TedTest

From the Ted Talk by Artūrs Miksons: The benefits of expressing your emotions (constructively)

Unscramble the Blue Letters

It's a Friday aenorfotn, I have finally finished my workday, and there is just one thing on my mind: I can finally go to the supermarket and get those coiekos I've been drinmaeg about my whole day. I get to the local store which is near my flat, I get near the aisle where there's bunch of cookies, and I'm standing there with a gaze, and I notice there's a little girl next to me. She's about four or five, let's call her Lucy. And Lucy has that same smile on her face like, "All of these are going to be mine!" At that moment, I just take one or two packs for myself, she sees how I do this, she's like, "Aha, this is how it works." She tekas ten of them, puts them in her armpits and vrotiuscoily goes to the cashier's office. And you have that sensation there's like ponies and rainbows and the sun is shining and she's going to have a blastly Friday. I gather my stuff, get to the cashier's, and I notice we are in the same queue. Lucy is there with her mom, she's torwhn all the cookies there in the basket and unfortunately, as life is, mom takes all the cookies out, just leaves one pack. And when she takes them out, you notice that the sunshine and raibowns slowly sratt to fade. And that's when Lucy starts to become a bit grim, she becomes a bit angry and sattrs to say, "Wait, wait, hold on there Sparky, what's going on?" And then she realizes this is not going to end well, and those rainbows and sishnnue turn into rainy clouds and a thunderstorm, and that samll sweet Lucy isn't sweet Lucy anymore. She becomes argny and shouts, and yells, "Why? Why are you doing this to me? Why? I want those cookies!" and so on and starts to cry suddenly. And then there's kind of a fuss around the situation - everybody looks at how the mom is going to react - and at this magical moment, all of you probably know, a magical thing happens. Somewhere from the store, the gnnary appears. (Laughter) She appears and starts to have an opinion, of course, on the matter. "Oh, in my time, things were different." Yada yada yada. Let's pause for a brief moment here. What you've just heard is basically a part of my daily life. Being a meciadl doctor and a psychotherapist, I hear a lot of stories which people go through. And there is this myth that you have to, as a doctor, distance yourself a bit from pttaenis in order to not get too involved, too actthaed and so on, which is not quite true. When you are a psychotherapist, you need to actually let yourself feel to some degree, to some extent what the petniat feels. How that works is not magic, it's simple biology. You have a part of your barin that is called the limbic system, which is responsible for how you feel, where your emotions, yours and mine, reside. And when you have an emotional reaction, it's never logical, it's neurophysiological, it's blgiooy, it could be completely illogical. And when somebody feles something, you can start to feel in a similar manner. To give you an example, few years ago, me and my girlfriend were asked to babysit our friend's infant. Let's call him David. David is about eight, yeah, eight months old. We airvre at their place, we go in, and you have like a déjà vu feeling, like sunshine and rainbows and ponies. Everything is great, you go in, it's going to be a blasty evening. The parents leave; we have a very nice time with David. But the infant who is eight month old is at a very special age. Everything's kind of nice up until one pnoit David notices something. "You're not my real parents, now, are you?" (laueghtr) At which point, David starts to cry, as babies do. For five minutes. "Oh, David, it's going to be fine." "We just have to caerss him, maybe put him to bed." fietefn. OK, then. "Let's change the diaper." "Yeah, sure, let's change the dpiear." We change the diaper. Twenty five, for Christ's sake. "Let's feed him?" "Yes, let's feed him!" We feed him. Forty. At this point, you start to have various ideas in your head, like, for example, "David! Shut up, David! Please shut up!" or that you would just leave him somewhere, or you could just ignore him for the rest of the evening. But you realize you can't do that. An hour. An hour and ten. And I remember so vvdiliy, my girlfriend was holding divad in her hands, and he's still crying, We're standing in the doorway, we look at each other, and we realize we're screwed! At that monmet, what balslaciy happens on a ngliiooorcbuael level, you can't act out in this instance when you want to sakhe David, you want to put him away, you want to do something else. But it's interesting to notice in yourself how you actually feel. And how I actually felt at that moment was