Blog Post #12: Managing Strong Feelings Pt 2

In the last post we talked about dealing with strong feelings especially feelings of anger and the reality that there is a lot in this world to be angry about and have strong feelings about. We discussed the physical expression of anger, in particular by doing something positive with these feelings such as expressing them through exercise, punching a pillow or bag and that this is much better to do than allowing them to come out sideways by getting into arguments with colleagues or our partner. Feelings are messy and they tend to confuse our thinking. They may at times prevent us from thinking logically about the situation that we're confronting. This is why it is critical to be able to admit that they exist and to deal with them in a productive way. But remember that anger usually has a lot of energy in it that can be used in a positive way.

Previously we have talked about some of the complex emotions that are involved in grieving whether it is grieving the loss of someone or something in your life. It may be something concrete like a specific person or activity such as a job or maybe something more amorphous and vague such as a feeling of loss related to the changes in our world that we don't like and perhaps do not know how to cope with.

There is usually a combination of emotions in grief. Anger is one of these. We may be angry with the person who has died or left us for another person. It is a bit more complicated and difficulty to deal with if it involves someone who is deceased. But again acknowledging the anger is important in being able to talk and admit that it exists is critical to being able to discharge and express it. Grief also involves sadness. As President Biden has discussed the feeling may be that there is a dark hole now in our life and that there is no way to fill it. But to go on and move forward we must admit that these feelings exist and we must find ways to fill the dark hole. We may never flll it completely, especially if it is the loss of a child. But we need to try. We need to discharge these feelings as well as talk about them. Allowing ourselves to cry may be a good thing especially being able to cry with someone else who has experienced or is experiencing a loss. We may find ourselves, as the expression goes, “crying at the drop of a hat.” We may cry about a newscast or an old movie. This can be a good thing. At some point though we need to stop crying and we may need some extra help with that. This is where professionals, like myself, become involved.

Sometimes we don't allow ourselves to grieve when we should and months after a significant loss in our life we find ourselves quite depressed and confused as to why we are feeling this way. Clinically it is known as unresolved grief and what we need to do at that point is to get some help with resolving it and letting go of the past. There is nothing wrong with asking for help and nothing wrong with taking time to grieve the loss in our life. Better to do it now than later. Again the key to all of this is being able to admit that these feelings exist in being able to allow ourselves to find ways of expressing them and discharging them.

Ron Breazeale, PhD