Managing your emotions so they don’t manage you

Ethan Kross’s grandmother, Dora Kremin, survived the horrors of the Holocaust by staying one step ahead of the Nazis, finding refuge in the bitter cold forest, begging for shelter from strangers and hiding from militia intent on killing Jews.

After the war, Kremin and her family eventually moved to Brooklyn where she was like a second mom to her grandson. Kross writes in his new book, Shift, that when he used to ask her why she never talked with him about the war, she always replied, “Darling don’t ask why!”

Ethan Kross is a psychologist who has made asking “why” the centerpiece of his professional life. He’s the director of the Emotion and Self-Control Laboratory at the University of Michigan. In his new book, he argues that emotions are neither good nor bad. They are information that operates like our immune system, alerting us to danger and helping us make decisions about how to navigate the world.