How to Feel Better: Tools for Dealing with Anger, Sadness, and Grief

We are wired to be happy.  We don’t want to feel bad. We are also taught at a young age that we aren’t supposed to feel sadness, anger, and grief.  

But negative emotions like stress and anxiety serve a purpose.  To help us survive.  

People feel uncomfortable with these emotions.  Which adds an extra layer to our suffering as humans.  I remember at a funeral a couple of years ago, people kept telling the wife and son of the person who had passed away not to cry and to be strong.

Let me be clear.  Not cry and strength are not synonymous.  They have zero connection.  You can cry and be strong.

Negative emotions and expressions of negative emotions are stigmatized in society.  When we are told not to cry, we are taught we aren’t supposed to cry we aren’t supposed to express our negative emotions.  Maybe even not feel them.  That’s why we buffer with negative coping strategies-overeating, overdrinking, over anything.

Disney fairy tales

What we are taught programmed at a young age living happily ever after

You may be thinking, ok I understand that, but what am I supposed to do about this?

What about life being 50% good and 50% bad…so as beautiful as life is?  It ebbs and flows.  There are hardships.

Example: 

My son will express sadness, or missing a friend.  I explain these are all normal feelings ok to cry express them and feel them.  Then we can move on.

Our resistance to negative emotions gives us an extra layer of grief on top of feeling the negative emotion.

Accepting negative emotions-becoming more acquainted with them.  They are vibrations in our bodies.  Feeling them where they are, characterizing them, sitting with them noticing them.  Get distance from them practicing mindfulness.  The more we familiarize ourselves with them, we empower ourselves and neutralize them.  We notice more and more, get familiar, and don’t treat the negative feelings as an enemy, but perhaps a frenemy.  

Acknowledging we aren’t our own emotions.  We aren’t angry, we feel angry.  Not all of us are angry, a part of us is angry.  We don’t have to indulge in the all-consuming news of negative emotions.

We can 

Not having shame about them

De stigmatizing them

In my own life when I’ve needed to grieve, I might play a song that helps me to cry.  It’s cathartic and I feel better.  One time, I was beside myself in grief crying and while I was crying I reminded myself it was okay, the feeling will pass, and afterward I noted I cried for about 10 min which felt like forever but really wasn’t that long at all!

Our brain tends to put a certain spin on things.  We focus on the negative, probably as a survival mechanism to assess threats

Keeping this in mind we can begin to practice not giving space to thoughts that don’t serve us.  We can waste less energy that way.

Believe that we can handle it

Look to the past

We’ve felt so much anger sadness grief fear

Know it’s temporary…this too shall pass

Feel the negative emotion

Know it can’t kill you

Know you’re resilient.  You’ve felt bad feelings before much of your life.  You’ve survived and gone on to thrive.  

When we allow ourselves to feel negative emotions like anger, sadness, or grief we can move forward without buffering.

Not wanting to feel a certain way is never helpful.  But allowing ourselves the space and grace to feel it all…that is the hard work.  That is where the magic lies

Being at peace with all of the feel-good and bad is a key component of our best life.  Your best life isn’t one where you never feel sad.  It’s one that aligns with your values, and is filled with self-love where you feel it all.

Actionable tip:

Negative Narratives

Notice

Neutralize

New

Now I want to touch upon.  When something major happens or there is a major crisis.  

I’m talking about more catastrophic events.

Ie someone you care for has been in an accident or perhaps your child was harmed or someone died.

These are more extreme circumstances

The above may not work

So this is what you do instead

For me, massive action makes me feel powerful.  That is what I control.

It also allows me to be distracted from whatever emotion I may not want to feel at the given moment.

I will feel the emotion later.

Taking action is a way of buffering an emotion

But sometimes we need time before we are ready to sit with certain emotions and processes.

For me action works…for you, it might be something else that keeps your brain able to cope.

Life has ups and downs as we all know. And as much as we want to be happy, we can certainly embrace that when bad things happen…nothing has gone wrong.  This is how it was supposed to be and we are moving through it.  Life presents grief in various forms and accepting that fact makes it easier.

If you are feeling stuck are a professional mom with the seemingly perfect life but you’re silently suffering on the inside, in survival mode and you’ve tried self-help, self-care, therapy, spinning on your Peloton® and feel like this isn’t helping you get you to where you want to be and peace, freedom, confidence seem unattainable, book a call to chat with me to realize that it’s not.  That thriving is possible for you even if it seems like it’s not.  Priancanaikmdcoaching.as.me