Pushkin

Sometimes the realization that you need to reset your relationship with your feelings comes from some minor or everyday event

Like losing your temper in the parking lot while out grocery shopping

But many of us have experienced a bigger life change event that causes us to rethink how to deal with our emotions

In the last episode, we heard from the Harvard psychologist Susan David, who realized she needed to listen to her negative feelings after the death of her father

I felt so untethered from myself and so untethered in this experience of grief

And I started to respond to that as so many people do when they experience an emotional pain

Especially unprocessed emotional pain, which is to for me that took the form of binging and purging

Refusing to accept the full way to my grief

In this season of the Happiness Lab, we're going to tackle a whole range of uncomfortable, painful emotions

And we'll give you strategies to learn from these feelings and respond to them in ways that will make you happier

But I wanted to start with the emotion that caused Susan so much pain

The one that prompted her to suppress her feelings because they hurt so badly

Grief

We live in a kind of age of what I don't think about, what I don't talk about, isn't going to hurt me

I'll just turn away

And then when you are grieving and you feel like this grief often feels like fear

And you have all of these competing feelings of angry and sad and confused and lost

And all of that at the same time, you think you're somehow doing it wrong

This is Psychotherapist Julia Samuel

Julia is the author of two best-selling books about grief, grief works, and this too shall pass

With all the difficult feelings that Julia has found can come twisted up with grief

...