1 week Ago By Miranda Levy
Feelings like anger and jealousy are difficult – but avoiding those emotions or trying to spin them into a positive can be just as harmful. Six months before Diana’s* marriage exploded in flames, her friend Vanessa* fell in love. “We were both in our mid-40s at the time,” says Diana, 57.
“Vanessa was desperate for me to meet her new man, but every time she set something up, I found an excuse not to go. I would tell her, I was too busy or too tired. But the truth was, I was jealous.
” Admitting that we’re jealous is something most of us struggle to own up to. Probably because jealousy is a classic example of so-called “ugly” feelings. Moya Sarner, a psychodynamic psychotherapist and the author of When I Grow Up: Conversations in Adults in Search of Adulthood, explains: “Dealing with something like jealousy can be very difficult, even if it’s obvious what you should do.
” In Sarner’s view, the fallout and the damage comes when people are not able to put their ugly emotions into words, and it affects their relationships in a negative way. There is a growing body of research that supports the idea that suppressing negative emotions can also affect your physical health. In 2013, the Journal of Psychosomatic Research published a study suggesting that emotional suppression may raise the risk of earlier death, including death from cancer.
And yet, we are often very bad at expressing ourselves. So how can we deal with difficult feelings so that they don’t backfire, harm our health and damage the way we relate to the important people in our lives? 1. Recognise, then name the emotion you are feeling.
