Tara Rama

Sister Emotions

Summary

• .Anger and sadness are often seen as opposing emotions but really they are related and go together.
• Reference book: The Language of Emotions by Karla McLaren.
• Anger is not getting what you want.
• Sadness is losing what you want.
• You can see the inherent loss in not getting what you want.
• Anger gives us a signal about it and when we process this emotion we can begin to see the loss.
• The loss can be an idea/way of doing something or a relationship.
  • We may realise that some of the anger we have at our children are about rules we’ve instilled that came from our upbringing.
  • We may decide (after understanding our anger and processing the emotion) that we want to let go of the beliefs from our childhood (our parents).
• Anger is about us falling or failing. Being upset about it.
• Sadness is about letting go of that failure and raising to the occasion to go after what we want.
• In sadness, we open up to the loss and regroup, evaluate the situation.
• When we effectively move through sadness we come up with another way of handling a situation or relationship.
• Toddlers teach us that the sequence of these emotions is anger, then sadness.
• We are often destabilised when the emotions are mixed and not processed and jumping from one to the other. This can lead to inconsistent behaviours.

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez 🇨🇦 on Unsplash