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A review by vsarna
Emotional: How Feelings Shape Our Thinking by Leonard Mlodinow
1.0
Honestly I learned nothing from this book. Why is over 2/3’s of the book focused on regurgitating popular studies and books and providing little to no analysis on it? And than the actual “tools” are a 20 page after though? Also pretty much every nuance is missed in this book.
First of all changing your thinking and relation to your emotions is HARD. The author presents it as a easy thing. Just change your appraisal of the situation! That’s lovely, but that is something that can take YEARS to change, especially if someone has one or more disorders. When you struggle with depression and anxiety like I do it’s easy to spiral and get caught up in those emotions and feelings because that is part of struggling with a mental health disorder. To be like lol take this little measure on anxiety and change your appraisals in about 20 pages feels disrespectful and honestly neglectful too.
In general, the author doesn’t offer any form of new information or even usual information in this book. He simply restates the findings from popular, well known studies and than moves on.
From the beginning I knew this book was written by someone who wasn’t within a field that dealt with helping people process their emotions because, again, this lacks the nuanced understanding of the complicated nature of emotions. Studies only can tell you so much. It is a completely different ball game to experience anxiety and complex emotions and also to help people process that. When you’re on the receiving end and even on the professional side of things, you begin to understand there is no one nice neat answer. Emotions are complicated and your relationship with them will be ever changing. That’s ok. That’s normal. With practice, emotions can become manageable and be described better. But it still takes time!
Overall I found this book lacking in every single aspect from start to finish. With a lack of interesting or well researched or useful information, this book feels like a cheap and tasteless money grab.
First of all changing your thinking and relation to your emotions is HARD. The author presents it as a easy thing. Just change your appraisal of the situation! That’s lovely, but that is something that can take YEARS to change, especially if someone has one or more disorders. When you struggle with depression and anxiety like I do it’s easy to spiral and get caught up in those emotions and feelings because that is part of struggling with a mental health disorder. To be like lol take this little measure on anxiety and change your appraisals in about 20 pages feels disrespectful and honestly neglectful too.
In general, the author doesn’t offer any form of new information or even usual information in this book. He simply restates the findings from popular, well known studies and than moves on.
From the beginning I knew this book was written by someone who wasn’t within a field that dealt with helping people process their emotions because, again, this lacks the nuanced understanding of the complicated nature of emotions. Studies only can tell you so much. It is a completely different ball game to experience anxiety and complex emotions and also to help people process that. When you’re on the receiving end and even on the professional side of things, you begin to understand there is no one nice neat answer. Emotions are complicated and your relationship with them will be ever changing. That’s ok. That’s normal. With practice, emotions can become manageable and be described better. But it still takes time!
Overall I found this book lacking in every single aspect from start to finish. With a lack of interesting or well researched or useful information, this book feels like a cheap and tasteless money grab.