THE TWO-DOLLAR QUESTION: UnLocking the Operating System of Your HEART | with Doug Johnston ❖ 304

Our brains thrive when we give it words that match what we feel... You will be happier and calmer when you put better words to your emotions. It’s that simple."
— D. Earl Johnston

What started as a sweet dinnertime game between a loving father and his teenage daughter turned into an accidental, nine-year investigative masterwork across three millennia of human history. When D. Earl Johnston’s fifteen-year-old daughter asked him from across the table, "What do you know about depression?", 

Doug realized right then and there that our standard dictionaries only tell us what a feeling looks like from the outside—leaving a massive, gaping void about what it actually feels like on the inside.
That one brave question sparked an "Emotionary" mapping 272 distinct emotional states in his incredible release, Choosing Emotions: Thinking with Your Head and Acting with Your Heart. In this conversation, Doug and I pull up a chair to completely dismantle the quiet myth of silent suffering. We trace the lines between cutting-edge neuroscience, ancient Hebrew thought, and the raw simplicity of the gospel, uncovering why the loops in our heads cannot heal until we drag them out into the open light. From the brilliant clinical tool of "name it to tame it" to the undeniable spiritual truth that mountains do not move until you address them out loud, this episode gives you the practical language to turn internal storms into peace, clarity, and bold faith.

Episode Takeaways: What You Will Hear and Receive

• The Heart Behind the Two-Dollar Question: Hear the beautiful story of how a father's quest to answer his daughter's pain uncovered a 25% blind spot in our modern psychology dictionaries.
  
• Permission to Stop "Sucking It Up": Receive the spiritual and emotional freedom to stop burying your pain, learning why hiding your struggle actually blocks the Holy Spirit from stepping in as your Comforter.
  
• The Practical Power of "Name It to Tame It": Discover why speaking your thoughts aloud breaks recursive loops in the brain, pulling you out of the emotional fog so you can look at the facts with clear eyes.
  
• The Laughter of Recognition: Learn how taking worries, looping irritations, and anxiety out of your secret soundtrack and saying them into the room instantly shatters their power and makes you smile at the enemy's bluff.
  
• Why Mountains Only Move When You Speak: Receive an activating revelation on why faith comes by hearing—because until you voice the truth, your own ears can't hear it, and the atmosphere cannot shift.
  
• Emotions as Navigational Tools: Shift your paradigm from viewing feelings as an inescapable trap to seeing them as divine gears, designed to steer you away from danger and guide you straight into life, joy, and peace.
  

What's Inside This Week's Blog Post: 

• The Dinner Table Revelation: How an innocent game called College Bowl and a daughter's question about depression exposed a massive blind spot across centuries of emotional dictionaries.
• The Problem with "Sucking It Up": Why swallowing your feelings and hiding in silent suffering keeps you trapped, while bringing them into the open releases the Comforter to do what He does best.
• Name It to Tame It: The neuroscience and ancient wisdom behind speaking what troubles you aloud to break mental loops and turn recursive anxiety into clear, objective perspective.
• The Laughter of Recognition: How dragging secret worries out of the dark into physical sound exposes the bluff of fear and brings instant relief to your heart.
• Why Mountains Only Move When You Speak: A deep dive into Mark 11:23 and Romans 10:17, revealing why faith cannot shift your atmosphere until your voice puts sound into the room.
• Emotions as Divine Navigational Tools: Practical keys to viewing your feelings as internal gears designed to protect you from harm and steer you straight into curiosity, joy, and peace.
• The Story Behind the Song: An inside look at the inspiration behind our companion track, "Two-Dollar Question," and the spiritual power of writing down a record on the earth.

