Bottling bad feelings = an explosion of untruthiness - When I Grow Up

Bottling bad feelings = an explosion of untruthiness - When I Grow Up In speaking with my client (lets call her CeCe, because I love Beaches), we spoke at length about what I feel is a common obstacle for most women today: acknowledging our bad feelings. In 2008, were expected to be strong, independent, responsible, nurturing, always smiling/chipper/positive/bouncy. We end up making sure that everyone around us is taken care of, usually at the expense of our own self-care. When we have a bad feeling come up (anger, fear, frustration, et al) we try to make it go away as fast as we can. Quick! Get rid of it before anyone sees! But the outcome of pushing those feelings down or of not even acknowledging them to begin with is a permanent state of unease and falsity with a 0% chance of turning around the situation that has made you feel angry/frustrated/upset in the first place. At least if you acknowledge (I know I should find a synonym for acknowledge, but I just like that word so much!) that youre in a bad feeling, give it a name (anger? frustration? out of control?), and discover why youre feeling this feeling (My boss didnt acknowledge my hard work/I hate this stupid job/ Ive had spinach stuck in my teeth all day and nobody told me), you can then allow yourself to ride this ride until it comes to a complete stop. If its not the time or the place to ride the roller coaster (or if you dont meet the height requirement), then at least allow yourself to focus on your breathing for 30 seconds so you can get past the feeling reflect on it later. Either way, its going to allow you to discover what prompts the se feelings so you can figure out how to circumvent it while also allowing you to be true to yourself not bottle things up inside. How do you handle bad feelings?