Michael Pariser is the well-known author of No More Mr. Nice Guy, The Hero’s Journey, the official companion book to Robert A. Glover’s famous No More Mr. Nice Guy. His greatest aim is to help people from all walks of life learn how to get in touch with their emotions for greater happiness and interpersonal impact. Building on their increased emotional intelligence, he teaches them how to become more assertive, advocate for their own needs, set healthy boundaries, have difficult conversations, and, if everything works out well, craft a lasting legacy that transforms generations.
Use Your Feelings, Don’t Let Them Use You
Borrowing from the words of Master Yoda, Michael Pariser says: “Use your feelings;” but that doing so first requires recognizing and understanding what they are. “Everything flows from there,” he says. “Once people start experiencing their emotions in a real, visceral way, they can use those feelings to evaluate their situations, motivate themselves to take appropriate action, communicate better with others, and make effective plans for the future. Feeling feelings is the critical action that provides a steppingstone for all further progress.”
The caveat, however, is that feeling one’s emotions in a deeply embodied way is not always the easiest thing to do. “Many people just can’t handle their own feelings,” says Pariser. They repress, suppress, defend and hide from the emotions that they can’t handle, which almost never works well. In order to thrive, you need to accept and embrace all of your emotions. “Demonstrate boldness in the face of adversity,” says Michael Pariser, “even if that adversity is your own emotional life.”
What’s more, according to Dr. Pariser, “human beings likely have the most sophisticated emotional systems in the world,” and getting a complete grasp on such a complex phenomenon can be a challenge for anyone. “However,” he cautions, “it is not a challenge to shy away from.” The key, he claims, is to commit to an emotional learning process, which is how he helps his clients. The first step is to get them to concentrate on body awareness, sensation focus, and gut feelings. From there, he works with them to tolerate those feelings, so they don’t run away or defend themselves. Then he helps them put names to their feelings and see how they are the emotions product of all their personal and interpersonal interactions. Finally, he engages their heartfelt desires, so they can make effective decisions and take constructive actions based on those feelings.
On Emotional Tolerance
All this work requires directly confronting one’s inner turmoil (and perhaps external forces) that may be hindering progress. As the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius once said, “The obstacle is the way.” Science has a term for the emotional tolerance and fortitude Michael Pariser references throughout his work, and it’s called “distress tolerance.” The Journal of Contextual Behavioral Science examined the structure of distress tolerance in a 2023 research paper (“Distress tolerance, or the ability to tolerate physically and emotionally aversive experiences, is a target of psychological intervention in contextual behavioral science.”) Its research highlights the fact that distress tolerance affects multiple aspects of human functioning, including interpersonal relating, memory, attention and mood.
According to Dr. Pariser, building emotional distress tolerance is about much more than simply knowing what you’re feeling. It’s also about understanding that some feelings are more difficult than others, and the difficult ones bring up real discomfort, in the form of more feelings. So, for instance, if you have difficulty with sadness, then when you feel yourself getting sad, you might shift into shame that you’re sad, or anger at whoever triggered that sadness, or anxiety that people will see you crying. You will need to face these uncomfortable feelings as well, and the emotional turmoil may be tremendous. But it is possible to tolerate it.
Riding the emotional rollercoaster is a familiar human experience, and sometimes there’s no way around it. “There is a useful expression making the rounds,” Pariser notes: “Get comfortable with discomfort,” because it’s not a hopeless process. It needs to be practiced, so it gets easier with time, as is true for many difficult things. And the benefits of doing so are enormous.
Looking Towards the Future
Michael Pariser says he’s grateful to have helped so many people through his companion book, and from his consulting and coaching practice. Through one-on-one and group sessions with clients, he has worked to improve the lives of people who are looking to build greater capacity for emotional tolerance, and he plans to expand his work in other domains.
To continue his campaign for emotional tolerance and wellbeing and to expand his audience, Dr. Pariser has plans to launch an online course series and a new website, which will house useful resources and serve as a guiding light to those who are looking to better their lives mentally and emotionally.
For those people, and to all others who may one day come to see the usefulness of greater emotional tolerance and intelligence, Dr. Pariser has a key phrase that serves as one of the underlying pillars of his life philosophy, one that speaks to the ability to confront challenging forces in the world and within yourself: “If you’re not afraid of feeling, then you’re not afraid of life.”