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Part 1: Full Transcript with Timestamps & Speaker Names
Kristen Wambach (00:01.364)
Welcome back to the table. Joining us today is D. Earl Johnston. Doug is an author, an expert lexicographer. I probably should have asked him. Lexi, lexicographer, I'm gonna need help on that word. Former world champion sail sailor. World champion sailor. So we can talk because Don and I, my husband, love to sail, and a leader who once served as one of the youngest.
Bank presidents in the country. After a profound dinner table conversation with his daughter about depression, he realized standard definitions simply fell short. my goodness, listeners, that is the highlighted quote here. That fatherly quest launched a quiet nine-year research project that culminated in his groundbreaking release, choosing emotions.
Thinking with your head and acting with your heart. Doug has mapped out 272 distinct emotional states from anxiety and art, my favorites, to prayer and redemption, synthesizing 3,000 years of wisdom across science, philosophy, and 30 spiritual traditions.
He is here to give us the language to understand how hearts align our inner operating system. You have your ears tuned. I know you do. Doug, welcome to the show.
doug johnston (01:38.421)
Kristen, thanks for that wonderful introduction. Wonderful to be with you.
Kristen Wambach (01:42.039)
Yay, yay, it's it's it is a delight to have you here and I just want to tell the listeners right off the the bat that his his book is stunning. And I do not say that it's in line for my faves for 2026, my favorite reads. It's it's right up there. So pay attention listeners, we have such a delight today. Now, Doug, would you
Rekindle us and catch us up here. You spent nine years building emotionary after dinner table conversation. That research that went 3,000 years of thought and you discovered roughly a quarter of everyday emotional states aren't even recognized in standard psychology dictionaries. Means
We don't have the words to describe things. Why do you think modern science has less left us with such a massive gap in our emotional vocabulary? And what happens in that inner life when we lack the language for what we feel?
doug johnston (02:56.66)
Well, I love the question. Thank you. so my book, Choosing Emotions, Thinking with Your Head and Acting with Your Heart, was was an accident. like a lot of books are accidents. This started with me as a veteran corporate executive and researcher hired by elite law firms to help them dig into complex financial disputes, hired by the Department of Justice to help them dig into things.
I was sitting at dinner with my then 13-year-old daughter, pardon me, 15-year-old daughter. we had started a game two years earlier when she was 13, where she knew I was a researcher. And so I would come to dinner and instead of simply handing her an allowance like she might have expected, I decided to make her try to earn it. And so I would bring a list of 200 questions. could be about anything, art, history, music, science, anxiety, you name it, sports, music.
And if she got the answer to the question right, I would slide a two dollar bill across the table toward her. We called it College Bowl, and she loved it, and I loved it. It was an opportunity for me really to have just quiet time with my daughter and really understand the way she thought. Well, it it became a fun game. There were there were questions I would ask her that she would run to an adjacent table at a restaurant and get
Get help from them. And I said, No, no, you don't get to do that. She said, Dad, you didn't you didn't say I couldn't throw at a lifeline. So we we had a lot of fun with it. Two years later, she's fifteen, she's a sophomore in high school. She'd been out of school for a month with an injury followed by an unrelated surgery. And a month when you're fifteen years old is an eternity. And her face was long and she said, Dad, can I ask the questions tonight? And I said, Sure. She said, Well
Kristen Wambach (04:29.229)
Mm-hmm.
doug johnston (04:49.586)
What do you know about depression? Well, I I knew that in my heart that she was asking an emotional question, but I faked it because I didn't want to answer about emotional depression. I said, Well, depression is a slowdown in business activity accompanied by a decline in interest rates. I rattle off something. And she said, No, no, no, not that kind of emotion. not that kind of depression. I mean emotional depression. I said, sweetheart, your dad's a great researcher, but I I you know, you've got me. I I I don't know beans about that.
mean I know that somebody who's depressed is sad, but I don't know anything more than that. I said, give me a couple of weeks, I'm gonna do some research. So I dove into being a researcher about depression, emotional depression, and I found all sorts of books that talk about what it looks like, but very few really that talk about what it feels like. And that really became the departure point in in any dictionary, Kristen, that you pick up.
Kristen Wambach (05:31.883)
Yeah, yeah.
doug johnston (05:49.769)
You know, the the the traditional dictionary talks about something in scientific scientific terms, what it looks like. But in my research, that wasn't terribly helpful. I mean, I, you know, you you know that a person is downcast and sad, but but what is really depression to experience yourself? And within a matter of days, I started coming across quotes from people who had experienced depression themselves who were describing it in their own words.
Kristen Wambach (05:57.292)
Mm-hmm.
Kristen Wambach (06:18.327)
Mm-hmm.
doug johnston (06:18.716)
So the first quote that really grabbed me, and which I wrote on a post-it note, was from a 1950s self-help writer by the name of Rollo May. He had a PhD and a Bachelor's in Divinity. He was well known in the 1950s in the era. He was the one of the first self-help authors before anyone even called it self-help. He had survived depression, and his quote was: Depression is the inability to construct.
A future. And I thought, what a compelling quote. I mean, he he I I know much more about depression now than I knew when I thought it was simply somebody was sad. somebody who'd actually experienced it. You know, you you hear friends, associates say, I can't get out of bed, and you think, Well, why? I mean, there it is. Depression is the inability to construct a future. That's a quote from somebody who'd survived it. Another quote from
more prominent person, I'm sure you know who J.K. Rowling is, the author of the Harry Potter series. She had suffered terribly from depression as a young woman before she became the world's top ever novelist. Her quote about depression from J.K. Rowling, depression is that absence of being able to envision you will ever be cheerful again. It's the most unpleasant thing I have ever experienced. Well, now I'm starting to get
Kristen Wambach (07:20.171)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
doug johnston (07:46.333)
A true feeling for what depression is like from the eyes of somebody who's been there. I came across a third quote from a freelance writer, very talented freelance writer by the name of Haley Cornell. And her quote, she also had survived depression. Her quote about depression was this: depression lies. It tells you you've always felt this way and you always will, but you haven't and you won't. All right. So
Kristen Wambach (07:50.506)
Mm-hmm.
doug johnston (08:12.126)
Those were three quotes I wrote down on post-it notes during the course of being surrounded by books and and articles and two laptops as I was researching to try to help my daughter. And one morning, two weeks into it, I thought, you know what? These quotes are much better than the scientific quotes. These are quotes of what it feels like, not what it looks like. And so I thought, My daughter's back in school. I'm just gonna text him to her, and Kristen, she probably shouldn't have been looking at her cell phone, but
Kristen Wambach (08:14.134)
But
Kristen Wambach (08:28.236)
They are.
Yes. Yes.
doug johnston (08:41.246)
Blissfully she was, so I press send, and minutes later, at 10 in the morning, I get a text back from my daughter. I'm crying. Well, I was alarmed. I, you know, that's the last thing I'd wanted. and I said, Why are you crying? All three of these people survived depression and went on to live happy lives. And her response was immediate, That's why I'm crying. Thank you, Dad. Well, that was a wonderful moment, but between the two of us. but we had discovered a really core truth that.
Kristen Wambach (09:05.291)
Mm-hmm.
doug johnston (09:09.648)
In academia, in all the wonderfully, beautifully written books by scientists and and academicians, I'm using a big word, they're almost always in terms of what it looks like. but we were coming up with a process of defining words by how they feel, not how they look. And that made all the difference. So moved quickly from depression to anxiety. My daughter recovered in a in a
Kristen Wambach (09:27.982)
Yeah.
doug johnston (09:37.577)
Period of a few weeks, she was back in school and back on the swing of things. But I moved from depression to anxiety to codependence to frustration to all sorts of things, good emotions, bad emotions, and all of them defined by people who had experienced them, how it felt. And nine years later, imagine that nine years, 272 different emotions and emotional states, as described or defined by eight.
Kristen Wambach (09:59.255)
Okay.
doug johnston (10:07.422)
thousand quotes across three thousand years of history. I realized that's a lot of numbers, but that was really the scope of it. When I finished the last word in the series, 272, they're arranged alphabetically. The last word that I researched was ego, which was last summer, right about now a year ago. And I sort of felt like Forrest Gump at at the movie where he, you remember he's running back and forth across the country and finally he just stops in the middle of the desert and he says, I've done it, you know
Kristen Wambach (10:26.21)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Kristen Wambach (10:36.045)
Yes.
doug johnston (10:36.846)
when I got to Ego, it was such a such a watershed moment for me because I had long misunderstood the word ego myself. I I committed to publishing it. And when I submitted the the entire electronic manuscript to AI early this year, it was already published. So I couldn't make any changes to it. AI, you know, you can appreciate that I would pause before I press in. I mean, you know.
Kristen Wambach (10:56.32)
Uh-huh.
doug johnston (11:05.204)
I'm putting this whole manuscript up for cr for critique. And the response came back within minutes from both Claude AI and ChatGPT that this was the most comprehensive reference on emotions in the English language, which stunned me. I had no idea. I thought there would be hundreds of other psychologists who would have done it. But no, there is a genuine gap in academia. And to answer the question, why is there a gap in academia? Why is it that 25% of the
Kristen Wambach (11:27.938)
Mm-hmm.
doug johnston (11:34.619)
All day common, everyday emotions that I've put in the book are not included in the leading dictionaries of psychology. Well, part of it is because of the so-called silos in academia. a psychologist, for all of the brilliance of a psychologist, will not generally comment at all about what a neuroscientist says, and a neuroscientist will generally not comment at all about what a linguist says. There is a high degree of respect between them, but
That means that there's a gap because emotions cover all fields of academia, all pursuits of life. They're the Rosetta Stone of human experience. And so it it in a in a way I lucked into this. It it it it was the the territory was ripe for somebody who was not obliged to protect a specific academic line of thinking. I I could look at it with fresh eyes and I could sort of take
Kristen Wambach (12:09.832)
Mm-hmm.
doug johnston (12:32.724)
from anyone. So 1800 contributors from every walk of life, every faith, every gender, every culture, every every possible continent except for Antarctica. I didn't find anyone in Antarctica that I could quote. You can appreciate the humor in that. But it it is wide-ranging, it is all inclusive, and it it it paints a better, far better picture, I think. And I'm being
Kristen Wambach (12:37.858)
Mm.
doug johnston (12:58.664)
humble. I mean I I I mean that sincerely. I think anyone that looks at the book will see what I mean by that. psychologists are brilliant. I have spent many hours in therapy myself and a good psychologist, a good psychiatrist, a good neuroscientist, they're all worth their white and gold. But I took a different, fresh approach and I think it it's been meaningful.
Kristen Wambach (13:04.12)
Mm-hmm.
Kristen Wambach (13:18.286)
Wow. Wow. I'm I'm impressed. With your permission, this just jumped right at me. It's one of my favorites from the book. And it's and how can the word anxiety be a favorite? And it's just because it jumped out at me. Now I want to thread this in and embed it when we understand what we're feeling.
It actually helps us communicate to the Lord. It actually helps us pray. It actually helps Holy Spirit communicate to us because we can address a feeling. So I'm going to read from the description from your book on page 30. And this is on anxiety. And it jumped out at me and it
pegged my heart, and said, Hullo, Kristen.
It also says see stress and worry. Number one, experiencing repetitive worries or fixations over personal irritants. Number two, becoming distressed over apparently unresolved trigger issues or contradictions. Number three, trying to control the future. Popular or heart based usage? Getting stressed out, having
an agenda and no having
doug johnston (14:52.338)
Having the agita, it's an Italian word.
Kristen Wambach (14:55.246)
Thank you, Ajita. I stumbled over that. Number three, feeling angst. Number four, touching your ears a lot. Number five, getting heartburn about something. Number six, worrying yourself sick. Number seven, grinding on something. Number eight, getting fixated on something. But the first part that it got me is the repetition. The repetition, and that's going on
in our brains. So I had to have a conversation with the Lord. I went, I am overlooking these things and not taking them seriously. And you the way that you unpack that really helped me to be reflective.
doug johnston (15:43.381)
How well I understand. So I'm going to go back to what you offered up a few minutes ago, and what how I responded. If you pick up a standard Webster's dictionary, there's tons of incredibly helpful data there, but it is all what something looks like. No dictionary in the world, and I mean that sincerely, we have yet to find in the several months that my book has been out.
