Alyssa Luboff, PhD

I often hear people diminish their own suffering with phrases like: It’s just first-world problems. I have it so much easier than other people. It’s no big deal. I really have no right to complain. Sometimes we say these things because we’re trying to remind ourselves to be grateful for what we do have. Sometimes it’s because we’re ashamed of our own needs and of our own vulnerability. Sometimes it’s because we’re afraid to let ourselves feel what’s really going on.

Many of us were taught as children to hold in our anger and to hide it. We didn’t feel safe to embrace our emotions or to express our truths. Many of us believed – and still do – that our anger is bad and hurts people. So, we hold it in, often to protect those we love. This strategy becomes a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy. We hold in our anger as long as we can—like a balloon that we’re filling with more and more hot air—until it just can’t possibly hold any more.

The death of a loved one. The rupture of a relationship. The loss of a job. The failure of a project. The dismantling of a dream. The end of an era. There are many reasons that the heart breaks, that we feel an emptiness in the center of our chests as the world around us seems to cave in. Sometimes, it hits abruptly, out of nowhere, and other times, it crashes down on us only after a long period of foreboding. And yet the anatomy of a broken heart, regardless of the timing or