54. When You Can Name a Thing You Gain Power Over It

Naming emotions gives us power over them. When we misidentify what we're feeling, we become controlled by unseen forces instead of responding thoughtfully.

Seth Roberts explores how accurately naming emotions—like realizing irritability stems from hunger, not anger—helps us break reactive patterns. Drawing from Spirited Away and horror films, he illustrates how naming what scares us diminishes its hold over us.

The next time strong emotions arise, ask: "What is the true name of this feeling?" Clarity begins where confusion ends.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
What in life deserves our time and attention and what
things don't.
I hope that as we consider thatquestion, along with other
topics on this show, that we canall learn to live our lives
just a little more intentionally.
This is Seth Roberts.
Thanks for joining me onSkipping Stones.
The reason words matter isbecause when we cannot

(00:33):
accurately name or describe athing, we are powerless to take
action.
How could we?
Without a name for that whichwe are experiencing or seeing,
we do not even know the thingthat needs to be acted upon or
seeing.
We do not even know the thingthat needs to be acted upon when
we are afraid.
If we can learn the source ofthis fear and put a name to it,
that fear often goes away or, atthe very least, it's weakened.

(00:54):
Likewise, when we have a poorunderstanding of what is going
on inside ourselves, our morebasic emotions can more easily
take control of us.
Think, for example, of a personthat is really hungry but
doesn't realize it.
They're probably on a shortfuse and maybe snapping at the
people around them, and in thatmoment they think that they're

(01:16):
angry because somebody sneezedthe wrong way, when actually
they're just hungry.
In the past, I've brought up oneof my favorite films, spirited
Away, which is a famous Japaneseanime.
There's a witch in that storythat runs a bathhouse for
spirits.
When someone comes to herasking for work, she makes them

(01:36):
sign a contract.
Once the contract is signed,she takes ownership of their
name and gives them another name.
Once they have forgotten whattheir actual name was, they fall
under her control.
Now I can only guess where thecreator of that film, hayao
Miyazaki, was intending to takehis metaphor, but I feel there's

(01:58):
a depth to it.
There's a few different waysyou can interpret it, but one of
the things I was thinking aboutwas that when we do not know
the name of that which we arebeing affected by, we are
powerless to it.
When we know its name, we gainpower over it.
A person that understandsthemselves can do so much more

(02:23):
to promote their own well-beingthan a person that does not.
When we don't know orunderstand ourselves, we are not
prepared to face the inevitablechallenges of life that are
going to come.
It is as if, when we do notknow ourselves, we become slaves
to our emotions because wecannot name or describe them.
The witch in my mind representsthose blunt primal reactions,

(02:47):
such as fear or confusion thatdistract us from the truth or
keep us from recognizing whatthe source of those reactions
are.
If you find yourself gettingirritated at the people around
you, but unable to know for whatreason, you will remain in that
state.
Most likely, if you are able torecognize that your irritation

(03:09):
is actually a symptom of asituation at work or some other
problem, you gain the power totransfer that negative energy
away from places it doesn'tbelong and move it to places it
does.
When we watch an action film,the protagonists are frequently
in physical danger from otherpeople and or monsters trying to

(03:30):
kill them.
Yet we are not typically scaredby that.
In a horror film, there islikewise a person or a monster
trying to kill the protagonist,but the difference being is that
we usually do not know wherethe bad guy is or how they are
going to try and kill theprotagonist.

(03:50):
The protagonists are frequentlyput into situations where their
vision is limited, whetherthey're in the dark or in a
facility with lots of physicalobstacles to hide behind.
In the first example, I think Icould say that the protagonists
are able to name their enemy.
Their chances of survival maybe 100 to 1, but they know what

(04:12):
they are facing.
In the second example, theyknow almost nothing.
They often do not even know whothe killer or killers are.
They cannot name what they arefacing.
We are never going to be angryjust because we are.
There's always a reason.
In the moment, it might be easyto think we're angry because

(04:34):
the person next to us is beingannoyingly cheerful or because
they looked at us wrong, but thetrue name of what we are
experiencing may be as simple asstress at work, a fight with a
spouse, hunger, or maybe we tookthe wrong medicine.
We may think we'reuncomfortable at a party, but

(04:55):
the true name of our distressmay be that we don't feel like
we are good enough to be there.
Or it may be that we don't knowthe social rules that are
needed to thrive in thatparticular scenario.
Maybe you have gone throughlife thinking you are not meant
for great things, but truly, thename of your limits is that you
are afraid of injuring yourpride by trying.

(05:16):
In so doing, you trappedyourself into a prison of your
own making.
It's possible that you thinkyou hate the place you are
living, but maybe the real nameof your problem is that you hate
, that you haven't made anymeaningful connections and
missed the familiarity of home.
Or maybe your discontent withwhere you're at comes from

(05:40):
feeling left behind by yourfriends that have left.
Something I have always foundkind of interesting about
politics is that, depending onwho the president is and
depending on which news platformyou're listening to, when
something good happens it isbecause of the president, and
when something bad happens it'sbecause of the president.

(06:00):
But sometimes the answer hasnothing to do with the person
sitting in the White House, ormaybe it has something to do
with 20 person sitting in theWhite House, or maybe it has
something to do with 20different things that happened
all at once.
We are all too often tempted togive something an
oversimplified name, like thatguy is angry because he's a jerk
, when maybe he's angry for amuch more nuanced reason than

(06:23):
that.
Maybe the reason you can'tstand that new hire in the
office has nothing to do withtheir unbearable personality.
It's possible that theirpersonality is unbearable to you
because you are actuallyfeeling jealous of them.
Maybe your anxiety in life isless a matter of hormonal
imbalance and more so aconsequence of constantly

(06:44):
staying up late, or possiblybecause your life is actually in
shambles and you have everyright to feel anxious.
It could be that your actionsand your beliefs are not aligned
and it's ripping you apart.
Maybe the reason you can't getyourself to do the things you
know you have to do in order toreach your aspirations is not

(07:06):
because you are lazy.
Know you have to do in order toreach your aspirations is not
because you are lazy, butbecause you don't actually want
the lifestyle that your goalsare going to require of you.
Or possibly you're just afraidof facing the inevitable
discomfort of changing yourhabits.
When we learn the true name of athing, we can become its master
.
Name of a thing, we can becomeits master.

(07:27):
Look to know the true name ofyour fear, of your anxiety and
of your anger, and you willbecome the master of your own
universe.
This is Skipping Stones.
You can find this podcastanywhere you choose to listen to
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(07:56):
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New episodes will be releasedweekly, every Monday.