Kristen Wambach (15:59.535)
Mm-hmm.
Kristen Wambach (16:03.832)
Mm-hmm.
doug johnston (16:11.922)
We've yet to find another dictionary that describes emotions by the way they feel. And so the model for how we go about defining an emotion like anxiety is first start with a standard normal dictionary type approach, what it looks like, which is what you read a moment ago. And then follow it with street phrases, because oftentimes street phrases resonate with your heart as opposed to your head. All right. And then
Kristen Wambach (16:35.938)
Mm-hmm.
doug johnston (16:40.732)
I added for each of these emotions, 272 of them, but you're talking about anxiety here, roughly 20 different quotes from thought leaders from all walks of life of what it actually feels like in their own words when they experienced anxiety. All right. Well, so that's a three-part approach, and there's a fourth which we use synonyms and anyms, similar and opposite words. A four-part approach to defining an emotion has never been undertaken anywhere that we can find by
Any of the leading psychologists, and again, I I'm a huge fan of great psychologists, but the approach has never been done before. And so rather than call it an emotional dictionary, we call it an emotionary because it combines elements of a dictionary, a thesaurus, a book of quotes, synonyms and anonyms, you get the complete picture about an emotion from the thought leaders across the world for 30 centuries.
Often in just one page. I mean, if you just think about the time savings, if if you or somebody in your life is experiencing depression or anxiety or codependence or whatever, you could go to a bookstore and read 10 books and take a month doing it, and you'd you'd get almost better in just one page in this book. because it's so concise, it's so helpful, it's going to the thought leaders. Why wouldn't you?
Avail yourselves of what the thought leaders across all faiths, genders, religions, continents, cultures, why wouldn't you take advantage of what the top twenty minds in history have said about that? Well, you would, but it hasn't been done before. so I want to address something that you touched on, which is that you were prayerful about something.
Kristen Wambach (18:19.667)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
doug johnston (18:29.5)
All of us, each of us, has an inner voice. That's normal. That's the voice you hear when you're thinking. It's a good thing. When you're sitting alone in your bedroom, alone in your car, walking the dog, thinking to yourself, you're thinking in words. We all think in words. And what the science has demonstrated, and I'm talking about Nobel level and Honda Prize level, the
Kristen Wambach (18:57.558)
Yeah.
doug johnston (18:58.238)
Top New York Times, best-selling psychiatrists, psychologists, neuroscientists, they all say the same things that we solve problems in words. But we don't always realize that our inner voice, we sort of acknowledge or protect, or we sort of, you know, I don't have to share with you what I'm thinking, right? But we all think in words. So I'm gonna give you
Kristen Wambach (19:21.88)
Mm-hmm.
doug johnston (19:24.22)
my research summary, which is that I've come across 19 different academic disciplines where all of the thought leaders address the importance of how we think and solve problems in words. I'm going to give you those, a few of those disciplines. They include physics, they include engineering, linguistics, psychiatry, neuroscience, psychology, philosophy, literature, rhetoric, art,
It goes on and on. The thought leaders all say that we solve problems in words. But the point I want to go back to, Kristen, is sometimes we forget we have an inner voice. And what the leading scientists, including Dr. Ethan Cross or Cross, K-R-O-S-S, he's a psychologist with the University of Michigan, a New York Times bestseller, he talks about the importance of self-distancing. What do I mean by that?
When you're thinking alone in your room, and that would include silent prayer to yourself, of course. When you're thinking alone in church, when you're just thinking, you're thinking in a voice. And what's very, very helpful, what's therapeutic across all of these disciplines is it's very helpful to say it out loud, to to put words to your thoughts, to put words to your emotions.
Kristen Wambach (20:28.27)
Mm-hmm.
Kristen Wambach (20:41.229)
Yes.
doug johnston (20:47.444)
All right, so what do I mean by that? So let's say that that you've got a job and there's a new employee who's competing with you, and you might start to ruminate on, well, maybe the boss is going to fire me. And and that thought is in a loop. You've said it to yourself a thousand times. You're not even sure you're saying it. You're just sort of in the emotion, you're not really even looking at it. But what Dr. Cross and what my book has have amply underscored is
Kristen Wambach (21:04.054)
I think
doug johnston (21:16.51)
There's a real benefit to saying out loud what you're thinking. And by that I mean I'm afraid that my boss is going to fire me. I'm afraid that that new competing employee is going to get my job. All right. Well, what you often find when you actually take it out of the silent inner soundtrack of your mind, where you think, and you actually say the words out loud. You're bringing them out of your silent inner voice into the physical world. You've actually
Kristen Wambach (21:35.909)
Mm-hmm.
doug johnston (21:46.793)
Heard the voice, your voice. And what often happens is you laugh because you say, Well, my boss isn't gonna fire me. I'm doing a great job for my boss. Why have I been spending a thousand times ruminating in this loop in my head that I'm gonna get fired? I'm not gonna get fired. You know, the new employee is capable, but I I I do a really good job. And so what you find is 95% of the things that you worry about
Kristen Wambach (21:57.129)
Ha ha ha.
doug johnston (22:16.904)
Don't ever happen. And when you say them out loud, you suddenly take them out of your inner voice, you put them in the real world. And instead of being in the emotion, in your secret, silent inner world, you're putting it out in the real world and you're hearing the sound of your own voice. And often you will laugh out loud. You'll say, I've really been thinking about that for weeks, but it sounds so stupid. Well, suddenly it's not something you're in.
It's something you're looking at objectively, and you gain better, better command and control over it. It's very therapeutic. So that is echoed across the top scientists in the world. I'll give you a couple just to reinforce the research I've done. There's a neuroscientist and a clinical psychologist at Northeastern University in Boston. Her name is Lisa Feldman Barrett.
May not be a name you know, but she is just for scope, she is not only a New York Times bestselling author because she writes beautifully, but she is a brilliant clinical psychologist. She has a team of folks with who work with her. she is, Lisa Feldman Barrett, is one of the top one tenth of one percent of the most frequently cited scientists in the world. So you may think they're physics, they're, you know.
Astronomers and there are, but her work is so highly regarded. She's in the top one tenth of one percent of the most frequently quoted cited scientists in the world. she has a brilliant quote about the importance of words. Her quote is the more finely grained your vocabulary, the more precisely your brain can construct emotions. Well, that she's not a Nobel laureate yet. I suspect she might be in the not too distant future.
Kristen Wambach (23:42.924)
Mm-hmm.
Kristen Wambach (23:58.369)
Mm-hmm.
doug johnston (24:12.818)
There is another clinical psychiatrist, a slightly different profession, associated with UCLA in Los Angeles. His name is Daniel J. Siegel. He came up with five words that are should be cast in stone, in my view. again, a a clinician. He is a person who has a team. He capitalized on the work of psychologist Matthew Lieberman and other teams at UCLA. He came up with five words that
So beautifully describe the importance of putting your emotions into words. Put your emotions into words. Here are his Dr. Dan Siegel's five words. Name it to tame it. I'm going to repeat that. Name it to tame it. If you can simply put words to what you're thinking and feeling, you're going to be a calmer, happier person. Name it to tame it. What a gift from a highly credentialed clinical psychiatrist to
To reduce masses of clinical research volume into five words that will change your life. Name it to tame it. And that means when you're alone in your room in your car, perhaps when you're praying, if you say it out loud, you're gonna be calmer, you're gonna be happier. You get it out of the inner soundtrack. Prayer does not have to be silent. It does not have to be silent. And and for those of us who were raised in an environment where you know you keep your problems to yourself.
I have yet to find in the Bible, and I've been researching it with now that I've finished my book with the assistance of Claude GPT and and pardon me Claude AI and Chat GPT. The Bible is full of references to to David, to Christ himself. Why hast thou forsaken me? He didn't say it silently, he said it out loud.
When when David said I cry out to the Lord, he didn't say I keep it silent and I just hope. He says it out loud. That's really significant. That's really significant that speaking the word.
Kristen Wambach (26:14.146)
Yeah.
doug johnston (26:23.112)
There's the word, the word. There is speaking the word out loud is helpful and therapeutic. We know it across science from Lisa Feldman Barrett and Dan Siegel and many others. I can quote 19 different academics at that level. we also know it from theology. And it's not just Christian, it's Old Testament, it's New Testament, it's Islam, it's in Buddhism. All of these disciplines attest to the therapeutic value of speaking
Kristen Wambach (26:27.82)
Mm-hmm.
Kristen Wambach (26:40.03)
Yeah.
Kristen Wambach (26:45.251)
Mm.
doug johnston (26:52.838)
out loud what is troubling you in your head.
Kristen Wambach (26:58.698)
And I will put it into the simplicity of the gospel, which could be considered a quantum physics thought. But anytime we bring it into the light, you bring it out of darkness, bring it into the light, then you can begin to deal with it. Whether it's this is ridiculous, my boss would never fire me. When you bring it into the light.
It reveals. That's the reason why why Jesus said with the the lady with the who had lost the coins, you know, and she was digging in her room. You don't hide light under a barrel. And we always think the light is just the goodness of God with it which is in us. No, the light is you bring life to the light so it cannot hide.
doug johnston (27:53.311)
That's so so beautifully said. All right. So I'm going to give you a couple of more reference points to support what I've I've said. So in Judaism, Genesis, in the Old Testament, Genesis 1:3, God said, Let there be light, and there was light. Almost verbatim what you just said, but I'm just tying it back to the Bible itself. In Hebrew, there's a word d-A-B-A-R, pronounced Davar. that's
Kristen Wambach (28:00.494)
Okay.
Kristen Wambach (28:10.846)
Mm-hmm.
doug johnston (28:21.522)
The Hebrew word for the word, the thing, the concept. So there, as you know, there are various movements in Judaism. There's Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform, and others. there's a respected rabbi, a Polish American rabbi, whose work is respected by all the movements in Judaism. his words are words create worlds. All right.
Kristen Wambach (28:48.194)
They do.
doug johnston (28:49.512)
Let me say that again. Words create worlds. We think in words. All right. In Christianity, John 1:1. In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God. We know about the logos, the Greek term for the generative principle. The word precedes all. Well, it's right there in black and white, and it's been around for over 2,000 years. But we sort of forget the word. It started with the word.
Kristen Wambach (28:51.981)
Mm-hmm.
Kristen Wambach (28:59.67)
Everyone's with the one what?
doug johnston (29:18.15)
In Islam, in the Quran two, one seventeen, Kun Fala Kun, be and it is, is the English translation of Kun Fala Kun, which gets at divine creation through the spoken command. All right, Buddhism is not a religion, it's more a philosophical tradition. But 2300 years ago in Buddhism, something emerged called the Abhidharma, which was the first in 300 BC, the first cataloging.
Of 51 emotional and mental states. In our lifetime, Kristen, one of the leading Buddhist writers, is a gentleman who passed away a couple of years ago, Tik Nathan. He was born in Vietnam, but he was educated and wrote 130 books in English. He studied and taught at Princeton and Columbia in New York. so he ultimately was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by none other than Martin Luther King. So if that helps you.
Kristen Wambach (30:15.342)
Mm-hmm.
doug johnston (30:16.638)
Place the leading Zen Buddhist of our time, Tiknat Han, acknowledged by certain presidents of the United States, but nominated for the Nobel by Martin Luther King himself. Here are his quotes about the importance of speaking your emotions. Recognize, this is from Tik Nathan. Recognize and acknowledge the presence of your feelings. Don't fight them or drive them out of their out of your mind. Don't fight them or drive them out of your mind. Call them by their names.
He didn't say silently muse over them. He said call them by their names. So there you have it. Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism, which cover much of the earth between those four traditions, all saying the same thing. The word is not just a describer of reality, it is the creator of reality. What a powerful thought.
Words. Words are the scientific community says that's how we solve our problems. The faith based communities, I've just given you four, all say the same thing. Speaking what's in your mind out loud is very helpful and therapeutic.
Kristen Wambach (31:26.35)
I'm going to put a personal testimony with this and then something that the Holy Spirit just said to me while you were speaking. So on my journey, I was raised with three brothers, and I'm a parent of four sons. So I, for years and years and years, when it came to emotions, I would tell myself, Kristen, just suck it up.
Because I was in an environment with a high testosterone and it was for me to overcome. That's just what I so I buried those. At one point in my life, Holy Spirit said, don't do that anymore. Don't say that. Say that to yourself. Because if I hide my feeling, my emotion, then Holy Spirit is unable to be the comforter for me.
Now here's here's also what he said to me. He says, mountains won't move unless you speak to them.


