About Karla McLaren
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Emotions and Empathy Are Your Natural Language
Hello and welcome! If you're looking for clear and useful information about emotions and empathy, you've come to the right place.
Empathy pioneer and researcher Karla McLaren. M.Ed. is the author of Embracing Anxiety: How to Access the Genius Inside This Vital Emotion (2020), The Dynamic Emotional Integration Workbook® (2018), The Art of Empathy: A Complete Guide to Life's Most Essential Skill (2013), and The Language of Emotions: What Your Feelings Are Trying to Tell You (2010).
This site is full of information on emotions and empathy, which you can find on this Free Tools page. You can also download your own free Emotional Vocabulary List that will help you develop stronger emotion recognition and emotion regulation skills.
Free PDF: Your Emotional Vocabulary List
You can also take this free quiz to measure your empathic abilities.
Free Quiz: Are You an Empath? (spoiler: yes you are)
For information about workshops, lectures, courses, and interviews, see our Events page. To find a licensed Dynamic Emotional Integration® professional to support your emotional awareness and your healthy empathy, see their profiles here.
Karla McLaren, M.Ed.
You can embrace your anxiety!
Your anxiety is not a mistake or a problem. It's an essential source of foresight and intuition, and it brings you the energy you need to prepare for the future and get things done.
Embracing Anxiety: How to Access the Genius of This Vital Emotion will help you learn how to work with your anxiety in new and life-affirming ways!
Escaping Utopia: This accessible and nuanced account of a controversial subject will be the standard reference on its subject for many years to come.
Benjamin Zablocki, Professor Emeritus, Department of Sociology, Rutgers University
Embracing Anxiety is a kind and empathetic, practical and reality-based approach to managing emotions, useful for anyone and everyone.
Mark Bertin, MD, author of How Children Thrive
Karla McLaren brilliantly illuminates the rich, textured landscape of emotional intelligence and the most important glue holding together all relationships — empathy.
Peter Levine, PhD, author of Healing Trauma and Freedom from Pain
Escaping Utopia is a must read book for everyone concerned about the real nature of human nature.
Philip Zimbardo, Professor Emeritus, Stanford University
Karla McLaren's breakthrough approach provides the missing link for those who want to finally get off the merry-go-round of anxiety, shame, and self-judgment. Embracing Anxiety has become a permanent fixture in my tool box.
Dr. Samantha Brody, author of Overcoming Overwhelm
Karla McLaren is an emotional genius; she is the perfect guide to lead us through the complexities of emotions, and right into the heart of compassion.
Michael Meade, author of The Water of Life and The Genius Myth
The Language of Emotions has changed the way I relate to others, and to myself, forever.
Gavin DeBecker, author of The Gift of Fear and Protecting the Gift
The Emotion Cards
The Language of Emotions Cards will help you increase your emotional awareness and empathic skills, anytime and anywhere! These 24 cards give you detailed insights into all of your emotions and the unique Empathic Mindfulness practices that increase your emotional awareness.
The DEI Workbook
Each of your emotions contains a specific form of genius that you can learn to access with Dynamic Emotional Integration® (also known as DEI). This Dynamic Emotional Integration® Workbook explores your 17 essential emotions and the skills and practices that will help you understand them - and work with them brilliantly.
The Art of Empathy Cards
These Art of Empathy Cards will help you work with emotions and empathy in yourself and others. These 28 cards (plus a special fold-out Emotional Vocabulary List) offer detailed insights into Karla's Six Essential Aspects of Empathy model, plus the skills and practices that will help you develop healthy empathy.
The Language of Emotions
Emotions hold a tremendous amount of energy, and we've all seen what happens when we repress or carelessly express them. In The Language of Emotions, empathy pioneer Karla McLaren shows you how to work with every emotion you have, and receive their life-saving wisdom in healthy ways.
Emotional Vocabulary List
Your vocabulary matters. Research is continually showing us that a good emotional vocabulary doesn't simply help you identify more emotions – it also helps you work with them more easily and more skillfully. This portable Emotional Vocabulary List will help you develop emotional awareness and skill!
The Art of Empathy
With her groundbreaking model of the Six Essential Aspects of Empathy, McLaren teaches you how to understand empathy clearly, how to pinpoint your strengths and challenges, and how to support healthy empathy in yourself and others.
Deep emotions and the racist bones
In 2019, when Joe Biden, a powerful, wealthy, White man who will preside over a country built on the backs of enslaved people, said "There's not a racist bone in my body," I... Read More
Empathy and Self-Care — an online course at Empathy Academy!
Empathy is not a soft skill — it's a vital skill The quality of your empathy — for yourself and others — can mean the difference between just getting through life and thriving... Read More
How to Support Antiracism in Yourself and the World
How do we build a more loving and inclusive world? In 2016, when the serious troubles in the United States began to boil and coalesce into ever deepening and blatant racism, I went... Read More
Understanding cultic leaders so that you can leave them behind
Focusing on the abuse that has ensnared our country I tend to write about explosive things in undercurrent, and one reader noted that if you can't read subtext, you may not realize what... Read More
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