Hard Feelings

Hard Feelings, Daniel Smith. Simon & Schuster (ISBN: 9781982103903) 2026.

Summary: We are inclined to suppress negative emotions but if we listen to what they are saying about ourselves, we gain wisdom.

Daniel Smith received two unusual gifts for his fortieth birthday. One was a 1621 book, The Anatomy of Melancholy. The other was a coffee table book of the strange, lurid art of Hieronymus Bosch. He shelved the books away but couldn’t forget them. He’d wrestled with what one might call “negative emotions” all his life, and most dramatically after his divorce several years earlier, that sent him in a tailspin. But he couldn’t shelve the negative emotions these represented. Neither could he wallow in them. As a therapist, he was coming to understand that the place to begin was to be curious about them and what they were pointing to, perhaps in his own life.

Before he gets into specific emotions he first explores the morality of emotions and theories about emotions. All to often, emotions were divided into good and bad, with the bad being immoral. Then he explores theories of emotions, considering both Basic Emotion Theory and the Theory of Constructed Emotion. The former proposes that we are wired to respond in certain ways to different experiences, the latter, that how we respond is shaped by our interpretation of experience. Smith favors the latter and believes we need to “understand the complex structures and patterns” that underlie our emotions.

In the remainder of the book, in two parts, he considers six emotions we might consider negative. Part Two considers annoyance, shame, and envy. Then Part Three looks at boredom, regret and despair. Smith combines autobiographical material with research to tease out what each of these emotions. Annoyance points to boundaries transgressed that could lead to anger. Smith realized the choice he faces to internalize the annoying–to become annoyed–and that he may choose not to. He discovers that shame feeds on hiding and is lessened with self-exposure. Then there is envy, which may point to a neglected desire, fueled by comparisons with others. Interestingly, he spends a lot of time discussing his wife’s struggle to not have others envy her!

One of the strengths of the book is Smith’s candor. For example he honestly describes his own boredom in parenting a young child. Yet he sees boredom as the underside of a life “pregnant with meaning.” Then, he explores the addictive element of regret that poisons our steps into the future. Finally, despair is the curving inward in which one luxuriates in one’s helplessness rather than accept help, to look beyond oneself. In the author’s case, this meant daily studying a linden in a nearby park.

Perhaps the greatest wisdom here is to acknowledge and listen to all our emotions for what they are trying to show us. Smith’s self-deprecating autobiography models that posture. However, at points, this felt meandering. I didn’t always feel that his discussions “landed.” But perhaps that is also the point. He and all of us are in a process of making sense out of our lives, one that doesn’t progress in neat, linear fashion. He is not one of those who has arrived. Rather, he is still on the way, a way he has illuminated with humor, honesty, and substance.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review through LibraryThing’s Early Reviewers Program.