completely helpless, angry, in desapir, scared at the same time, I don't know what to do. If you think about it, it's the same way how David feels. He's been abandoned by his parents - bastards left him all alone with these two strangers at home. God knows what they're doing. So he's abandoned, all alone, helpless, hopeless and scraed. And the only thing you can do in this instance is to just be there with him and to feel him and to help him in his feelings what he's feeling. It's ittnersenig, when we start to feel something, how our minds change, kind of to some degree tell us what we actually feel. Every single one of us has been born with a celptloemy different set of a brain, how we enixeepcre fgleiens, how intensively that happens - but we experience all the same feelings. The odd thing is while we are growing up we are taught, mostly by our ptarnes, what feelings to feel and not to feel. setoyprtees exist because to some derege, they are true. If we are very open about things, then if I ask the ladies of the audience you'll probably want your men to be emotional, right? I can just - "No." Someone said no. No? See? Proves my point! So, to some degree you want him to be emotional, but if you're very open to yourself, you don't want the whole eainotoml spectrum. You want him to be firm and stable, a man on a high horse - or meecders, whatever you prfeer. But you don't want that ernbessrmamat, the shame, the fear, the excessive jealousy. You don't want that, do you? The same question would be for the men. You do want your lady next to you to be emotional, right? Of course not. You want her to be on the shy side, maybe be afraid sometimes. You're going again ride on your high horse and your Mercedes, and save them from despair, but ... good grlis don't get angry, do they? You don't like the hiyresta, you don't like the anger. These are the stereotypes that are tguhat to kids already from day one, to basically ertadaice some of the feelings that they have. And the more the years go by, you start to actually think you don't feel something, and then you put your feelings somewhere else. You start to think you're angry at somebody else, you start to think you're afraid or ashamed of something else, which is not quite true. To maybe not talk so much broadly and saying everything about you, I'd like to srhae the story about me, how my feelings get in the way of my work. Four months ago, I received one of the worst phone calls you can get. In the evening, when I finished my work, my mom called me and told me those words I was always afraid to hear from her: that my father had passed away. And I remember when I came home, how filled with rage I was. I sermecad and I yelled, I broke some furniture in my apartment. And my girlfriend was there to see that thing happening to me. Of course, the funeral goes by and life goes on. Then you start to notice something interesting, that some weeks have passed, and wniaklg on the setrets to work, I don't even think about my dad in any way, any shape or form, but I'm looking at the people around me, and I notice a feeling in myself: I hate every single one of them. I hate their smile, even hate babies that I see. You start to notice, What the hell is happening to me? You get to work, you're angry at your caegleulos. You want to tell them how imnatrpot it is to cherish relationships, how important it is to do stuff, to do things on time, not to let things go, and so on and so on and so on. Months have passed, and I was asked to do this TED Talk. I was papenirrg the speech for my TED Talk, and every single time I did it, I realized it is not good enough. This isn't good enough, that isn't good enough. At some point, I even had the idea I'm going to cancel this whole TED thing. I called up my mom and said, "You know, I think I'm going to give up all this TED thing. I don't want to do it." And she said, "Why?" "Well, because, I don't know, because I am going to stand there and don't know what I'm going to say and so on." And then it hit me, why I didn't want to be here. It's not because I don't know what to say. I give lectures all the time. I know what I am going to talk about. The reason why I didn't want to be here because I know I would feel something standing right here. What I am actually feeling right now. I notice my heart racing. I notice that I'm sad that he is not here. He's not going to call me after this lecture. I notice that I'm angry that that's an inevitable thing of life. At the same time, I'm to some degree maybe scared or ashamed: What if I drop a tear while I'm talking to you? How awful is that going to look? But I didn't finish the story about Lucy, did I? If we go back to Lucy, Lucy's mom could've done anything. She could've told her, "That's not how