Permission to Feel

The mental well-being of children and adults is shockingly poor. Marc Brackett, author of Permission to Feel, knows why. And he knows what we can do. "We have a crisis on our hands, and its victims are our children." Marc Brackett is a professor in Yale University's Child Study Center and founding director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence. In his 25 years as an emotion scientist, he has developed a remarkably effective plan to improve the lives of children and adults - a blueprint for understanding our emotions and using them wisely so that they help, rather than hinder, our success and well-being. The core of his approach is a legacy from his childhood, from an astute uncle who gave him permission to feel. He was the first adult who managed to see Marc, listen to him, and recognize the suffering, bullying, and abuse he'd endured. And that was the beginning of Marc's awareness that what he was going through was temporary. He wasn't alone, he wasn't stuck on a timeline, and he wasn't "wrong" to feel scared, isolated, and angry. Now, best of all, he could do something about it. In the decades since, Marc has led large research teams and raised tens of millions of dollars to investigate the roots of emotional well-being. His prescription for healthy children (and their parents, teachers, and schools) is a system called RULER, a high-impact and fast-effect approach to understanding and mastering emotions that has already transformed the thousands of schools that have adopted it. RULER has been proven to reduce stress and burnout, improve school climate, and enhance academic achievement. This book is the culmination of Marc's development of RULER and his way to share the strategies and skills with readers around the world. It is tested, and it works. This book combines rigor, science, passion and inspiration in equal parts. Too many children and adults are suffering; they are ashamed of their feelings and emotionally unskilled, but they don't have to be. Marc Brackett's life mission is to reverse this course, and this book can show you how.

Marc Brackett, PhD, is the founding director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence and a professor in the Child Study Center at Yale University. He is the author of the bestselling book Permission to Feel (now translated into twenty-seven languages), which has transformed how individuals, schools, and organizations approach emotional intelligence. Marc is the lead developer of RULER, an evidence-based framework for cultivating emotional intelligence, currently adopted by over five thousand schools worldwide. He is an author on more than two hundred scholarly articles, with his research featured in The New York Times, Good Morning America, Today, and the Huberman Lab podcast. A sought-after keynote speaker, he has headlined over seven hundred conferences and advises Fortune 500 companies on integrating emotional intelligence into workplace culture. Together with Pinterest cofounder Ben Silbermann, Marc launched the award-winning How We Feel app, a powerful tool helping millions of people improve their well-being. He is also the producer of the acclaimed documentary America Unfiltered: Portraits and Voices of a Nation. Marc hosts Dealing with Feeling, a YouTube web series and podcast that brings groundbreaking insights on emotion regulation to a global audience. He lives in Connecticut and New York City.