Alyssa Luboff, PhD

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.

There are times when life is really hard, when it feels like everything is falling apart, like things couldn’t possibly get any worse, until they do. How are you supposed to handle that? How are you supposed to even begin to make your way out of a mess like that? Start by asking yourself just this question: