Who benefits, and who loses, when emotions are described in particular ways? How can metaphors such as “hold on” and “let go” affect people’s emotional experiences? Banned Emotions draws on the latest research in neuroscience and psychology to challenge popular ideas about emotions that should supposedly be suppressed. This interdisciplinary book breaks taboos by exploring emotions in which people are said to “indulge”: self-pity, prolonged crying, chronic anger, grudge-bearing, bitterness, and spite. By focusing on metaphors for these emotions in classic novels, self-help books, and popular films, Banned Emotions exposes their cultural and religious roots. Examining works by Dante, Dickens, Dostoevsky, Kafka, Forster, and Woolf in parallel with Bridesmaids, Fatal Attraction, and Who Moved My Cheese?, Banned Emotions reveals patterns in the ways emotions are represented that can make people so ashamed of feelings, they may stifle emotions that they need to work through. By analyzing the ways that physiology and culture combine in emotion metaphors, Banned Emotions shows that emotion regulation is a political as well as a biological issue. Banned Emotions considers the emotions of women abandoned by their partners and asks whether the psychological “attachment” metaphor is the best way to describe human relationships. Recent studies of emotion regulation indicate that reappraisal works better than suppression, which over time can damage a person’s health. Socially discouraged emotions such as self-pity emerge from lived experiences, often the experiences of people who hold less social power. Emotion metaphors like “move on” deflect attention from the social problems that have inspired emotions to the individuals who feel them—people who need to think about their emotions and their causes in the world.