a girl behaves. Look at that granny who's shouting at you. Look at the man, that tall man behind you, he is looking weirdly at you." I'm looking what was actually hnpeaipng. And she didn't just keep silent and not say anything. She didn't devalue her, she didn't cendomn her, she didn't do anything of the sort. All she did was to get the gricereos that she had, took Lucy on her arms, and I heard her just so vaguely that Lucy continued to tell mom, "I want those cookies so bdlay," and "I wanted them." And the only thing Lucy's mom said to Lucy was, "I know, hneoy. I know you did. But it's OK to be angry, it's OK to be sad." And I remember I'm walking home from this very smplie sncee any one of you has maybe already seen. I go in my apartment. My girlfriend metes me. She asks me, "Well, how was your day?" I said, "I started off with a smile on my face," said, "I just saw a girl not get any cookies." She's like, "What? Are you OK?" I'm probably in a posytcihc state right now. I said no. I told her the whole sorty about the store. And at some point I notice that my slime turns into a single tear that I have. She asked me, "Why are you crying? Is everything OK?" I said "No. I miss him, like a lot." And the hardest thing about feelings, actually, is that it's easy, to some degree, to think about them in your head. But it's much hrdaer to actually express them out loud. And all of my patients every single time ask me one of the same questions: "What's the difference that I tell you that I'm angry, I'm scared, I'm helpless, I'm hopeless, I'm happy? What's the difference?" And I tell them, "This is the difference, that somebody's here - this time it's me - who actually doesn't just udnntserad what you are going through, but I feel what you're feeling to a certain amonut." Question always is, The exereceipns we have in life, how will that impact your and my alitiby to, let's say, be there with somebody and feel these feelings? The same way as David needed somebody to be there, the same way Lucy ndeeed somebody to be there, even I need somebody there to be there for me. And I hope every single one of you has the experience that not somebody uardntesnds you, but somebody feels you. Thank you. (Applause)

Open Cloze

It's a Friday _________, I have finally finished my workday, and there is just one thing on my mind: I can finally go to the supermarket and get those _______ I've been ________ about my whole day. I get to the local store which is near my flat, I get near the aisle where there's bunch of cookies, and I'm standing there with a gaze, and I notice there's a little girl next to me. She's about four or five, let's call her Lucy. And Lucy has that same smile on her face like, "All of these are going to be mine!" At that moment, I just take one or two packs for myself, she sees how I do this, she's like, "Aha, this is how it works." She _____ ten of them, puts them in her armpits and ____________ goes to the cashier's office. And you have that sensation there's like ponies and rainbows and the sun is shining and she's going to have a blastly Friday. I gather my stuff, get to the cashier's, and I notice we are in the same queue. Lucy is there with her mom, she's ______ all the cookies there in the basket and unfortunately, as life is, mom takes all the cookies out, just leaves one pack. And when she takes them out, you notice that the sunshine and ________ slowly _____ to fade. And that's when Lucy starts to become a bit grim, she becomes a bit angry and ______ to say, "Wait, wait, hold on there Sparky, what's going on?" And then she realizes this is not going to end well, and those rainbows and ________ turn into rainy clouds and a thunderstorm, and that _____ sweet Lucy isn't sweet Lucy anymore. She becomes _____ and shouts, and yells, "Why? Why are you doing this to me? Why? I want those cookies!" and so on and starts to cry suddenly. And then there's kind of a fuss around the situation - everybody looks at how the mom is going to react - and at this magical moment, all of you probably know, a magical thing happens. Somewhere from the store, the ______ appears. (Laughter) She appears and starts to have an opinion, of course, on the matter. "Oh, in my time, things were different." Yada yada yada. Let's pause for a brief moment here. What you've just heard is basically a part of my daily life. Being a _______ doctor and a psychotherapist, I hear a lot of stories which people go through. And there is this myth that you have to, as a doctor, distance yourself a bit from ________ in order to not get too involved, too ________ and so on, which is not quite true. When you are a psychotherapist, you need to actually let yourself feel to some degree, to some extent what the _______ feels. How that works is