A GOOD WAY
OF DEALING
WITH BAD
FEELINGS
Sooner or later it happens in the best of
relationships: some little thing catches us off
guard and rubs us the wrong way. Before we
know it, we find ourselves flooded with
inappropriate and, moreover, extremely
unpleasant emotional tides. These moments
are dangerous, because frequently these
emotional states of emergency lead us to say
or do things we regret soon after. More often
than not, we only realize it when we can’t take
them back. In real life, words spoken or deeds
done can not be retracted with a simple ctrl-Z
command. Of course, we can apologize, but in
most cases, this move will only work the first
or maximum the second time around. Yet how
can we deal appropriately with these
challenging emotional tides? And where do
they come from?
The Emotional Backpack
We all carry a certain amount of emotional
baggage around with us. I like to call this our
"emotional backpack". That’s where we store
experiences which were emotionally
overwhelming for us at the time. These can be
experiences which were traumatic. They can,
however, also be experiences which wouldn’t
really have been a problem for anyone else —
yet for us they were.
When an experience is emotionally
overwhelming, we need the support of other
people to cope with it. As children, we
instinctively looked for this support: we fled
into mommy’s arm or hide in daddy’s lap when
the other kids were being mean, our pet died or
some other terrible thing had happened. If
things went well, this was a place where we
could have a good cry or let off some steam
and soon enough everything was back in place.
When their caretakers are available to them in
this way, kids are able to process challenging
experiences. They are still painful and might
still be sad when they think back on them later
on, yet they are no longer emotionally
overwhelming.
When this kind of loving attention is missing,
the experience goes into our emotional
backpack, where it then waits for an
opportunity to discharge. In theory, this is a
good thing because if we carry emotional
baggage around with us for too long, sooner or
later we become sick, unhappy or both.
Unfortunately, these stored feelings tend to
discharge in ways that are strong and
frequently also hurtful — usually with exactly
the people we love the most.