Part 2: Full Transcript with Timestamps & Speaker Namesdoug johnston (32:38.782)
I love that. Thank you. And and if I may share a personal overlap, I I am the youngest of four boys, and I was told in in friendly humorous terms by my older brothers, when we want your permission, we when we want your opinion, we'll ask for it. And if you're injured, unless you have a bone sticking through your skin, you're faking it. I mean that that was the the ethic and environment of me being the youngest of four boys in a rough and tumble home. So I was taught.
Kristen Wambach (32:45.762)
Okay.
Kristen Wambach (33:01.972)
Yes!
doug johnston (33:06.568)
Keep your mouth shut. Nobody wants to hear what you have to say. You're the youngest. It took me a long time to understand that speaking up and speaking out was really my salvation. And it all started with my daughter asking me about depression at dinner. And I was stunned and embarrassed. And I began the research that led to the book and to this conversation today. The Bible says, David said, cry out.
Kristen Wambach (33:33.58)
Yes.
doug johnston (33:33.68)
Open your heart, pour out your heart to the Lord. He doesn't say, keep it silent, keep it to yourself, does not say that.
Kristen Wambach (33:39.567)
No, no. And it and sometimes our our self-thinking or we feel like we're being strong and our faith is working if we we just we we we tap we we keep it pressed down. No, I'm not going to
To say that I'm not no faith comes by hearing. And unless you speak a word, then faith, even if it if it's something that's an intimate turmoil, unless you get it out there for the light to hear it, then faith can't go into your ear to hear it, which changes it and moves the mountain.
doug johnston (34:23.7)
It moves the needle, it moves the mountain, it moves your life. so I'm gonna the the final words of Jesus Christ, well documented, Father, my Father, why hast thou forsaken me? we we remember that from Christ in the crucifixion. But those very words came from Psalm twenty two, they came from the Old Testament. So Christ was repeating those in his final moment, but he was speaking out. He wasn't silently suffering.
Kristen Wambach (34:27.008)
Yes it did.
Kristen Wambach (34:35.672)
Uh-huh.
Kristen Wambach (34:44.44)
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Kristen Wambach (34:53.016)
Mm-hmm.
doug johnston (34:53.266)
Right? So pour out your heart to the Lord. Cry out, David, Christ, Old Testament, New Testament, Islam, Buddhism, they're all saying the same thing, and science, as I've documented and and and referenced earlier. Speak out what's in your head. Take it out of the silent inner soundtrack, put it into the world, you can deal with it, and presumably the Holy Spirit can be more accommodative.
Kristen Wambach (35:19.85)
Absolutely. Absolutely. This is so much fun. This is so much fun. I consider myself or the verbiage that I use for myself as a spiritual invest investigative journalist. So I'm also talking to an investigative journalist. I went, I just have so many questions. And we we allow curiosity. We've spoken our curiosity out.
And when you speak your curiosity and your question out, then the answers begin to surround you because you've released it. I also have a personal theory that when we speak it, when we hear it, so we're using two different senses when we speak it, when we hear it, when we hear that inner conversation, as soon as we write it down, it becomes a record on the earth.
Because God talks about in Malachi that he has a book of remembrance. So as soon as we acknowledge the voice and write it down, it becomes a record on the earth, whether you put light on it because it's an issue of fear or whether it's a promise that God is bringing to pass in your life. When you write it down, that seals the conversation.
doug johnston (36:41.758)
So beautifully said. You can speak it, you can write it, but bring it forward into the physical universe. Yeah.
Kristen Wambach (36:47.412)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yes. Yes. And that's the reason why it it absolutely is.
doug johnston (36:51.282)
And it's very therapeutic to do that.
doug johnston (36:56.852)
Kristen, the number of times that I have following this said something out loud in my bedroom, at church, whatever, you know, walking along, walking the dog, and I've said out loud, and there is a there's a psychological phenomenon known as the laughter of recognition. When you speak it out, and particularly with respect to worries or or anxieties, and you go, Wow, I just said it. That's the dumbest thing I ever thought, right? But you laugh, and humor is the great solvent.
Kristen Wambach (37:25.122)
Yeah. Uh-huh.
doug johnston (37:26.94)
So when you speak it out or write it out, or both, you put it in the objective world so that you can look at it as a fact to look at rather than a sentence you're burdened by. You take it out of the silent, secret, inner voice and you put it out in the world, and then you can deal with it, and then you are more in charge. It's it's a subtle point, but a very, very important one, amply supported by both science and faith tradition.
Kristen Wambach (37:51.712)
It is.
Doug, for someone who is wrestling with an emotional state like anxiety, depression, how does understanding that emotion as a modifier, that's your really strong word though, how does that help us shift from the automatic, the fearful reactions to intentional grounded response?
doug johnston (38:20.628)
Thank you. Another wonderful question. Again, when you take it out of the silent inner soundtrack of your mind and you put it into the physical world by spoken word and also by written word, you take it out of being trapped in an emotion to looking at it objectively in a balanced way. And I want to be very careful with my use of words. There is a tiny bit of magic that happens when you do that.
Kristen Wambach (38:33.582)
Mm-hmm.
doug johnston (38:50.916)
Suddenly you are less troubled. And then you will find, my gosh, you know, that that problem is real. I'm not laughing at myself anymore. The problem I'm addressing is real, but you are now looking at it as a fact to deal with instead of a sentence you're that's being imposed on you. All right, so one of the favorite quotes, aphorisms that came out of the book was.
Make friends with your inner voice. Make friends with your emotions. emotions are tools, they are navigational devices. I'm going to be really careful about this. So, in the course of nine years, 8,000 hours, with me and my little dog curled at my feet, you know, night after night researching what the great minds of history have said about certain things. What emerged really clearly, Kristen, for me is.
Kristen Wambach (39:40.311)
Yeah.
doug johnston (39:49.311)
Then emotions do two things. Our emotional system does two things. Number one, it protects us. Touch a hot stove, you withdraw your hand. Hang around angry, aggressive people, you'll want to withdraw. We move away from things that are threatening or dangerous to us. So that's navigational principle number one. Our emotional system protects us. We move away from bad stuff. But our emotional system also
Kristen Wambach (39:57.583)
Mm-hmm.
Kristen Wambach (40:13.515)
Mm-hmm.
doug johnston (40:19.668)
Helps us navigate toward things that are helpful to us. Love, curiosity, interest, enthusiasm, excitement, wonder, zeal, joy. So job number one of your emotional system is to navigate away from bad stuff. Job number two is to navigate toward good stuff. Well, there it is. Job number one, job number two. Always job number one is first. Protect us. You can't advance your life unless you're safe, right?
Kristen Wambach (40:29.742)
Mm-hmm.
doug johnston (40:47.848)
But the moment you realize that emotions are navigational, we use the word navigational politely in general conversation. How did you navigate the scene with your boss? How are you going to navigate that tricky situation with your significant other? But emotions are how we are navigating. It's emotions that are the tools that give us that bit of navigation, and words are the landmarks.
To allow us to use our emotions as tools. The more precise the words. Here is the quote again from Lisa Feldman Barrett, the top no one-tenth or one percent scientist. The more finely grained your vocabulary, the more precisely your brain can construct and deal with emotions, right?
Kristen Wambach (41:28.226)
Mm-hmm.
doug johnston (41:39.431)
Adding words to your vocabulary. And the words might be single words, they might be terms, they might be street phrases, they might be the quotes of Albert Einstein. But when your heart recognizes that that the thoughts you're having were suddenly just echoed exactly by those words, you are much more in command. So I am not a psychologist, as clearly as I can state it, I am a professional researcher. But I have spent lots of hours in in
The care of therapists and psychologists. I say that freely because a good psychologist, a good therapist is worth their weight in gold. It is not at all uncommon for a new patient in a therapist chair to be asked by the therapist. Well, they might say, Doug, welcome. We're glad you're here. I'm glad you're here. Good to meet you. What seems to be troubling you? Or words like that.
Well, let's say that me, Doug, it's the first time in my psychologist's office or in my priest's office or in my rabbi's office or in my imam's office, right? It doesn't really matter. but it's a first time experience. And let's say I'm just a tiny bit reluctant to to address, you know, I'm not sure I'd really want to be there. I'm, you know, my wife, my significant other told me to come. Maybe a friend said, you know, why not give it a try? But I'm not entirely sure what's bugging me.
Kristen Wambach (42:43.159)
Mm-hmm.
doug johnston (43:05.02)
And so I just blurt out, well, Doctor, I I I you know, what's troubling me? My I I'm I'm I'm anxious, that's it. I blurt out the word anxious, right? Because that's the first word that popped into my head. Well, the therapist listening to Doug say I'm anxious, understands there's a clinical protocol for how to handle anxiety, and so makes a mental note. Well, Doug is anxious, that's anxiety, but Kristen.
Kristen Wambach (43:16.492)
Mm.
Kristen Wambach (43:20.258)
Mm-hmm.
doug johnston (43:34.793)
What if the real problem isn't anxiety? What if the real problem is I just blurted out the first word that came to mind because I wasn't sure of myself. What if the real problem is addiction? And I don't mean chemical addiction, drug addiction. You can be addicted to sports, you can be addicted to bubblegum. Addiction is is veering toward a substitute reality, right? What if the real problem is addiction? Well, addiction is a really different.
Therapy protocol than anxiety, right? Well, what the book does is it's arranged alphabetically. You can pick up the book and thumb through and go from addiction to anxiety to frustration to impatience to whatever. And you can read 20 quotes from thought leaders, all denominations, all faiths, traditions, genders, cultures. And let's say that you are reading silently in the presence of your therapist.
Kristen Wambach (44:05.784)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
doug johnston (44:33.564)
And you read number seven, a quote from it might be a therapist, it might be a scientist, it might be an artist, it might be anyone, and you go, That's it. That's exactly what the way I feel. Right there, those words, that phrase, that clause, that's it. Well, suddenly you are on track. The therapist gets it where you really are, you get it where you really are. You see the that you are not the only person to experience this. In fact, probably thousands of people have experienced it, but thought.
Kristen Wambach (44:44.268)
Yes. Mm-hmm.
Kristen Wambach (44:51.266)
Mm-hmm.
doug johnston (45:02.192)
Leaders, people who've experienced an emotion, are going to be most helpful to you in spotting what's really troubling you. And suddenly you and your therapist or rabbi or priest or imam, whoever, are making progress instead of being lost in question marks. So what the book does fundamentally is it helps you replace question marks with exclamation points.
Think about that. That's really true. And it's never been done before.
Kristen Wambach (45:29.9)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. So as you were you were sharing your insights and the stories, because I'm a seer, God opened up my spiritual eyes over 20 years ago. And I was seeing us as we were walking in our relationship with Jesus. And I was seeing us walking down the street with him, you know, as we would walk with a friend.
If we keep inside of ourselves what we're dealing with, what we're feeling, then we're not allowing them to be that friend. We need to learn how to communicate. When we to communicate our our our feelings, and even if we stumble over them, Holy Spirit helps us to put words to how we feel. If we go back.
to the the the language that God gave us in the Old Testament, I the Hebrew language is pictorial.
It has colors, it has sound, it has frequency, it has numbers, it has pictures. So it is literally alive and has all these different perceptions on how it puts together a word and how it says it.
doug johnston (47:03.804)
that all right so I I'm a Christian by birth and and and tradition my own I'm a lifelong Christian but to be as clear as I can be the book is non-denominational at least 30 different faith traditions are referenced by multiple multiple highly insightful quotes in in the book all right so in Judaism many in Judaism
Kristen Wambach (47:15.596)
Mm.
doug johnston (47:31.865)
Are reluctant to speak the name of God out loud.
