THE WISDOM BEHIND EMOTION AND FEELING
This handbook takes you to the wisdom that can be discovered behind all your emotions and feelings. Not only through clear theoretical explanations, but also through practical examples, experience stories, and tips.
This book is available as a hardcover (1st edition, 2019) and an ebook (2nd revised edition, 2026).
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About The Wisdom Behind Emotion and Feeling
The Wisdom Behind Emotion and Feeling – Your Daily Life as a Mirror invites you to get to know yourself and your life better. It explains difficult human topics (such as dealing with fear, need for control, jealousy, anger, depression, loss, and trauma) in a fresh and understandable way.
One by one, the book unravels the different layers of human nature and clarifies the natural connection between them. Instincts, needs and desires, emotions, feelings, thoughts, and inspiration are all explained in a clear and accessible way.
The book offers support for dealing with intense emotions, feelings, thoughts, and pain in a natural and constructive way, making it suitable for both personal and professional use.
The Wisdom Behind Emotion and Feeling is a book for adults of all ages. Adolescents (16+) can read the book with the support of a parent or professional.
Blurb
How do you become more aware of who you are and what you need? Your daily life is full of information and mirrors to find out. Learning to allow and understand emotions and feelings leads to inner growth and a fulfilling life. Yet, you tend to run away from it or resist it.
This book explores the wisdom behind all your emotions and feelings through clear theoretical explanations, practical examples, experience stories, and tips.
The author shares her professional expertise and life story with the reader. Therefore, her belief in the power of openness, connection, and trust is palpable and convincing. The reflection questions she gives the reader after each chapter help to successfully complete the search for the wisdom behind emotion and feeling.
A Dutch edition of the book is also available, called ‘De wijsheid achter emotie en gevoel’.
“You feel most secure when you are able to take care of your seven basic needs on a daily basis.”
– Wendy van Mieghem
What’s inside
Needs, shortages, and desires
How do needs, shortages, and desires affect your daily life? Learn how to put them at the service of recovery and well-being in a constructive way?
Conditional and unconditional
About fear, the illusion of control, and making space.
Natural recovery
Read about natural recovery and the wisdom behind anger, lust, fear, despair, insecurity, and more.
The necessity of expression
How can constructively expressing yourself be a key to recovery?
Levels of consciousness
Thinking, feeling, and doing each have their own wisdom and consciousness.
Levels of humanness
Read about the natural connection between instincts, needs, emotions, feelings, thoughts, and inspiration. When do they work against each other? And when do they support each other in a constructive way?
Chapter 9
In previous chapters, you’ve read about the wisdom behind the basic emotions of anger, lust, and fear. You’ve also gained more insight into the illusion of control. The difference between natural control and forced control mainly lies in the conditionality found at the root of forced control. This chapter enables you to read more about conditionality and unconditionality. What’s the difference between the two? How can you recognize them? How do they feel? And what can they offer?
9.1 Conditionality
Conditionality means that you feel a need to experience influence in contact. You impose restrictions on yourself and others. Most of the time, this means that you start to suppress what is (unconditionally) present. You do not (yet) feel enough peace and trust within yourself to let things be. In contact with yourself and in contact with others. You do not (yet) dare to leap unconditionally. Often, you’re afraid to lose yourself when you allow unconditionality to breathe, afraid that things will not be fine. You feel uncomfortable, and you want the source of this feeling to go. So you push it away. This doesn’t mean that you’re finished. You simply create more time for yourself to learn to deal with it.
Chapters
Pages
Content
The 26 chapters of the handbook, The Wisdom Behind Emotion and Feeling, take you on an inner journey. Based on themes such as basic needs, (un)conditionality, natural recovery, the necessity of expression, and the meaning of madness, you, as a reader, will gain step-by-step insight into how you are currently dealing with your humanity. The experience stories, tips, and reflection questions help you see the wisdom behind your emotions and feelings and apply that wisdom to your daily work and life.
“Emotional entanglement is taking care of other people’s needs and feelings out of an inability to take care of your own.”