not magic, it's simple biology. You have a part of your _____ that is called the limbic system, which is responsible for how you feel, where your emotions, yours and mine, reside. And when you have an emotional reaction, it's never logical, it's neurophysiological, it's _______, it could be completely illogical. And when somebody _____ something, you can start to feel in a similar manner. To give you an example, few years ago, me and my girlfriend were asked to babysit our friend's infant. Let's call him David. David is about eight, yeah, eight months old. We ______ at their place, we go in, and you have like a déjà vu feeling, like sunshine and rainbows and ponies. Everything is great, you go in, it's going to be a blasty evening. The parents leave; we have a very nice time with David. But the infant who is eight month old is at a very special age. Everything's kind of nice up until one _____ David notices something. "You're not my real parents, now, are you?" (________) At which point, David starts to cry, as babies do. For five minutes. "Oh, David, it's going to be fine." "We just have to ______ him, maybe put him to bed." _______. OK, then. "Let's change the diaper." "Yeah, sure, let's change the ______." We change the diaper. Twenty five, for Christ's sake. "Let's feed him?" "Yes, let's feed him!" We feed him. Forty. At this point, you start to have various ideas in your head, like, for example, "David! Shut up, David! Please shut up!" or that you would just leave him somewhere, or you could just ignore him for the rest of the evening. But you realize you can't do that. An hour. An hour and ten. And I remember so _______, my girlfriend was holding _____ in her hands, and he's still crying, We're standing in the doorway, we look at each other, and we realize we're screwed! At that ______, what _________ happens on a _______________ level, you can't act out in this instance when you want to _____ David, you want to put him away, you want to do something else. But it's interesting to notice in yourself how you actually feel. And how I actually felt at that moment was completely helpless, angry, in _______, scared at the same time, I don't know what to do. If you think about it, it's the same way how David feels. He's been abandoned by his parents - bastards left him all alone with these two strangers at home. God knows what they're doing. So he's abandoned, all alone, helpless, hopeless and ______. And the only thing you can do in this instance is to just be there with him and to feel him and to help him in his feelings what he's feeling. It's ___________, when we start to feel something, how our minds change, kind of to some degree tell us what we actually feel. Every single one of us has been born with a __________ different set of a brain, how we __________ ________, how intensively that happens - but we experience all the same feelings. The odd thing is while we are growing up we are taught, mostly by our _______, what feelings to feel and not to feel. ___________ exist because to some ______, they are true. If we are very open about things, then if I ask the ladies of the audience you'll probably want your men to be emotional, right? I can just - "No." Someone said no. No? See? Proves my point! So, to some degree you want him to be emotional, but if you're very open to yourself, you don't want the whole _________ spectrum. You want him to be firm and stable, a man on a high horse - or ________, whatever you ______. But you don't want that _____________, the shame, the fear, the excessive jealousy. You don't want that, do you? The same question would be for the men. You do want your lady next to you to be emotional, right? Of course not. You want her to be on the shy side, maybe be afraid sometimes. You're going again ride on your high horse and your Mercedes, and save them from despair, but ... good _____ don't get angry, do they? You don't like the ________, you don't like the anger. These are the stereotypes that are ______ to kids already from day one, to basically _________ some of the feelings that they have. And the more the years go by, you start to actually think you don't feel something, and then you put your feelings somewhere else. You start to think you're angry at somebody else, you start to think you're afraid or ashamed of something else, which is not quite true. To maybe not talk so much broadly and saying everything about you, I'd like to _____ the story about me, how my feelings get in the way of my work. Four months ago, I received one of the worst phone calls you can get. In the evening, when I finished my work, my mom called me and told me those words I was always afraid to hear from her: that my father had passed away. And I remember when I came home, how filled with