Working with emotions: Paul Ekman’s ideas and a writing practice

A message arrives halfway through the working day: “We need to talk about what you did.” While someone rereads that brief sentence, their shoulders tense and answers to an accusation start forming, although the message contains no accusation yet. A sharp reply can be written in seconds. Understanding the reaction may take considerably longer.

It helps to separate the episode into parts: an event, our interpretation, an emotional experience, and the action that followed. Paul Ekman’s work and the Atlas of Emotions give attention to this sequence. A practical task follows from it: notice the response more precisely and consider what to do next.

The Science & Wisdom of Emotions Summit took place on May 2–5, 2021. Mind & Life Institute’s account identifies the institute and The Awake Network Foundation as its presenters. It revisited themes from the 2000 dialogue on destructive emotions. The twenty-year history therefore refers to the earlier dialogue, not the age of the summit itself.

The panel programme featuring Paul Ekman also names Daniel Goleman, Richard Davidson, and Matthieu Ricard. This was a discussion involving several participants. Alongside these ideas, the independent writing practice below offers a way to reconstruct one episode and consider possible responses.

Paul and Eve Ekman created the interactive Atlas of Emotions, launched in 2016. It maps five broad areas: anger, fear, disgust, sadness, and enjoyment. The project announcement explains that each contains different states. That describes the structure of a particular tool rather than reducing all emotional variety to five words.

The atlas website explores states, triggering events, and possible responses. For personal observation, making “I’m angry” more precise is more useful than guessing a prescribed number of shades. Irritation, indignation, and intense rage may come with different intentions about what to do next.

The work message says only that a conversation is needed. “They are going to humiliate me” has been added by the reader. Perhaps previous conversations really did go badly. Perhaps a specific mistake needs correcting. These remain different explanations, and the chosen explanation shapes the reply.

Leave two separate lines in a note: what happened and what you thought it meant. “A message arrived without details” is the event. “They are unhappy with me and want to punish me” is an interpretation. Separating them makes a clarifying question easier: “Which situation do you mean? What should I prepare for the conversation?”

A pause does not have to look like complete calm. Sometimes it means leaving the first draft unsent and returning after a short break. During an in-person conversation, someone might say, “I’m too irritated to discuss this carefully right now. I’ll return to it in twenty minutes.” An agreed return time distinguishes a pause from disappearing.

An action needed for safety should not be delayed for the sake of an elegant analysis. Leave a dangerous situation or end an insulting conversation first; decide what to write later. Working with emotions does not require preserving every relationship or agreeing to someone else’s terms.

“Read the message. Assumed I was being blamed. My jaw tightened and I wanted to reply sharply. Wrote a draft but did not send it. Asked what the conversation concerned and learned that a report needed correcting.” This provides a sequence to revisit. The next similar episode may show whether the initial assumption repeats.

Finish with a question about the next action. Do you need to clarify a fact, acknowledge an error, state a limit, or ask for time? A practical criterion is whether the action is sufficiently safe, helps address the situation, and leaves room to correct a mistake. The answers connect reflection to a particular situation.

Several notes might suggest that messages without context, or conversations at the end of an exhausting day, are particularly difficult. That is an observation to check in subsequent situations. One coincidence cannot explain every emotional response.

The EQ Emotion Journal can hold notes about the event, thought, bodily response, and consequences without demanding perfect composure. A useful result may be small: one assumption clarified, an insult left unsent, or an agreement to return to a conversation kept. Those changes can be recognised in the next episode.