Raise | Of the 272 Emotions, Most Parents Only Know 12 (w/ D. Earl Johnston)
5 Big Ideas, 3 Reflection Questions, 1 Takeaway
We explore D. Earl Johnston’s groundbreaking book Choosing Emotions — now the single most comprehensive reference on human emotions in the English language — and what it means to parent as someone who chooses their responses instead of defaulting to them.
You’ll learn why the average adult operates with a vocabulary of just 8-12 emotions when hundreds exist, how to break default emotional patterns using the Awareness → Belief → Repetition framework, and why the vocabulary we give our kids now is the vocabulary they’ll reach for when life gets hard.
Doug also shares the story of how three Post-it notes with quotes from survivors changed his daughter’s relationship with depression — and ultimately sparked a decade of research.
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🖐 5 BIG IDEAS
1. Emotions Are Choices, Not Reactions
The near-unanimous scientific consensus says that, at our best, we choose our emotions. Doug calls them the “gears of life” — tools we shift deliberately, like a cyclist downshifting on a hill.
The distinction matters enormously for parents: we’re not just modeling how to handle emotions, we’re modeling whether they can be handled at all.
Winston Churchill captured it in eight words during the London Blitz: “Fear is a reaction. Courage is a decision.” That framing shifts everything. You’re not expected to stop feeling afraid — you’re expected to decide what comes next.
2. The Emotional Vocabulary Gap
The average American believes there are 8-28 emotions. Doug has documented 272 — and suspects the real number is closer to 400. This gap has real consequences. Psychologist Lisa Feldman Barrett’s research on “emotional granularity” shows that precision of language directly predicts our ability to resolve what’s troubling us.
When a kid mislabels fear as “stress,” they solve for the wrong thing. When addiction gets mislabeled as anxiety, recovery slows.
As linguist Noam Chomsky put it: “Words are the grooves through which our thoughts are conveyed.” The vocabulary we give our kids is the vocabulary they’ll reach for when life gets hard.
3. Awareness → Belief → Repetition
Breaking a default emotional pattern requires three things in order.
Awareness first — the habit of catching what you’re feeling before you act on it. `Doug’s practical tool: say it out loud. “I’m getting mad.” The moment you name it, you’re watching the emotion instead of being inside it.
Belief second — Doug read Carl Jung’s line about ego and literally cried, because a belief he’d carried for decades shifted in a moment. Nothing else produces that kind of change.
Repetition third — wires the new default in. Your kids are watching every rep of this sequence, whether you intend it or not.
4. The 90-Second Rule
Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor’s research found that the physical experience of an emotion lasts roughly 90 seconds in the body. After that, it dissipates — unless the cognitive brain kicks in and connects it to every previous time you felt that way.
The guy who cut you off triggered a 90-second chemical event. What keeps it alive is the story you keep retelling.
For parents, this reframe is immediately useful: you have 90 seconds.
If you can pause and name what you’re feeling instead of acting on it, the wave passes on its own. The pattern interrupt — that pause — is the practice.
5. Name It to Tame It
UCLA professor Dan Siegel’s five-word principle sits at the heart of this conversation: name it to tame it.
When we give children specific words for what they’re feeling, two things happen: the emotion becomes workable instead of overwhelming, and we signal that emotions can be named, examined, and moved through.
Doug’s book exists precisely for this — a page full of quotes from people who’ve experienced an emotion, survived it, and found language for it. If Winston Churchill or J.K. Rowling felt that way, it becomes easier to face. That’s the gift — not protection from hard feelings, but orientation inside them.
🤔 3 REFLECTION QUESTIONS
1. Where are you currently reacting instead of choosing — and what would it look like to catch it one beat earlier?
Think about a recurring emotional pattern in your life — with your kids, your partner, or your work. Is the reaction something you consciously chose, or something running on autopilot for years? What would change if you named it out loud before you acted on it?
2. What emotional vocabulary are your kids absorbing from watching you — not from what you say, but from what you do?
Not what you teach explicitly, but what they observe. When you’re frustrated, what do they see? When you’re anxious or afraid, do you name it or perform it? What’s the gap between what you say about emotions and what you actually model?
3. Think of a time you struggled to find the right words for what you were feeling. How did that affect your ability to move through it?
Doug’s central argument is that if you can’t name it, you can’t tame it. Reflect on a moment — a setback, a relationship tension, a loss — where the feeling stayed stuck because you didn’t have language for it. What word, if you’d had it then, might have helped you move through it sooner?
🔑 1 KEY TAKEAWAY
The vocabulary we give our kids is the vocabulary they’ll reach for when life gets hard.
Doug Johnston didn’t set out to write the most comprehensive reference on human emotions in the English language. He set out to help his daughter, who couldn’t find words for what she was feeling. Three Post-it notes with quotes from survivors changed something in her — not because the quotes solved anything, but because they proved the feeling had a name, and that others had been there and come out the other side.
That’s the through-line of everything in this conversation. Emotional vocabulary isn’t just self-help language. It’s the primary tool we have for moving through difficulty. When we can name what we’re feeling precisely — depression, not sadness; fear, not stress — we can address what’s actually there. When we can’t, we solve for the wrong thing.
The Awareness → Belief → Repetition framework Doug describes maps directly onto our own model of Awareness → Intention → Action. You can’t choose an emotion you haven’t noticed. You can’t notice something you don’t have a word for. This is where the work starts — not in a crisis moment, but in the quiet daily habit of naming what’s actually happening inside you.
And here’s what makes this a parenting conversation specifically: your kids aren’t waiting for a teachable moment. The conversation is already happening. They’re watching how you handle frustration, fear, grief, and joy. The emotional vocabulary you model — and the size of it — is what they’re inheriting.
Name it. Tame it. Then teach them to do the same.