Video Transcription

Ask a therapist: How to cope with mixed emotions

Having mixed emotions might mean experiencing two or more emotions that are conflicting or opposing one another. Anytime there’s going to be some loss, grief, or a change in your life, you’re probably going to experience a whole range of emotions, and some mixed emotions surface. Sometimes we fall into this belief that we can only experience one emotion, and that emotion is the only true emotion at that time. But what we know in reality is that we can actually experience two emotions and truths at the same time.

When you get asked to go out with friends or when you get asked to do something, a part of you might want to go out, but then you always say, “A part of me wants to stay home.” That doesn’t mean that either of those experiences are any less valid or true than the other. They’re both just coexisting at the same time.

So, personal boundaries are anything that help us conserve our energy and anything that helps us feel that we are living aligned with what we value and what’s important to us at that time. A personal boundary can be sometimes saying no when we feel that a part of us really wants to stay home and recoup. Another personal boundary that we could put in place is a traffic light system. So, this is a color system that we can start to put on our calendars. This is separating different activities and things that we have on in life into a red, orange, or green color category.

Then, when we look across at our week or our month and we see that the majority of the things in our calendar are red (which are usually things that are taking a lot from us, taking a lot of our energy), maybe then we need to put in place some more green activities, which are quite nourishing and give us some energy back. This is a really good visual cue for us to sort of have a look at our day, our week, or our month and see: What is it looking like? Is it looking like so much in the red zone, or is there also green zone in there?

Experiencing mixed emotions is part of the human condition. It’s what makes us all human beings. It’s very valid, normal, and it’s a common experience. If you are starting to feel that some of those emotions are becoming overwhelming and impacting your day-to-day life, that’s when I would say that it may be time to talk to someone that you trust and that you feel safe with about how to process those emotions.

Video by ReachOut