Emotions aren’t a problem

So in the beginning of this chapter, the author is sharing a story that I'm sure many of us can relate to where she was angry at something her parents did as an adult.

She was angry that her mother had come to visit her and they had this really important time together.

But yet again, her mother had to be pulled away to go take care of her father.

And this was kind of a pattern where her father would pull attention and care away with his behavior with his emotions with his substance use and she felt really angry about it and her partner at the time said you're allowed to be angry and she was having this experience of wondering if being angry made her a bad daughter her parents were suffering too so she shouldn't be angry at them she shouldn't be upset at them But when she could observe that shame that came in that said, no, this is bad anger, you're not allowed to feel this, she was able to get a little space for the first time and feel, I'm allowed to feel angry and I'm not in trouble this time.

So we can see as she's sharing this story, an experience that many of us may have had before.

which is that anger makes us bad.

It makes us a bad girl or a bad person, a bad daughter, a bad partner.

That it's not fair to be upset at other people who are doing the best they can or who are also suffering.

And that makes our emotions bad or wrong or harmful to others.

And we know there are tens of thousands of ways that different learnings could go.

But many of us can relate to this feeling where an emotion comes in and then we shame ourselves for it.

And we know that shame, from my perspective, is more of a process than an emotion on its own.

And it's a process that comes in to put a lid on the pot.

So whatever emotion you feel shame around, if it's anger, if it's sadness, if it's loneliness, if it's longing or a desire or whatever it might be, that's a clue for you that shame is coming in to put a lid on the pot and say, no, no, no.

This emotion is either too much.

It's too dangerous for you to feel on your own.

It's going to take you under.

It's going to make other people mad at you.

It's going to make you not be good.

If you stop criticizing yourself, you'll never be good again.

If you're angry at someone else, you'll never have love, right? Like some of these stories that we learned, that's what we're always wanting to be curious about.

Because we know we can't just trick ourselves or, you know, cognitive behavior ourselves into being safe enough to feel anger or sadness or disappointment or grief.

We have to learn how to be with it.

And ideally, we would get these experiences as children, but many of us didn't because our own parents did not know how to be with emotions.

They were never taught.