Tara Bennett-Goleman and her husband Daniel Goleman form a kind of intellectual dream team-one almost exclusively preoccupied with emotions. In best-selling books like Emotional Intelligence and Social Intelligence, Daniel Goleman has laid out the cognitive science and theories behind our emotions and social interactions. In her work as a psychotherapist and in her best-selling book Emotional Alchemy, Bennett-Goleman has applied those theories to overcoming self-defeating habits of mind and improving our relationships. Now Bennett-Goleman has a new book called Mind Whispering: A New Map to Freedom from Self-Defeating Emotional Habits. In it, she builds on the theory described in Emotional Alchemy to apply mindfulness to overcoming the ingrained emotional habits that can hurt our relationships. I spoke with Bennett-Goleman and Goleman recently. Jill Suttie: What is mind whispering exactly? Tara Bennett-Goleman: Mind whispering is an integration of Eastern and Western psychologies, the neuroscience of habit change, and principles from horse whispering, creating a new map of the emotional mind. It draws on mindfulness, cognitive therapy, and Buddhist psychology to re-pattern self-defeating habits. Daniel Goleman: Mind whispering helps us to identify our modes of being, particularly the ones that are built around self-defeating habits. Unfortunately, many of us get stuck in those. The modes are on a spectrum-there's a self-defeating range, but then there's a positive, healthy range. The alternative to being either anxious or avoidant is to be secure, and the research shows that if we're in the secure base we're more open, empathic, generous, and compassionate. The secure mode helps us connect with others.