The next time you find yourself in an argument, try putting the other person in a picture frame and imagining them as a character in a movie. This is one of the psychological distancing techniques that Marc Brackett uses in his own life.

Brackett is the director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence. After studying emotions for more than two decades, he has become their stout advocate—encouraging people to befriend their affects and normalize feeling their feelings.

It might seem strange to need a permission slip for something so central to the human experience. Yet it can be transformative to stop treating emotions as unwanted guests and instead welcome them as integral companions on our journeys. In fact, Brackett has found that this magnanimous attitude toward our inner world is also what we long for in the outer world—in each other’s company.

“When people seek social support, they’re not looking for someone to tell them what to do or fix their feelings. What they really want is an emotional ally—someone non-judgmental, someone who shows empathy and compassion, someone who truly knows how to listen,” he says.

In the early 1990s, psychologists Peter Salovey and John D. Mayer introduced the concept of emotional intelligence as a subset of social intelligence (initially described as “the ability to understand and manage people”). They defined emotional intelligence as “the ability to monitor one’s own and others’ feelings and emotions, to discriminate among them and to use this information to guide one’s thinking and actions” (Salovey & Mayer, 1990, p. 189).

In the decades since this pioneering research, Brackett and his colleagues have developed and popularized an evidence-based approach to teaching and learning emotional intelligence. Although mastering emotional intelligence may sound like a grand undertaking, it ultimately comes down to five essential (and surprisingly manageable) skills: Recognizing, Understanding, Labeling, Expressing, and Regulating emotions (RULER). Through this framework, Brackett and his team........

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