rage I was. I ________ and I yelled, I broke some furniture in my apartment. And my girlfriend was there to see that thing happening to me. Of course, the funeral goes by and life goes on. Then you start to notice something interesting, that some weeks have passed, and _______ on the _______ to work, I don't even think about my dad in any way, any shape or form, but I'm looking at the people around me, and I notice a feeling in myself: I hate every single one of them. I hate their smile, even hate babies that I see. You start to notice, What the hell is happening to me? You get to work, you're angry at your __________. You want to tell them how _________ it is to cherish relationships, how important it is to do stuff, to do things on time, not to let things go, and so on and so on and so on. Months have passed, and I was asked to do this TED Talk. I was _________ the speech for my TED Talk, and every single time I did it, I realized it is not good enough. This isn't good enough, that isn't good enough. At some point, I even had the idea I'm going to cancel this whole TED thing. I called up my mom and said, "You know, I think I'm going to give up all this TED thing. I don't want to do it." And she said, "Why?" "Well, because, I don't know, because I am going to stand there and don't know what I'm going to say and so on." And then it hit me, why I didn't want to be here. It's not because I don't know what to say. I give lectures all the time. I know what I am going to talk about. The reason why I didn't want to be here because I know I would feel something standing right here. What I am actually feeling right now. I notice my heart racing. I notice that I'm sad that he is not here. He's not going to call me after this lecture. I notice that I'm angry that that's an inevitable thing of life. At the same time, I'm to some degree maybe scared or ashamed: What if I drop a tear while I'm talking to you? How awful is that going to look? But I didn't finish the story about Lucy, did I? If we go back to Lucy, Lucy's mom could've done anything. She could've told her, "That's not how a girl behaves. Look at that granny who's shouting at you. Look at the man, that tall man behind you, he is looking weirdly at you." I'm looking what was actually _________. And she didn't just keep silent and not say anything. She didn't devalue her, she didn't _______ her, she didn't do anything of the sort. All she did was to get the _________ that she had, took Lucy on her arms, and I heard her just so vaguely that Lucy continued to tell mom, "I want those cookies so _____," and "I wanted them." And the only thing Lucy's mom said to Lucy was, "I know, _____. I know you did. But it's OK to be angry, it's OK to be sad." And I remember I'm walking home from this very ______ _____ any one of you has maybe already seen. I go in my apartment. My girlfriend _____ me. She asks me, "Well, how was your day?" I said, "I started off with a smile on my face," said, "I just saw a girl not get any cookies." She's like, "What? Are you OK?" I'm probably in a _________ state right now. I said no. I told her the whole _____ about the store. And at some point I notice that my _____ turns into a single tear that I have. She asked me, "Why are you crying? Is everything OK?" I said "No. I miss him, like a lot." And the hardest thing about feelings, actually, is that it's easy, to some degree, to think about them in your head. But it's much ______ to actually express them out loud. And all of my patients every single time ask me one of the same questions: "What's the difference that I tell you that I'm angry, I'm scared, I'm helpless, I'm hopeless, I'm happy? What's the difference?" And I tell them, "This is the difference, that somebody's here - this time it's me - who actually doesn't just __________ what you are going through, but I feel what you're feeling to a certain ______." Question always is, The ___________ we have in life, how will that impact your and my _______ to, let's say, be there with somebody and feel these feelings? The same way as David needed somebody to be there, the same way Lucy ______ somebody to be there, even I need somebody there to be there for me. And I hope every single one of you has the experience that not somebody ___________ you, but somebody feels you. Thank you. (Applause)

Solution

feels
brain
prefer
streets
takes
small
neurobiological
david
start
caress
walking
needed
amount
patients
ability
condemn
mercedes
share
story
despair
preparing
happening
groceries
moment
honey
starts
colleagues
feelings
laughter
simple
stereotypes
rainbows
scene
experiences
degree
parents
victoriously
hysteria
smile
diaper
badly
fifteen
point
shake
sunshine
harder
basically
cookies
afternoon
thrown
understands
embarrassment