Right. that's well known. So we might in the New Testament tradition we might be familiar with the word Jehovah, right, as another name for God. In in Judaism there are substitute names for for God, Adonai, and often Jehovah is abbreviated as J H V H or Y H V H simply using
Kristen Wambach (47:38.574)
Mm-hmm.
Kristen Wambach (47:48.152)
Mm-hmm.
Kristen Wambach (47:56.309)
Mm-hmm.
doug johnston (48:04.434)
four consonants to represent the name of God because the true name of God is so sacred, only the elect are allowed to pronounce it, to speak it out loud. All right. What you get there is a recognition in Judaism, among other faith traditions, about the importance of speaking certain things. The spoken word is incredibly powerful. so I'm echoing really what you got at but but with a slightly different
Kristen Wambach (48:06.542)
So
Kristen Wambach (48:10.764)
Yeah,
Kristen Wambach (48:31.982)
Yeah. And and as with a friend, we God gave us a text, which is absolutely wonderful. But remember the word is a person. It's it's living. So living means it is a frequency, it is a light, it is a sound.
doug johnston (48:34.633)
Viewpoint.
Kristen Wambach (49:00.146)
that consists of matter. And when we bring our words, when we bring our confessions, when we bring our reflections, our the things we cry over, the things we celebrate out, then again bringing them to the light, it brings it so that it actually starts moving the environment around us. Either way it can move it negatively.
doug johnston (49:25.276)
To go back, thank you. I love that, Kristen. I'm going to go back to, you know, we've been talking more theology in the last few moments, few minutes, but I'm going to go back to the so-called hard sciences and other areas of academia for a moment. So Niels Bohr, B-O-H-R, you may or may not know his name. He is a theoretical physicist. He was a colleague of Albert Einstein. Niels Bohr also won the Nobel Prize. So we're talking about.
Kristen Wambach (49:38.924)
Okay.
Kristen Wambach (49:49.282)
Hmm.
doug johnston (49:54.335)
Top drawer, right? Here is you might think that that a physicist, a theoretical physicist like Niels Bohr or Albert Einstein would think in terms of square root symbols and infinity symbols, right? They write that way, but but here is Niels Bohr's quote. What is it that we human beings ultimately depend upon? We depend upon our words. We are suspended in language. In the world of engineering,
Charles Kettering. You may be, Kristen, familiar with the Sloan Kettering Cancer Clinic in New York City, one of the top cancer clinics in the world. Charles Kettering was not a phys a physician. He was not a doctor. He was an engineer. He, in the course of his career at General Motors, he became the owner of 186 patents. So this is a man who can think and solve problems. Here is his wonderful quote about words.
A problem well stated is a problem half solved. What a beautiful, simple, plain English way of describing the importance of words. A problem well stated is a problem half-solved. Noam Chomsky, educated at MIT, taught also at Harvard. he is known as the father of modern linguistics. He's in his late 90s these days.
Here is his quote Language etches the grooves through which your thoughts must flow. Here is another name that you will recall from history William Shakespeare, the father of modern English literature. Four hundred years ago, William Shakespeare understood the importance of words from Hamlet, Act three, scene two. Suit the action to the word and the word to the actions.
Kristen Wambach (51:26.445)
Uh-huh.
doug johnston (51:43.693)
All 19 of these disciplines are saying the same things. We solve problems with words. Speak them out. Match the words to what you're feeling. Put words to your emotions. This is where you get calm and happy, putting words to your emotions. What a thought. And it's been out there, but nobody has really integrated it this way before.
Kristen Wambach (51:56.11)
Mm-hmm.
Kristen Wambach (52:10.414)
It's I I'm chuckling. I absolutely love quotes. My current most recent published book, which is How Good Is God. It started three years ago. My introduction, and the introduction had 23 quotes from famous football quotes. That I mean, and through the whole book are these quotes that because I'm addicted
to the movement to the movement. So I like the words, but my investigation is okay, we got this word. What do we do with it? How do we move the word? How do we move it? Put it into an action so it can become a story. Because when it becomes a story, it's the story that changes my life, but the story can be repeated and it becomes a testimony that we can say, do it again, Jesus.
doug johnston (53:11.08)
Love that. Love that. Putting motions to it. So I'm gonna I'm gonna add something that that you probably thought about, but it's worth mentioning right here, right now. We talk about motion in the physical world. Well, emotion is the energy of motion, emotion. Emotion is what brings about physical motion in the physical universe, right? So let's say that you might think.
Kristen Wambach (53:13.432)
Mm-hmm.
Kristen Wambach (53:23.019)
Mm-hmm.
Kristen Wambach (53:27.63)
I love that.
doug johnston (53:40.499)
Well, look, I can walk across the room and there's no emotional component to that. I'm just walking across the room. yes, there is. If you are a a person and you are moving, there is an emotional component to it. You are either walking across the room eagerly or hungrily or curiously, or there's some emotional component to it, or bored. You're walking bored across the room, or you're afraid to walk across the room.
Kristen Wambach (54:07.554)
Okay.
doug johnston (54:08.264)
There is an emotional component to every human physical motion. That's really important and it really ties into just what you said.
Kristen Wambach (54:19.886)
Doug, I am going to stretch the conversation just a little bit off of what you just laid on the table. The way that I taught myself, and Jesus taught me to see, so was using a threshold doorframe. So I'd stand in a room here, and I believed because we stepped through the veil, which is his torn flesh, I believe.
That that is what he gave us, the ability to step through the veil and see beyond, beyond. I taught myself by standing here in a room in my office, and here's the threshold, and I perceived my body, I perceived my emotions, I perceived this is what I feel like, and I could describe it at this point. Then I believed God that I stepped through the veil, I stepped through the threshold.
And then I measured myself. I go, how has it changed? What am I feeling? What does the room seem to be pinging like old submarine radar? What is it pinging? What energy is coming back to tell me what is in this realm that I just stepped into? That's so that was the same, the same little technique that you just said, but that's how I taught myself.
To see in the spirit.
doug johnston (55:50.738)
You you discovered it and now you're talking about it and and and look you're sharing it with other people, which is which is really the message. It's communicated.
Kristen Wambach (55:52.939)
Yeah, you know.
This is so much fun. So much fun.
doug johnston (56:06.74)
Our our brains thrive when we give it words that match what we feel. Our brain thrives when we give it words that match what we feel. And I'm going to expand upon that for a moment. Our this is per science, not theology at the moment. Our very consciousness and our emotional command expand with precise words. The words can be single words.
Kristen Wambach (56:20.28)
Mm-hmm.
doug johnston (56:33.064)
They can be street terms, they can be phrases, they can be quotes from other thought leaders before us. All right, so you may or may not know that William Shakespeare was the originator of emotional terms and phrases in the English language. You may or may not know that. All right. So there are, by some estimates, 1600 1700 emotional terms that he introduced into language. This is 400 years ago in the early 1600s, late 1500s, early 1600s.
Kristen Wambach (56:47.927)
I n I know that from your book.
doug johnston (57:02.184)
Shakespeare was the introducer. He might have written them himself. We're not sure. The history doesn't reflect whether he invented these terms himself or whether he simply incorporated them and introduced them in his plays. But here are some words and terms that Shakespeare used that are purely emotional, that are with us 400 years later. The term good riddance. Shakespeare originated that. The term in a pickle, he originated. All Greek to me about confusion.
Kristen Wambach (57:13.571)
Mm-hmm.
Kristen Wambach (57:24.214)
Ha ha.
doug johnston (57:32.031)
Cold blooded, wild goose chase, brave new world. And here are some single words. Those are just phrases I gave you. Here's some single words that William Shakespeare was the first to introduce in the English language. And you may doubt this, but it's true. You can you can prove it for yourself. He invented, introduced the word lonely. Think about that. He's the first person to ever write it, the word lonely.
He introduced the word eyeball to eyeball something. I mean, that's people use that term every day. Addiction. He is the first to introduce the word addiction into language. Critic, bedazzled, swagger. This is a man that that that understood the value of coherence between your heart and your head in introducing terms that 400 years later everybody in the English language uses every single day. How remarkable. How remarkable.
Kristen Wambach (58:23.639)
Yes.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
doug johnston (58:27.508)
So whether it's single words like lonely or eyeball or addiction or bedazzled or swagger, or whether it's phrases like dog greek to me or good riddance or wild goose chase, or whether it's quotes in his expanded plays and and and poetry, what resonates are precise words that reflect what we're thinking. And that's where happiness and calmness develop in life.
Kristen Wambach (58:36.352)
Yeah.
doug johnston (58:56.594)
Whether it's through prayer, spoken or written, or however you want to communicate it, but we're talking about speaking and writing it.
Matching the words in your head with words expressed is the ticket to calmness and happiness. Think about that.
Kristen Wambach (59:14.678)
Mm. Mm-hmm.
doug johnston (59:21.33)
It's wonderful. So you will be happier and calmer when you put better words to your emotions. It's that simple.
Kristen Wambach (59:25.326)
Mm-hmm. Yes, it is. This is just, this is so much fun. I'm enjoying this so much. Doug, how do people connect with you? How do they find your book and your work?
doug johnston (59:39.871)
Thank you. So choosing emotions, thinking with your head and acting with your heart. It's three hundred and seventy-six pages. It covers two hundred and seventy-two different emotions alphabetically. it's been called the the the best bathroom book in history. I say that with some humor. You can spend five minutes with it or an hour or two hours with it. You can pick up an emotion that's on your mind or a for a paper you're writing or you know, some issue that's surfaced in your life. the book is available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble.
and elsewhere Ingram Spark it's available in hardback, paperback, e version. Social media were at Choosing Emotions. The website is choosing emotions.com. it is a joy to read. There is plenty of humor in it. There are there are quotes from people you would never expect to to be quoted
That will make you laugh out loud. And if you're wondering, for example, Kristen, if if you're the first person to ever suffer, you would be amazed at what the quotes from people who have suffered reveal. there are laugh out loud moments, there are tear jerking moments. it is enlightening and informing, and it's an easy read. So here I am touting my own book, but you appreciate why.
Kristen Wambach (01:01:00.615)
Yes. And and I will put what he said about his book in a nutshell. It is extremely reflective. Meaning I I love the I have a paperback and it was gifted to me so beautifully, but that makes it a tangible feel when I have the text and the quotes. And I can I scribble. See, I have all these pictures of the hearts.
And I have some that I wrote light bulbs, drew little light bulbs. So it becomes a curiosity, investigation. How do I put this and make it active in my life so that I can feel it? I can communicate it. I can tell a story about it. I love it. It's great. Yes, yes. Now.
doug johnston (01:01:50.388)
Thank you so much.
Kristen Wambach (01:01:54.723)
For the listener that that needs that that that tangible place to start, you had mentioned that you wanted to share something.
doug johnston (01:02:04.828)
I think the call to action, we use that term as writers and and in life, the the call to action, the thing that you probably haven't heard before that you should hear is make friends with the voice in your head and make friends with your emotions. Emotions are your tools to navigate your life. those would be the thoughts. That would be the call to action. I think that's what I would like your your viewers, your audience to hear. Make friends with the voice in your head.
Kristen Wambach (01:02:07.425)
Mm-hmm.
doug johnston (01:02:33.874)
Make friends with your emotions.
Kristen Wambach (01:02:37.184)
Yes, that's excellent. Excellent. Thank you so much for honoring us. Thank you so much for your commitment to write this. There's so much freedom written in what you've collected, what you've expounded on. Thank you so much for your dedication. Thank you so much.
doug johnston (01:02:58.677)
What a what a joy. A a truly happy call. I I enjoyed every moment of it. Thank you for including me.

