Dr. Tracy Epperson

My son, who is a teenager, but despite that fairly emotionally healthy, told me last night that he had “anger issues”. the reason he said this is that he got mad.  He was in a bad mood, he was stressed, he had 1 thing after another pile up on him, and he got mad.  He did not punch a hole in the wall, he did not break anything, he did not say anything hateful to anyone, he just got really mad.  So, what he felt was, because he was really mad, when he did not want to be mad, he had “anger issues”.  To him, his anger was out of control.  And I see this all the time with my patients.  They often tell me “I have anger issues”.  They will also often say things like “I am an angry person” “I am depressed”.  And the 1st thing I want to point out here is, your feelings are not who you are.  So, what I mean by that is, when you say “I am depressed”, that gives you that identity.  You are saying I am a depressed person, that is who I am.  But that is not what you are, and that is not who you are.  You feel depressed.  You feel angry.  You feel anxious.  Feelings are transient, but too often we take on that identity and say “I am”, and it becomes who we are.  And we identify with that so strongly, the feeling does not leave.  So we feel that way consistently, instead of allowing ourselves to feel and experience the emotion, then letting it go.  The other thing I want to point out is that, we as a society, have decided that anger, sadness, anxiety, etc are “negative” emotions and we have labeled them bad.  Therefore, we believe that we should not feel these emotions.  And even worse, when we do feel these emotions, we take on that identity as we 10 to do which becomes “I am bad” and people begin to believe that there is something wrong with them because they are feeling these emotions.  Do not get me wrong, these emotions are not comfortable to feel, nobody wants to feel uncomfortable, but the emotions themselves are not inherently bad, and, in fact, it is important that we do feel these emotions.  They serve the purpose, and are part of human nature.  When you feel uncomfortable, this let you know that something is wrong and it needs to be fixed.  That uncomfortableness has served the purpose throughout history not just to motivate people to fix what is wrong, but in previous store at times when things went wrong, such as limited resources, depression actually served a beneficial purpose.  When people become depressed the like energy, so they lay around and do not do much.  This means they require less resources (which is good when there are many).  They sleep a lot, again conserving resources.  Many of the symptoms of depression such as loss of interest, decreased energy, increased sleep, psychomotor slowing, served the purpose of requiring less resources to support that person.  The symptoms, though uncomfortable, actually worked to the benefit of the previous dark society.  Now, the difference is, that in previous store days this period of depression was transient after a few weeks, when resources were more abundant, having time to bounce back from what ever calamity had befallen them, the depression would resolve.  The wooden lay in their cave to the point that they starve to death, after some time of allowing the resources to bounce back from whatever, they would then get up and return to living life again.  Today we have similar experiences when things go wrong in our lives, just like in pre historic x1 resources with limited, although today it is more likely that something went wrong in her job and we fear are resources are going to be limited we fear that money is not going to be there anymore, and we become depressed- we stop being as active is interested is involved.  This may be a transient depression in the initial phase of what ever disappointment has occurred, but too many times more problems developed.  The person experiencing the depression may try to squash it down, not allowing himself for herself to feel it.  We labile it as a problem.  “An anger problem”, a depression problem”.  But it is not a problem, it is not an issue.  It is a feeling and an important part of being human.  In the more you try to squash feelings the more powerful they become.  The only way to get through that feeling to get through that depression, is to allow yourself to feel it, experience it, and then let it go.  The more you fight against it, the strong grip becomes.  If you remember the Hydra from Greek mythology-every time you cut off 1 head, 2 more grew in its place, this is similar to our emotions.  By suppressing them, you are essentially cutting off that 1 head, so that even more grow in its place, until it feels completely out of control. So…. How do we deal with that? Well, like I said, first… you have to feel it. And a good way to start with that is to give it a name.  We are so used to squashing those “negative emotions” without even paying attention to what, exactly, it is that we are feeling, that we do not even know how to describe them. We say things like I do not feel good.  I feel bad.  Bad is not really of feeling.  Get more specific with it- start by giving in the name.  What is it that I am feeling? I feel depressed. Next, try to discern why- “I feel depressed because___”.  These are statements you could practice all day.  Just periodically check in with yourself and say I feel blank because blank.  That is the next step-make time to notice her feelings.  Remember, squash thing them gets the more power and do end up making herself even more uncomfortable.  So name them, notice them, and then next allow them to be, then allow them to leave.