Permission to Feel. Permission to Break.

When I came across Marc Brackett’s Permission to Feel, I paused. Not because the books tell the same story, but because the titles seemed to be having a conversation with one another. His book asks what happens when we finally give ourselves permission to recognize, understand, and express our emotions. My memoir, Permission to Break, asks a different question. What happens after years of believing we weren’t allowed to have them in the first place?

That distinction has stayed with me because I think it reflects two very different starting points. For many people, emotional intelligence begins with learning to identify emotions. We learn to notice what we’re feeling, understand why it matters, and respond in healthy ways. But for others, especially those shaped by trauma or careers built around service and survival, the journey often begins much earlier. Before we can identify our emotions, we have to believe it’s safe to have them.

I’ve spent much of my career in policing, working alongside people who make impossible decisions under extraordinary pressure. I’ve also spent years listening to survivors whose lives have been shaped by violence, loss, and adversity. One observation continues to surface: many people weren’t taught emotional intelligence. They were taught emotional endurance.

We learn to keep going. Stay strong. Don’t cry. Don’t let anyone see you struggle. Handle it. Move on. Those lessons can save our lives in moments of crisis. They help us function when there is no time to fall apart. But what helps us survive one season can quietly become the way we live every season. Over time, strength stops feeling like a choice and begins to feel like an obligation.

That is where I believe another conversation belongs. Emotional intelligence teaches us how to recognize, label, express, and regulate emotions. Trauma, however, changes our relationship with emotions altogether. Sometimes it teaches us that emotions are dangerous. Sometimes it teaches us that vulnerability comes with consequences. Sometimes it convinces us that survival depends on staying disconnected from ourselves.

If that’s true, then healing isn’t simply about learning emotional skills. It’s about reclaiming permission. Permission to acknowledge what we’ve buried. Permission to grieve what we’ve lost. Permission to soften after years of surviving. Permission to ask for help. Permission to rest. Permission to break.

This is one of the reasons I’m so passionate about trauma-informed leadership. Organizations often invest in emotional intelligence training, and I believe they should. But I also think we have to ask a deeper question: Have the people in those organizations ever been given permission to be fully human? Because someone who has spent years surviving may not need another lesson on emotional regulation. They may first need a leader, a mentor, a therapist, or a trusted friend who communicates something much simpler: You don’t have to carry this alone anymore.

Perhaps that is where emotional intelligence and healing finally meet. Not in choosing one over the other, but in recognizing that before many people can fully understand their emotions, they first need permission to reconnect with them. Maybe that’s the conversation we’ve been missing. And maybe that’s where real leadership begins.