Ed Daube,Ph.D., The Emotions Doctor

Author, blogger, podcast guest

I retired after a 32 year career as a Senior Psychologist-Supervisor with the California Youth Authority.

During my career, I was responsible for treating incarcerated young women all of whom had multiple abuse histories and had committed serious crimes in California. These young women "avoided' their emotions by hurting themselves or others.

In addition, I was charged with training emotionally jaded correctional staff who tended to avoid their own emotions and the emotions of the young women because they viewed emotions as messy, hard to understand, and difficult to deal with.

In order to help both of these populations, I developed the Emotions as Tools Model because the incarcerated women understood the idea of TV remotes, sewing machines and cell phones as tools you needed to learn to master and the staff understood the concept of batons, handcuffs and cell phones as tools. Using the metaphor of emotions as tools enabled me to demystify emotions and explain where emotions come and the purpose they serve as well as offering strategies for both deploying one's own emotions and understanding the emotions of others as strategic tools to improve one's life and relationships.

When I retired, I realized that our culture does not teach us about emotions. In order to help address this deficit, I wrote two Amazon best selling books addressing in my first book the Emotions as Tools Model, what emotions are and their purpose, the emotions myths that exist, and the idea that all emotions are adaptive and can be mastered as strategic tools. In my second book, I addressed the emotion of anger specifically as this emotion can be very problematic for people, is highly misunderstood, and, when mastered, can be both very adaptive and beneficial.

In addition to my books, I continue to educate others with over 200+ entries on my blog (TheEmotionsDoctor.com) and my guest appearances on numerous podcasts.