INTERACTIVE WATCHING PROMPTS FOR YOUTUBE LIVE "ASK"

When you join us for the YouTube LIVE broadcast, don’t just watch—participate with us in real time! Grab your coffee, open your heart, and drop your thoughts in the chat as we journey through these moments together. Welcome to "Ask," just to the right of the share button!
BREAKING THE SILENCE LOOP (~21:16): Tell us in the chat: Have you ever found yourself trapped in a secret inner soundtrack, replaying a worry over and over until it paralyzed you? Type "BRING IT TO THE LIGHT" in the comments as a bold declaration that you are pulling that fear out of the shadows, breaking the loop, and stepping into the peace of Jesus today!
NAME IT TO TAME IT (~24:12): In the comments, share what area of your inner world needs precise words and an audible release with the Lord today:
1️⃣ Repetitive anxiety, worry about the future, or daily agitation
2️⃣ Grief, depression, or feeling like you cannot envision tomorrow
3️⃣ Breaking the habit of emotional suppression so the Holy Spirit can comfort you.
Drop your number 1, 2, or 3 in the chat so our community can stand in agreement with you to call it by name, get it out in the open, and let God's peace take over!
SPEAKING TO YOUR MOUNTAIN (~32:38): Drop in the chat: What mountain or heavy obstacle in your life has been waiting for the sound of your voice?
​Type "I SPEAK TO THE MOUNTAIN" as we agree together that faith comes by hearing, and as you voice the truth, the atmosphere shifts, and that obstacle must move!

