[waterbadger]

I’m sure you are trying to be helpful so I’m not trying to criticize you personally or devalue what you are sharing! More of a general gripe for me:

Anger and sadness are both very helpful, understandable and ok emotions. There is nothing wrong or dysfunctional about either of those feelings.

I think the cultural norm that certain emotions are “bad” and that we can “change” our emotions is extremely destructive for many people.

We can control (and our responsible for) our thoughts and actions.

I don’t think people can actually control their emotions however and making people feel ashamed or unhealthy because of their emotional reactions is unfair. This is actually one of the symptoms of abusive parent-child relationships that I think many people have unavoidably internalized.

A lot of people have experienced serious emotional trauma due to cultural norms and an unhealthy value system about how parents treat their children (as well as by being parented by traumatized people who have grown up in similar circumstances)

There are a lot of good books about it if you search for Complex PTSD. One that I think covers a lot of information holistically is “Healing Developmental Trauma” by Laurence Heller and Aline LaPierre

[M5x7wI3CmbEem10]

thank you for the recommendations.