The name Big Feelings comes partly in jest from the language we elementary teachers often use with our students: “It looks like you’re experiencing some Big Feelings right now. Why don’t we go to the Calming Corner and choose a breathing tool?” As someone deeply intimate with the experience of Big Feelings myself, I have found the phrase to be a very useful addition to my lexicon. 😅

Big Feelings follows the same basic structure as Big Ideas: participants will engage with a short “text set” beforehand, usually 2-4 articles, podcasts, videos, or other sources that take no more than 3 hours to complete. But instead of focusing primarily on ideas, arguments, or intellectual questions, Big Feelings will explore the emotional landscape of being human: grief, love, loneliness, belonging, shame, vulnerability, identity, healing, awe, resilience, and the many ways we make sense of our inner lives.

Complete the sign-up form if you wish to be invited to future gatherings of Big Feelings!

Up next in Big Feelings: What Are Emotions, and How Do You Relate to Them?

Sunday, June 28th, 10:00 am • Complete the Sign-Up Form to receive the Partiful invitation!

Human beings have wildly different relationships with their emotions. Some of us experience feelings as an all-consuming black hole (ahem, yours truly 😅.) Some of us keep emotions at arm’s length. Some of us can notice a feeling, watch it pass through, and let it float on by. Perhaps you move between all three, depending on the day, the feeling, and the circumstances.

For our first-ever Big Feelings gathering, we’ll begin by exploring two foundational questions:

What are emotions, anyway? Apparently, even neuroscientists don’t fully agree!
What is my relationship to my own emotions? Do I cling to them, avoid them, analyze them, perform them, suppress them, trust them, fear them, follow them, or something else entirely?

This gathering is meant to meet you wherever you are. Whether you could talk about your feelings for hours or would rather get a root canal, you are welcome here. There is no expectation that you need to “spill your guts,” disclose anything deeply personal, or be more vulnerable than you want to be. The goal is not forced vulnerability. In fact, it's the opposite: to create a safe, thoughtful container where people can choose to talk honestly about the hard, strange, tender parts of being human — or simply listen, reflect, and find meaning in others’ stories. Sometimes, choosing to listen instead of bearing your soul is its own act of self-compassion.

Required Texts:

Total Time: 35 minutes

1) Video: The biggest myths about emotions, debunked

10 minutes

This short video provides a neuroscientist's perspective; in it, Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett explains that emotions are not hardwired reactions that simply happen to us. Rather, the brain actively constructs emotions by drawing on past experience, bodily signals, and context. Barrett is a University Distinguished Professor of Psychology at Northeastern University, with appointments at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, and has been ranked among the top 1% most-cited scientists in the world.

You can find a transcript here.

If you want to dive deeper, check out the podcast linked under "optional texts" below. Or, you can really nerd out with Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett by exploring the dozens of articles, videos, and podcasts on her website.

2) Book Chapter: The River of Feelings

20 minutes

As many of you know, I’ve been pulled toward Buddhism over the past few years, and this chapter captures one of the things I find most compelling about it: its philosophy of emotions and the human mind.

In this chapter from The Wise Heart – which will be the centerpiece of our Big Feelings conversation – Jack Kornfield captures some of the key ideas that Buddhist psychology teaches about emotions: that feelings are not problems to solve, suppress, or obey, but passing waves of experience we can learn to notice with wisdom. He distinguishes between primary feeling tones — pleasant, painful, and neutral — and the secondary emotions that often follow, arguing that freedom comes from recognizing what we feel without getting lost in it.

Kornfield is a leading Buddhist teacher, author, and clinical psychologist who trained as a monk in Thailand, India, and Burma; he holds a Ph.D. in clinical psychology and is a founding teacher of both the Insight Meditation Society and Spirit Rock Meditation Center. He has been a key figure in translating Vipassana (insight) meditation for Western audiences, stripping away cultural complexities while maintaining core principles.

The River of Feelings (May 2026)

3) Article: Which of These Avoidance Strategies Do You Identify With?

5 minutes

This short article offers a practical inventory of the many ways we humans avoid feeling our feelings, organized into five categories: mental avoidance, behavioral avoidance, substance-related avoidance, emotional and relational avoidance, and spiritual or existential avoidance.

Some of the strategies on the list may feel immediately familiar; others may be more surprising. One of the biggest surprises in my own therapy has been discovering all the subtle, subconscious ways I avoid feeling my feelings — patterns I had been practicing for years without even realizing it.

As you read, I invite you to consider which strategies, if any, you recognize in yourself — not as a reason for judgment, but as a way of becoming more aware of the habits we use to protect ourselves from difficult feelings.

Optional Texts:

If you want to dive deeper into this topic, I recommend checking out the additional sources below!

How Your Emotions Are Made | Lisa Feldman Barrett10% Happier with Dan Harris · Episode

Podcast: How Your Emotions are Made

If you enjoye the short video with Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett above, you may enjoy listening to this longer conversation with one of my favorite Buddhist podcasters, Dan Harris. She gets into more detail on the neuroscientist's distinction between feelings and emotions, and I found it to be really interesting.

"Today's guest is at the forefront of understanding human emotions: what they are, why humans evolved to have them, how they're different from feelings, and what science says about how to manage them (rather than get yanked around by them all the time). In this conversation, we talk about how we can "deconstruct" our own emotions, and the overlap between her research findings and Buddhism."

Spotify | Apple Podcasts

Part 2 - Mindfulness of Emotions - Introduction to Meditation - Tara Brach

Podcast: Mindfulness of Emotion with Tara Brach

Of all the Buddhist teachers I've encountered so far, Tara Brach is the one whose work resonates with me the most. Her podcast is simply a recording of her weekly teachings at the Insight Meditation Community in Washington, D.C. Thus, there are typically 1-2 guided meditations embedded in the episode.

Episode description: "Our conditioning is to live in a reactive trance of either resisting or become possessed by strong emotions. This reactivity fuels a trance of being separate from others, and feeling defective and insecure. In this class we explore how to free ourselves from this suffering by bringing a mindful and kind awareness to the stories and feelings that make up our emotional life."

Podcast: Emotional Intelligence

I chose this episode from the Gay Men Going Deeper podcast not necessarily because it will teach you something new — though it might! — but because it offers a model of what our inaugural Big Feelings gathering might sound like.

In the episode, three friends reflect openly on their relationships with emotion, including several questions we’ll also explore together:

How would you describe your relationship to your emotions?
In what ways do you avoid your emotions?
What kinds of situations tend to bring up strong emotions for you?

You can watch the YouTube video or choose an alternative audio format here.