THE TWO-DOLLAR QUESTION: UNLOCKING THE OPERATING SYSTEM OF YOUR HEART.

The Myth of Silent Suffering

We have all been there, pacing the floor of our own minds while an endless loop of worry plays on repeat. It is that silent, grinding track where you replay an offense, stare down a catastrophic outcome at work, or wake up at 3:00 AM with your chest tight and your thoughts racing. For generations, many of us were handed an unwritten script: swallow it down, keep your chin up, and just suck it up.
Growing up in a home with three brothers and then raising four sons of my own, that was my default operating procedure. If an emotion felt uncomfortable, inconvenient, or weak, I stuffed it. I convinced myself that keeping quiet was a sign of endurance, maturity, and strong faith.
Then the Holy Spirit interrupted my internal narrative with a gentle, firm correction: Stop saying that to yourself. When you hide your pain, I cannot be your Comforter.

When you speak it out, particularly with respect to worries or anxieties... there is a psychological phenomenon known as the laughter of recognition. You say, 'Wow, I just said it—that's the dumbest thing I ever thought.' You laugh, and humor is the great solvent. If you can laugh at an emotion, it does not control you."
— D. Earl Johnston

CONNECT WITH DOUG JOHNSTON

Website Choosing Emotions by D. Earl Johnston

“Why do people act that way? How can I feel better?”
Understand you. Better. Start with putting words to your emotions.
Most people have words for only a fraction of what they really feel.
So they react instead of respond.
They manage instead of master.
This book gives you the specific words and phrases to change that.

