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

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 weekend
• Han's breakthrough: how advising a client led him to take his own advice about shame and guilt
• Alicia's 45-minute grief wheel — and why she no longer feels her dad's death the same way in her body
• What it means to practice the wheel "like bad first sex" and why that's the most honest description of growth we've heard
• Glenn and Phyllis share their own middle-of-the-night wheel moments — and what lonely really feels like when you go deep

Resources Mentioned:

Get the Core Emotion Wheel: www.connectioncodes.co/podcast

Work with a Connection Codes Coach: connectioncodes.co/coaches

Foundations Masterclass: connectioncodes.co/foundations

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