emotional
taught
scared
understand
medical
vividly
arrive
angry
biology
important
interesting
psychotic
patient
eradicate
screamed
meets
completely
experience
dreaming
granny
attached
girls

Original Text

It's a Friday afternoon, I have finally finished my workday, and there is just one thing on my mind: I can finally go to the supermarket and get those cookies I've been dreaming about my whole day. I get to the local store which is near my flat, I get near the aisle where there's bunch of cookies, and I'm standing there with a gaze, and I notice there's a little girl next to me. She's about four or five, let's call her Lucy. And Lucy has that same smile on her face like, "All of these are going to be mine!" At that moment, I just take one or two packs for myself, she sees how I do this, she's like, "Aha, this is how it works." She takes ten of them, puts them in her armpits and victoriously goes to the cashier's office. And you have that sensation there's like ponies and rainbows and the sun is shining and she's going to have a blastly Friday. I gather my stuff, get to the cashier's, and I notice we are in the same queue. Lucy is there with her mom, she's thrown all the cookies there in the basket and unfortunately, as life is, mom takes all the cookies out, just leaves one pack. And when she takes them out, you notice that the sunshine and rainbows slowly start to fade. And that's when Lucy starts to become a bit grim, she becomes a bit angry and starts to say, "Wait, wait, hold on there Sparky, what's going on?" And then she realizes this is not going to end well, and those rainbows and sunshine turn into rainy clouds and a thunderstorm, and that small sweet Lucy isn't sweet Lucy anymore. She becomes angry and shouts, and yells, "Why? Why are you doing this to me? Why? I want those cookies!" and so on and starts to cry suddenly. And then there's kind of a fuss around the situation - everybody looks at how the mom is going to react - and at this magical moment, all of you probably know, a magical thing happens. Somewhere from the store, the granny appears. (Laughter) She appears and starts to have an opinion, of course, on the matter. "Oh, in my time, things were different." Yada yada yada. Let's pause for a brief moment here. What you've just heard is basically a part of my daily life. Being a medical doctor and a psychotherapist, I hear a lot of stories which people go through. And there is this myth that you have to, as a doctor, distance yourself a bit from patients in order to not get too involved, too attached and so on, which is not quite true. When you are a psychotherapist, you need to actually let yourself feel to some degree, to some extent what the patient feels. How that works is not magic, it's simple biology. You have a part of your brain that is called the limbic system, which is responsible for how you feel, where your emotions, yours and mine, reside. And when you have an emotional reaction, it's never logical, it's neurophysiological, it's biology, it could be completely illogical. And when somebody feels something, you can start to feel in a similar manner. To give you an example, few years ago, me and my girlfriend were asked to babysit our friend's infant. Let's call him David. David is about eight, yeah, eight months old. We arrive at their place, we go in, and you have like a déjà vu feeling, like sunshine and rainbows and ponies. Everything is great, you go in, it's going to be a blasty evening. The parents leave; we have a very nice time with David. But the infant who is eight month old is at a very special age. Everything's kind of nice up until one point David notices something. "You're not my real parents, now, are you?" (Laughter) At which point, David starts to cry, as babies do. For five minutes. "Oh, David, it's going to be fine." "We just have to caress him, maybe put him to bed." Fifteen. OK, then. "Let's change the diaper." "Yeah, sure, let's change the diaper." We change the diaper. Twenty five, for Christ's sake. "Let's feed him?" "Yes, let's feed him!" We feed him. Forty. At this point, you start to have various ideas in your head, like, for example, "David! Shut up, David! Please shut up!" or that you would just leave him somewhere, or you could just ignore him for the rest of the evening. But you realize you can't do that. An hour. An hour and ten. And I remember so vividly, my girlfriend was holding David in her hands, and he's still crying, We're standing in the doorway, we look at each other, and we realize we're screwed! At that moment, what basically happens on a neurobiological level, you can't act out in this instance when you want to shake David, you want to put him away, you want to do something else. But it's interesting to notice in yourself how