When I was younger I was very intense; the world was an unfair and scary place and I knew all the ways to fix it if only someone would listen.  Everything was a cause and I was just so damn angry about absolutely everything; I didn’t know how to disagree with something without it needing to consume me; how to not take on every single one of the world’s problems as though it were my job to solve them.  If I could just be angry enough maybe it would make a difference.  I was all or nothing with everything and couldn’t enjoy anything as a result.

As I came out of my teens and joined the functioning world all I wanted was to not go back to how I felt as a teenager – “dark and twisty” as they put it in Grey’s Anatomy.  I wanted to be in the world with people, doing things instead of looking on from the outside…I didn’t want to be so damn angry all the damn time.  So somewhere along the way I became an optimist; my superpower became my ability to look on the bright side and find some sort of positive in almost any situation.  My youngest sister even made a game of it, that’s how good I got at finding a silver lining.  I would describe myself as “sometimes annoyingly optimistic” or joked that of course even my blood type was B+.

You might call this an over-correction.  I spent so many years of my life just absolutely miserable that I almost was treating it like I’d served my time and never wanted to feel bad again…so when something did upset me and even the silver lining couldn’t make me shake it off I felt like I was failing – I must need to practice my CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy – a form of therapy focused on reframing our dysfunctional thought patterns), maybe I need to meditate more or do more yoga…there must be something wrong if I can’t talk myself out of being upset.

But that’s the thing…some things SHOULD upset us.  The world is messy and in some ways very scary and disheartening.  People are human and flawed and sometimes those we love, or think we love, let us down and hurt us.  Sometimes we’re the ones to others down and hurt them and we feel shame and guilt about it.  I had a conversation with some girlfriends about a month ago and the word we landed on to describe the world right now is “heavy”…sometimes that weight, the heaviness of all the things happening that you just cannot control, is just a lot.  And it’s impossible not to have feelings about all of this – and having feelings that you just refuse to acknowledge is not the same as not getting angry or upset – it’s just denying your feelings so that they build up inside you and become resentment.

“Not everybody has to be happy all the time. That’s not mental health.  That’s crap.” (Also from Grey’s Anatomy.)

I am not a Care Bear, with one emotion labeled on my belly that I can shoot out into the universe.  I can’t always just hold hands with the person next to me and make it better.  Sometimes understanding something doesn’t make it easier to accept or not be angry about – last month I heard about a woman who lost her husband in a car accident; they have 3-year old twin girls and she is pregnant with triplets and now her husband is gone.  Sorry but that guts me.  I know that she will probably be OK and that the people who love them are rallying around them and that there is a Go Fund Me that has raised tens f thousands and that’s lovely…but a woman just lost her husband and those children lost their father and we should be sad about that.  Period. There is nothing wrong with sadness.

The question is what are we doing with it.  Being sad is normal and necessary. Feeling the sadness allows us to deal with it, to process it and to pass through it eventually.  Not allowing ourselves to be sad, ever, will result in not knowing how to process sadness when we can’t avoid it…because eventually SOMETHING is going to make us sad…or angry…or frustrated…or any one of the other plethora of unpleasant emotions we try to avoid.

In truth, I actually get frustrated very easily, if I’m trying to do too much at once (which is often) and drop the ball I almost instantly feel extremely mad and will berate myself – however, after years of practicing CBT, I then stop, close my eyes, take a deep breath and remind myself that I’m overreacting; that it isn’t worth rushing and that I need to slow down.  When I heard about this woman losing her husband I made sure to tell many of the people I love so much that I love them…instead of just wallowing in the sadness about how brutally unfair the world is sometimes.  Instead of just being sad, it’s a reminder to be grateful for what I have RIGHT NOW, and to remember that nothing is promised tomorrow…so either I can make the most of it, or avoid it and end up resentful and unable to enjoy my life at all.

Now, in no way am I saying that this is as easy to do as flipping a switch and suddenly being able to recognize when our feelings are out of proportion to a situation.  There is a steep learning curve here.  We can’t be positive all the time – that’s called toxic positivity.  Eventually we will feel like a failure because we can’t do it and we aren’t honoring that there are times when it is not just justified, but appropriate, to be upset.  But we also can’t let being upset consume us.

When I first started addressing my all-consuming emotions I was working with a counselor who had me complete a “Daily Record of Dysfunctional Thoughts” from the book Feeling Good by Dr. David D. Burns.  Since then I have also read and done many of the exercises from the book Mind Over Mood by Dr. Dennis Greenberger and Dr. Christine A. Padesky, and they provide a similar chart, called the 7 Column Thought Record, on their website. If you’re struggling with managing your emotions and moods, I highly recommend this book and completing the chart daily for a while.  Most of the time now, I can do the processing in my head; it’s become second nature to me to filter through my feelings and reactions and talk myself off the ledge when a feeling has gone from healthy to dysfunctional or out of proportion…but even still, 20 years after I started doing this, I sometimes have to sit down and write it out; there is just something about seeing words on paper that can bring to light things we aren’t wanting to see and even beyond that, sometimes the physical act of putting those words down, has a way of helping us let things go.

I want to be clear too that if you can, go to therapy.  Even if you think your problems aren’t that bad or ‘big enough’ or you feel awkward about it, all of us can benefit from talking to someone. Someone who doesn’t love us or already know how flawed we are, who doesn’t know our relatives and drama and isn’t going to automatically jump on the “you’re totally right, they’re an asshole” bandwagon when we vent to them about our spouse.  The caveat here is “if you can”.  One of the things that still makes me irrationally frustrated is the lack of funding and availability of resources for mental health services. It can be expensive, there are often many hoops to jump through to access services and wait lists can be lengthy.  I will be absolutely up front about that.  I’m not trying to discourage anyone from seeking help – I am saying it so that it isn’t a surprise.

If you cannot afford, do not qualify for, or are in what seems like a never-ending wait for services that doesn’t mean that you can’t get any help.  Reading books, like Mind Over Mood, which is used by many therapists in their sessions, is a great option and extremely helpful for a lot of people.  Many are available as audiobooks with the worksheets available online even. Do what you can. Use what you have.

Self-care isn’t always making ourselves feel better…sometimes it’s acknowledging that something happened that hurt us and allowing ourselves to feel how we feel about it.  Telling our brains that it’s ok to not be pumping us full of the happy chemicals that numb us from the pain. Sometimes it’s taking a minute to feel how we feel before channeling that energy towards something else. Self-care isn’t repressing all our unpleasant feelings – I thought that to be ‘better’ I needed to not ever be “dark and twisty” but really I just needed to learn how to not let it consume me. 

I still describe myself as an optimist.  I still find the silver lining where I can and try to stay upbeat.  I still try to make the best of things and if I can choose to go one way or the other I’ll go towards positivity.  But I also have days when I am mad at the world.  When it’s all too much.  When someone hurts me and I’m irrationally mad.  I still avoid some unpleasant emotions, sometimes to my detriment.  I wallow for a minute in the “lifes not fair” feelings that, I now see, we all get.  I just don’t stay there. 

“I go a little dark and twisty, but then I come back.” 

Get mad. Be sad. Vent your frustrations. Just come back.