It’s okay to feel sad.

It’s okay to feel angry.

It’s okay to be happy.

Emotions are yours to express, feel, and process in your own time.

There have been many times in my life where I was told to “buck it up” and not express how I felt. But bottling emotions up inside only adds pressure to a situation, and over time, the cork pops up out of the bottle.

Finding a healthy and constructive way to express emotions is a lifelong journey. Some families repress while others wear their emotions on their sleeves.

The balance between the two might be the sweet spot. I can’t say for certain because I’m not you.

How do you feel right now?

Do you do a daily check-in with how you’re feeling? Are there conversations that you’re dreading to have because you know that they’ll result in an argument or the blame game?

With alcoholic and dysfunctional behaviors swirling around in families, you never quite know what you’re going to get.

And that’s when the shame comes in.

We’ve grown up in dysfunctional families, and learning to solve conflict is not easy. Maybe you had a parent blow up at you because of something else that they were dealing with in their life, but you didn’t know that at the time. Or maybe it was easier for someone in your family to repress how they felt and put on a happy face.

There are many ways you may have taken on unhealthy responses to emotion. As an adult, it’s our responsibility to express our emotions healthily. What we learned and experience as a child probably won’t help us now.

Or worse, we’ll be replicating unhealthy family dynamics to our children.

The basics are essential: Acknowledge how you feel.

Put a name to the emotion(s). Write them down.

If you’re uncertain how to best handle the emotion you’re feeling, two good places to start are writing in a journal and speaking to a therapist.

When I’m in the midst of a big problem and emotions are swirling all around me, I first admit to myself how I’m feeling. Either I write the thoughts down or have an inner monologue with myself.

Then I run through and ask:

Is it true?

(Is it true that I’m feeling sad because of X? Or, am I taking my anger out on a friend when I’m really upset because of something that happened at work?)

I like to map my emotions to what’s going on in my life. I like to put my emotions in the right lane.

There's no point in taking anger out on someone else who did nothing to me.

And the same thing with trying to make someone feel guilty because I screwed up.

Emotions can be difficult to process and hard to let go. Grief could last months. But anger could come and go in hours.

The key is feeling yourself out and taking steps to express the emotion.

Step 1: Figure out what you’re feeling and why.