you actually feel. And how I actually felt at that moment was completely helpless, angry, in despair, scared at the same time, I don't know what to do. If you think about it, it's the same way how David feels. He's been abandoned by his parents - bastards left him all alone with these two strangers at home. God knows what they're doing. So he's abandoned, all alone, helpless, hopeless and scared. And the only thing you can do in this instance is to just be there with him and to feel him and to help him in his feelings what he's feeling. It's interesting, when we start to feel something, how our minds change, kind of to some degree tell us what we actually feel. Every single one of us has been born with a completely different set of a brain, how we experience feelings, how intensively that happens - but we experience all the same feelings. The odd thing is while we are growing up we are taught, mostly by our parents, what feelings to feel and not to feel. Stereotypes exist because to some degree, they are true. If we are very open about things, then if I ask the ladies of the audience you'll probably want your men to be emotional, right? I can just - "No." Someone said no. No? See? Proves my point! So, to some degree you want him to be emotional, but if you're very open to yourself, you don't want the whole emotional spectrum. You want him to be firm and stable, a man on a high horse - or Mercedes, whatever you prefer. But you don't want that embarrassment, the shame, the fear, the excessive jealousy. You don't want that, do you? The same question would be for the men. You do want your lady next to you to be emotional, right? Of course not. You want her to be on the shy side, maybe be afraid sometimes. You're going again ride on your high horse and your Mercedes, and save them from despair, but ... good girls don't get angry, do they? You don't like the hysteria, you don't like the anger. These are the stereotypes that are taught to kids already from day one, to basically eradicate some of the feelings that they have. And the more the years go by, you start to actually think you don't feel something, and then you put your feelings somewhere else. You start to think you're angry at somebody else, you start to think you're afraid or ashamed of something else, which is not quite true. To maybe not talk so much broadly and saying everything about you, I'd like to share the story about me, how my feelings get in the way of my work. Four months ago, I received one of the worst phone calls you can get. In the evening, when I finished my work, my mom called me and told me those words I was always afraid to hear from her: that my father had passed away. And I remember when I came home, how filled with rage I was. I screamed and I yelled, I broke some furniture in my apartment. And my girlfriend was there to see that thing happening to me. Of course, the funeral goes by and life goes on. Then you start to notice something interesting, that some weeks have passed, and walking on the streets to work, I don't even think about my dad in any way, any shape or form, but I'm looking at the people around me, and I notice a feeling in myself: I hate every single one of them. I hate their smile, even hate babies that I see. You start to notice, What the hell is happening to me? You get to work, you're angry at your colleagues. You want to tell them how important it is to cherish relationships, how important it is to do stuff, to do things on time, not to let things go, and so on and so on and so on. Months have passed, and I was asked to do this TED Talk. I was preparing the speech for my TED Talk, and every single time I did it, I realized it is not good enough. This isn't good enough, that isn't good enough. At some point, I even had the idea I'm going to cancel this whole TED thing. I called up my mom and said, "You know, I think I'm going to give up all this TED thing. I don't want to do it." And she said, "Why?" "Well, because, I don't know, because I am going to stand there and don't know what I'm going to say and so on." And then it hit me, why I didn't want to be here. It's not because I don't know what to say. I give lectures all the time. I know what I am going to talk about. The reason why I didn't want to be here because I know I would feel something standing right here. What I am actually feeling right now. I notice my heart racing. I notice that I'm sad that he is not here. He's not going to call me after this lecture. I notice that I'm angry that that's an inevitable thing of life. At the same time, I'm to some degree maybe scared or ashamed: What if I drop a tear while I'm talking to you? How awful is that going to look? But I didn't finish the story about Lucy, did I? If we go back to Lucy, Lucy's