Hard Feelings

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From a psychotherapist and the New York Times bestselling author of Monkey Mind , a thoughtful, deeply personal exploration of our most difficult emotions, arguing that they are not obstacles to overcome but essential messengers that can lead us toward wisdom and wholeness. What if the emotions we fight hardest against—anger, shame, envy, regret, jealousy, annoyance, despair—are not enemies to be vanquished but essential guides to self-knowledge? When two birthday gifts—a centuries-old treatise on melancholy and a book of Bosch's hellscapes—arrived just months before the birth of Daniel Smith's second child, he began questioning our culture's dismissal of difficult feelings and his own lifelong struggle against these so-called "negative" emotions. Moving between intimate personal narrative and rich intellectual exploration, Smith investigates how our relationship with negative emotions has evolved through history—from