
  270. special
  271. spectrum
  272. speech
  273. stable
  274. stand
  275. standing
  276. start
  277. started
  278. starts
  279. state
  280. stereotypes
  281. store
  282. stories
  283. story
  284. strangers
  285. streets
  286. stuff
  287. suddenly
  288. sun
  289. sunshine
  290. supermarket
  291. sweet
  292. system
  293. takes
  294. talk
  295. talking
  296. tall
  297. taught
  298. tear
  299. ted
  300. ten
  301. thrown
  302. thunderstorm
  303. time
  304. told
  305. true
  306. turn
  307. turns
  308. twenty
  309. understand
  310. understands
  311. vaguely
  312. victoriously
  313. vividly
  314. vu
  315. wait
  316. walking
  317. wanted
  318. weeks
  319. weirdly
  320. words
  321. work
  322. workday
  323. works
  324. worst
  325. yada
  326. yeah
  327. years
  328. yelled
  329. yells