In their book, I Want to Tell You How I Feel, husband and wife psychologists, Deb Brock and Ron Johnson, provide a paradigm for understanding what may be the most important element of human psychology. They suggest that people’s feelings can be understood, valued, and utilized in order to enliven them personally and enhance them interpersonally to such a degree that they can find true contentment, meaning, and satisfaction in life. They have dared to unpack the murky waters of feelings with precision without falling prey to simplistic ideas of feelings nor complex neurological assessment of feelings. The authors propose that if people grasp how they feel, they will subsequently grasp how other people feel, and in this interchange of feelings, they will profoundly enhance communication and ultimately relationships.

Johnson and Brock propose a unique paradigm for understanding feelings by first suggesting that feelings, while undefined, are the most basic experience and expression of one’s core self, sometimes called soul or spirit. The authors immediately admit to the undefined nature of such words as feelings, core self, soul, or spirit but note that such elements of humanity can be understood and utilized just as the equally undefined words love, time, and distance are undefined. While undefined, feelings can be observed in their experience and expression which comes sequentially physically, emotionally, cognitively, and actively. Thus, an important concept that Johnson and Brock propose is that emotion is the second experience one has when experiencing or expressing feelings but not the entirety of one’s feelings, and for many people not the most important. They suggest that some people are inclined to express or experience their feelings emotionally while others may be more inclined to physical manifestations, cognition, or activity in experience and expression of feelings. The authors suggest a commensurate four-part paradigm of personality temperament that often reflects one’s preference for experiencing and expressing feelings. They further delineate the four basic emotions suggesting that are love-based emotions of joy and sadness and two defense-based emotions of fear and anger.

With the groundwork of the book in this depth understanding of feelings, emotions, and personality temperament, Brock and Johnson present a myriad of scenarios between people demonstrating how to use their basic understanding of feelings. In these later chapters the authors focus on practical, down-to-earth examples of how people fail to communicate their feelings and examples of how they can succeed in feeling communication. They suggest rules for engagement in one chapter. They devote another chapter to the concept of emotional hurt which, they suggest, is often at the heart of miscommunication, and suggest ways of understanding, managing, and communicating hurt before it turns to defensive-based emotions of anger or fear.

Drs. Johnson and Brock have compiled a valuable book that is grounded in equal measures of science, theory, and their 100 years of experience in the field of psychology. Read this book and you will be compelled to think deeper, feel deeper, and communicate better.