Choosing Emotions is the most comprehensive consumer reference on emotions in the English language.

Endorsed by physicians, CEOs, Emmy-winning filmmakers, judges, and elite athletes, Choosing Emotions unites 272 emotions and 8,000+ insights from peak performers, artists, scientists, and philosophers who share their own experiences and help navigate the range of emotions.

D. Earl Johnston is a multi-field researcher and lexicographer. He spent nine years investigating new theories about emotions, distilling wisdom books through the latest news in health and science on emotions, and drawing insights from world-class voices in psychology, neuroscience, philosophy, and literature.

Here you will discover:

• The Operating System you didn't know you had — how emotions help you navigate every reaction, decision, and relationship in your life
• 272 everyday emotional states decoded - using real-world language and inner dialogue to get you oriented and moving forward in minutes
• The Gears of Life — how matching the right emotional response to the situation prevents costly self-sabotage in careers and relationships
• Words building confidence — how the adequacy of your emotional vocabulary directly determines the quality of your experiences
• How you can change your emotions - the Awareness-Belief-Repetition technique that deeply influences your subconscious and improves your 'default' emotional responses
• Your "Who's Who" Support Team — why drawing on a curated body of 1,800 deeply experienced voices across 2,500 years produces more reliable insights
• "Name it to tame it." — the clinically validated principle that having the words to name a specific emotion restores your control of both challenges and opportunities​

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A Dinner Table Game and a Nine-Year Quest

That single realization transformed my walk, and it was front and center during my conversation with researcher, author, and lexicographer D. Earl Johnston.
Doug’s journey into emotional literacy did not begin in an ivory tower; it started at his dinner table over an innocent family game called College Bowl. Whenever his then-fifteen-year-old daughter answered a question correctly about history, art, or science, Doug would slide a crisp two-dollar bill across the table. One evening, recovering from surgery and feeling the weight of the world, she looked at him and asked her own two-dollar question: "What do you know about depression?"
Doug, a veteran corporate investigator and legal researcher, realized he could only recite clinical definitions—what depression looked like on paper, not what it felt like in the soul. That fatherly quest to find honest language for his daughter launched an accidental, nine-year investigative pursuit. Digging through 3,000 years of recorded thought across science, literature, art, and more than thirty spiritual traditions, Doug discovered that roughly 25% of our everyday feelings are completely absent from modern psychology dictionaries.
The result of his work is Choosing Emotions: Thinking with Your Head and Acting with Your Heart, a landmark "Emotionary" defining 272 emotional states. When Doug submitted his completed manuscript to advanced artificial intelligence models, both Claude and ChatGPT confirmed what readers are now discovering: it is the most comprehensive reference on human emotion in the English language.

Make friends with your inner voice. Make friends with your emotions. Emotions are tools, they are navigational devices... Job number one of your emotional system is to navigate away from bad stuff; job number two is to navigate toward good stuff. At our best, we are choosing them and not merely reacting."
— D. Earl Johnston

Name It to Tame It: Science Meets the Light

What makes Doug’s work so deeply reflective is how it bridges the gap between hard science and biblical truth. In his research, nineteen separate academic disciplines—from neuroscience and linguistics to physics and engineering—agree on one foundational principle: the human mind solves problems in words.
Dr. Dan Siegel at UCLA captured this truth in five unforgettable words: Name it to tame it.
When an emotion stays trapped in the silent, looping soundtrack of your mind, you are submerged inside it. You become the storm. But the moment you speak that feeling out loud, something changes. Scientists call it self-distancing. By dragging the thought out of your head and putting sound into the physical room, your brain hears your own voice and evaluates the thought objectively. More often than not, what felt like a monster in the dark triggers the "laughter of recognition"—you hear how absurd the fear sounds in the light, and the lie dissolves.

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Why Mountains Only Move When You Speak

In the spiritual realm, the power of the spoken word is absolute. In Genesis, God did not merely contemplate light; He said, "Let there be light," and creation answered. In ancient Hebrew, the word Davar reveals that a spoken word is both a message and a tangible reality. In the New Testament, Jesus is revealed as the living Logos.
Faith does not operate in silent, suppressed isolation. Romans reminds us that faith comes by hearing. If you refuse to speak honest truth into the room, your own ears never hear it, and faith cannot rise to shift the atmosphere. Jesus never instructed us to quietly brood over our obstacles; in Mark 11:23, He commanded us to speak to the mountain. Mountains do not move because we hide behind them; they move when our voice releases truth into the light.

Your Internal Operating System

Your emotions are not a prison sentence or random storms to dread. As Doug maps out, they are navigational gears designed to steer you away from danger and propel you toward joy, connection, and life.
Stop stuffing your struggles in the dark. Take your thoughts off the secret reel, bring them before Jesus, and dare to name what you feel out loud. When you speak it, you give the Comforter room to heal your heart, align your internal operating system, and turn your question marks into exclamation points.

COACHING CHURCH ACTIVATIONS

1. Spot the Silent Loop
Identify one recurring worry, irritation, or fear currently playing in your head. Write it down exactly as it sounds—do not dress it up or edit it.
2. Name It to Tame It
Find a quiet space and read that exact thought out loud into the room. State the underlying emotion directly (e.g., "I am feeling anxious about my future" or "I am afraid of being rejected"). Listen to your own voice bring it into the physical realm.
3. The Laughter of Recognition & The Spoken Word
Notice the shift once the thought leaves your mind and enters the room. Acknowledge any absurdities in the fear and declare truth over it. Speak Mark 11:23 out loud directly to that obstacle: "I speak to this mountain. You do not have authority over my mind or my peace. Holy Spirit, I invite You into this place as my Comforter."

If I hide my feeling, my emotion, then Holy Spirit is unable to be the Comforter for me... And mountains won’t move unless you speak to them."
— Kristen Wambach

MEET THE AUTHOR & PODCASTER

Hey there! I am Kristen Wambach—author, keynote speaker, and host of the Interviewing Jesus Podcast.
At heart, I operate as a spiritual investigative journalist, dedicated to bridging the gap between heaven and earth with grounded, Monday-morning clarity. Whether sitting down with world-class thinkers or guiding individuals through transformational inner healing, my mission is to demystify the supernatural and equip you with practical tools to live Spiritually BRAVE.

Beyond the microphone and the page, I bring decades of experience as a trusted systems architecture consultant. In that space, I specialize in dissecting complex environments, diagnosing internal friction, and designing high-level functional frameworks that turn chaotic processes into seamless, sustainable execution. That background directly informs how I approach spiritual growth and inner alignment: treating your mind, heart, and spirit not as random storms to endure, but as an integrated operating system designed by God to thrive.
When we apply intentional design to our spiritual lives—bringing hidden struggles into the light and establishing solid structural habits—the atmosphere shifts, clarity takes over, and lasting freedom begins.
I am so glad you pulled up a chair to the table. Let’s dive in together!

FINAL SUMMARY AND CALL TO ACTION

You do not have to remain trapped inside an endless soundtrack of worry, overthinking, or unspoken pain. As this conversation reveals, our brains and spirits thrive when we give precise, honest words to what we feel. When you stop stuffing down your struggles and dare to speak them aloud, the recursive loops break, fear loses its grip, and the Holy Spirit is given full room to comfort, guide, and restore your heart. Your emotions are not a life sentence; they are divine navigational tools pointing you directly toward clarity, peace, and purposeful movement.
Take your thoughts off the secret loop and bring them into the light today. Grab your copy of Choosing Emotions: Thinking with Your Head and Acting with Your Heart by D. Earl Johnston at choosingemotions.com. Then, take a brave step forward: name what is troubling you, speak directly to the mountain in front of you, and watch the atmosphere begin to shift.

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