Emotions Are More Than Just Joy & Anger: How Learning the 8 Core Emotions Can Transform Your Marriage & Life

About this episode

Han and Alicia Lau share their journey from emotional resistance to fluency, exploring the impact of understanding core emotions on their marriage and personal lives.

What does it look like when someone who only knew two emotions — anger and joy — finally faces the full spectrum of what they feel? That's the story Han and Alicia Lau bring to the table this week. Married 31 years, parents to six kids, grandparents to six more — and coaches who almost skipped the Core Emotion Wheel entirely. Alicia grew up in a world that told her to stifle her emotions, be a "good Christian girl," and never be "too much." The result? A life where anger and joy were the only acceptable exits — until a poolside audiobook moment changed everything. In this episode, Glenn, Phyllis, Han, and Alicia unpack what it actually takes to go from emotional resistance to emotional fluency — including the 45-minute wheel session that helped Alicia finally process her father's suicide, more than a decade after his death. In This Episode: Why Alicia threw the Core Emotion Wheel across the room (metaphorically) — and why she came back to it How blended family dynamics (and two very different cultures) shaped emotional patterns for both Han and Alicia The moment on their 30th anniversary that changed their marriage — doing the entire Foundations course in one…

People in this episode

Hosts: Glenn, Phyllis

Guests: Han Lau, Alicia Lau

Topics covered

• emotional fluency
• marriage transformation
• grief processing
• blended family dynamics
• Core Emotion Wheel
• personal growth

Keywords

• emotions
• Core Emotion Wheel
• marriage
• grief
• personal development
• family dynamics
• emotional resistance

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Connection Codes

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