The “affect exhaustion” epidemic rampaging through society today is rooted in poor gatekeeping between our internal (emotional) and external worlds, which is essential to ameliorating the impact of negative emotions, ideas, and relationships on our psyche. The author attempts in this book to help readers become better “gatekeepers” via a rational, step-by-step process starting from awareness and causal understanding and ending with practices tailored to dispel mental internal friction. The author, who has a distinctly Eastern take on the factors contributing to this friction, promotes the importance of “balance, temperance, and self-control”.
Today’s social media environment drives participants to engage in ever greater levels of both self-exposure and interference in others’ affairs. Thus, setting boundaries goes beyond reestablishing the ability to protect oneself to using one’s personal space to express noncompliance with the present social system. Although not delving into the deep social structures associated with affect exhaustion, the author affixes an appropriate name to an ever-present threat facing our physical and mental health as well as maps out a self-help approach to easing today’s emotional self-torture epidemic. This book effectively shows the way forward to readers lost in emotional turmoil and provides the wherewithal to regain peace of mind.