– Wendy van Mieghem
Book reviews The Wisdom Behind Emotion and Feeling
There are writers, and there are feelers who write! Wendy unquestionably belongs to the latter kind. What she puts on paper is not just text – it’s an encounter. Not with a book, but with yourself. With what lives beneath the surface, with what seeks a name, and with what quietly asks to be seen.
Her book ‘The Wisdom Behind Emotion and Feeling’ reads like a gentle mirror. No forced self-help, no lofty rambling, but a pure invitation: to slow down, to feel, and to be honest with yourself. She writes with clarity, without detours, and always with a warm tone that makes you, as a reader, breathe.
What makes Wendy special is her ability to make deep emotional intelligence tangible. She writes with expertise, but that knowledge never gets in the way. On the contrary, she carries that knowledge like a second skin, not as a pile of explanations. Everything is thoughtfully crafted – the words, the tone, even the design. Elegant without fuss. Functional without becoming boring.
As a coach, I don’t use her work as an addition but as an essential part of my guidance. The book acts as a quiet co-therapist: my clients feel seen through the exercises, invited by the questions, reassured by the tone. And THAT makes the difference.
Wendy writes with head and heart, but always in service of the reader. No ego on paper, but a gentle hand on your shoulder. For me, this book isn’t a workbook but a compass – for those brave enough to enter their own inner world.
Thank you, Wendy. For your sense of language, your humanity, and your professionalism. Your words work – not only on paper but in real lives.
Warm regards,
Wendy has written a very accessible and wonderful book. She has combined lived experience and wisdom to describe difficult topics in a very fresh and understandable way. If you want to learn more about yourself and your relationships, you will find answers here. Emotions and behavior are explained and pathways and options are shown in a very clear and transparent way.
I would recommend this book to anyone in management and leadership. You may read this book from cover to cover or pick up chapters and subjects as needed. Wendy has left you the choice to decide for yourself. A refreshing and wise book to keep close!”
The design is very welcoming and comforting. Wendy talks with the reader and not at them. She strikes the right cord in pulling the reader into one’s own story. Reading the book meant a lot to me. I heartily recommend this book to others
This book allows you to be your own emotions coach. It is well structured with easy to understand information and life examples. I think it’s brilliant!
I love the concept and the reflection questions of this book. The reflection questions are great for relating experience to the concepts. And seeing how I individually process things: what emotions I let myself feel and experience completely, and the ones I run away from often exacerbating the problems. The book is also helping me work through some grief and despair over a recent difficult situation in my life.
I used to think more in outcomes rather than in an emotional journey. This book made me realize that it is helpful to think about my own humanity. I recommend this book to people who are keen to learn about themselves; and about their needs. The language is clear, but the meanings can be complex. In order to digest the content and get maximum value out of it, I advice to read and reflect in small chunks. I’d love to read more.
This book is fantastic! It covers a great range of topics and the various exercises are well thought through and easy to follow. I really like the structure of the book and the way in which Wendy has approached it.
I really enjoyed reading this book. It is very informative and it offers good guidance.
The Wisdom Behind Emotion and Feeling is well written and majestically performed. If you’re keen on emotions, how they affect daily life, and how you can gain insight and thus control them, this is THE book for you.
“As soon as tension creeps into control, illusions arise.”
– Wendy van Mieghem
Guidance options
If you’re seeking personalized guidance, you’re welcome to book an individual session and join our online community! The online community offers a safe space for you to learn and connect with other intrinsically driven, people-oriented professionals who are pursuing personal growth. Still interested in more? Maybe the Sustainable Change Program can fulfill your needs.
You have to do the inner work yourself.
I am happy to support you where necessary.
Stay tuned
Hi, my name is Wendy van Mieghem. As a psychologist and sociologist, I am happy to support you in increasing and learning to apply your emotional intelligence. Aligning with your human nature and learning to care for it in a supportive and healing way helps you achieve more lasting, constructive behavioral change.
By getting to know yourself and others better, you can connect more deeply and with more nuance to what is needed. This way, step by step, you achieve the goal or result you long for sustainably and effectively. Both on a personal and professional level.
On my website, I share tips, insights, and tools that you can use right away. Sign up for my newsletter. I’d love to keep you informed!
Warm regards,
Wendy van Mieghem






