I've finished this illustrated guide by Liz Fosslien and Mollie West Duffy, the authors of No Hard Feelings. Rather than offering a single fix, it takes seven emotions that are especially hard to handle, uncertainty, anger, burnout, comparison, perfectionism, despair, and grief, and gives each one its own chapter. Fosslien's cartoons carry much of the book, making heavy material feel approachable rather than clinical.
Themes I Noticed
Difficult Feelings Are Not Abnormal
- Naming an emotion is the first step toward being able to work with it
- Big feelings tend to surface most at work, where we are expected to keep them hidden
- Making peace with an emotion is different from getting rid of it
Talking About What We Are Going Through
- Most of us don't know how to talk about what we're feeling, so we say nothing
- Owning and sharing emotions can make room for empathy from colleagues and friends
- Creating an environment where people can be honest about how they are doing
Finding Meaning on the Other Side
- The authors' focus is not on feeling better quickly, but on coming out of hard periods with a deeper sense of what matters
- Practical strategies for each emotion, rather than a single universal approach
Memorable Quotes
"Despite being clearly damaged in full view of a world that sees us to have been wounded, is to discover what it really means to be human."
"Reach out to those who get it, and create distance from those who don't."
Coming from two people who have spent years writing about workplace culture, the book keeps its advice grounded in the everyday. It doesn't promise that bad feelings will disappear on schedule, and that honesty is what makes it useful.