mom could've done anything. She could've told her, "That's not how a girl behaves. Look at that granny who's shouting at you. Look at the man, that tall man behind you, he is looking weirdly at you." I'm looking what was actually happening. And she didn't just keep silent and not say anything. She didn't devalue her, she didn't condemn her, she didn't do anything of the sort. All she did was to get the groceries that she had, took Lucy on her arms, and I heard her just so vaguely that Lucy continued to tell mom, "I want those cookies so badly," and "I wanted them." And the only thing Lucy's mom said to Lucy was, "I know, honey. I know you did. But it's OK to be angry, it's OK to be sad." And I remember I'm walking home from this very simple scene any one of you has maybe already seen. I go in my apartment. My girlfriend meets me. She asks me, "Well, how was your day?" I said, "I started off with a smile on my face," said, "I just saw a girl not get any cookies." She's like, "What? Are you OK?" I'm probably in a psychotic state right now. I said no. I told her the whole story about the store. And at some point I notice that my smile turns into a single tear that I have. She asked me, "Why are you crying? Is everything OK?" I said "No. I miss him, like a lot." And the hardest thing about feelings, actually, is that it's easy, to some degree, to think about them in your head. But it's much harder to actually express them out loud. And all of my patients every single time ask me one of the same questions: "What's the difference that I tell you that I'm angry, I'm scared, I'm helpless, I'm hopeless, I'm happy? What's the difference?" And I tell them, "This is the difference, that somebody's here - this time it's me - who actually doesn't just understand what you are going through, but I feel what you're feeling to a certain amount." Question always is, The experiences we have in life, how will that impact your and my ability to, let's say, be there with somebody and feel these feelings? The same way as David needed somebody to be there, the same way Lucy needed somebody to be there, even I need somebody there to be there for me. And I hope every single one of you has the experience that not somebody understands you, but somebody feels you. Thank you. (Applause)

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations

ngrams of length 2

collocation	frequency
sweet lucy	2
high horse	2
single time	2

Important Words

abandoned
ability
act
afraid
afternoon
age
aisle
amount
anger
angry
anymore
apartment
appears
applause
armpits
arms
arrive
ashamed
asked
asks
attached
audience
awful
babies
babysit
badly
basically
basket
bastards
bed
behaves
biology
bit
blastly
blasty
born
brain
broadly
broke
bunch
call
called
calls
cancel
caress
change
cherish
clouds
colleagues
completely
condemn
continued
cookies
cry
crying
dad
daily
david
day
degree
despair
devalue
diaper
difference
distance
doctor
doorway
dreaming
drop
déjà
easy
embarrassment
emotional
emotions
eradicate
evening
excessive
exist
experience
experiences
express
extent
face
fade
father
fear
feed
feel
feeling
feelings
feels
felt
fifteen
filled
finally
fine
finish
finished
firm
flat
form
forty
friday
funeral
furniture
fuss
gather
gaze
girl
girlfriend
girls
give
god
good
granny
great
grim
groceries
growing
hands
happening
happy
harder
hardest
hate
head
hear
heard
heart
hell
helpless
high
hit
hold
holding
home
honey
hope
hopeless
horse
hour
hysteria
idea
ideas
ignore
illogical
impact
important
inevitable
infant
instance
intensively
interesting
involved
jealousy
kids
kind
ladies
lady
laughter
leave
leaves
lecture
lectures
left
level
life
limbic
local
logical
lot
loud
lucy
magic
magical
man
manner
matter
medical
meets
men
mercedes
minds
minutes
mom
moment
month
months
myth
needed
neurobiological
neurophysiological
nice
notice
notices
odd
office
open
opinion
order
pack
packs
parents
part
passed
patient
patients
pause
people
phone
place
point
ponies
prefer
preparing
proves
psychotherapist
psychotic
put
puts
question
queue
racing
rage
rainbows
rainy
react
reaction
real
realize
realized
realizes
reason
received
relationships
remember
reside
responsible
rest
ride
sad
sake
save
scared
scene
screamed
sees
sensation
set
shake
shame
shape
share
shining
shouting
shouts
shut
shy
side
silent
similar
simple
single
situation
slowly
small
smile
sort
sparky
special
spectrum
speech
stable
stand
standing
start
started
starts
state
stereotypes
store
stories
story
strangers
streets
stuff
suddenly
sun
sunshine
supermarket
sweet
system
takes
talk
talking
tall
taught
tear
ted
ten
thrown
thunderstorm
time
told
true
turn
turns
twenty
understand
understands
vaguely
victoriously
vividly
vu
wait
walking
wanted
weeks
weirdly
words
work
workday
works
worst
yada
yeah
years
yelled
yells