I was recently listening to a Mel Robbins podcast episode with Dr Marc Brackett, where they talked about emotions, emotional regulation, and the impact our emotions have on us- how they drive our attention, our learning, our judgement and the way we respond to what is happening around us.
One thought stayed with me:
Little emotions can become much bigger emotions if they are not dealt with.
It made me think about one of my recent coaching sessions.
A client came back to me after some time. After multiple miscarriages and failed IVF cycles, she finally became pregnant, and this time everything has been going well.
But emotionally, it hasn’t been easy.
She has been experiencing a lot of worry and anxiety. She has struggled to connect with the pregnancy because part of her is afraid that if she gets too excited, too hopeful or too attached, she will somehow jinx it.
After everything she has been through, allowing herself to believe that things might actually be okay feels frightening.
A simple reflection came up during the session:
“I should have talked to somebody after my miscarriages. The load of that was big. I went through a lot.”
Not talking about what happened didn’t help her recover more quickly. Silence didn’t mean it hurt less. Pretending that nothing happened didn’t make it hurt less either.
When we don’t give ourselves space to acknowledge what happened, the emotions don’t disappear. Very often, we simply learn how to carry them. But silence can take the space where an open conversation should have been.
Instead of talking about how we are really feeling, we hide our true emotions. Sometimes we even internalise them. We try to fit our emotions into what feels acceptable to the people around us, hiding how we are truly feeling because we don’t want to make other people uncomfortable, because we think we should be coping better, or because we simply don’t know how to talk about what happened.
And this is not only about miscarriage or pregnancy loss.
It can happen after bereavement, infertility, redundancy, relationship breakdown, burnout, disappointment or any difficult life experience.
Emotions don’t necessarily follow the timeline we would like them to follow. And when they don’t have space to be acknowledged, understood or expressed, they can start showing up somewhere else. They can affect the quality of our relationships with other people. They can affect our mental and physical health. They can affect our ability to concentrate, our attention, our motivation and the way we respond to everyday situations.
As Dr Brackett says, sadness that you experience, if not processed or understood, moves towards hopelessness and despair. That irritation that you feel can develop into anger and eventually rage.
The emotion we notice at the beginning may be much easier to understand and regulate than the emotion we are dealing with after weeks, months or sometimes years of pushing it away.
And perhaps emotional regulation doesn’t always mean trying to calm ourselves down or get rid of difficult emotions. Sometimes regulation starts much earlier. It starts with noticing them.
Talking doesn’t erase what happened. It doesn’t mean we will never feel sad, worried, angry or afraid again. And it doesn’t mean that every difficult experience requires therapy or coaching. But having a safe place where we don’t need to pretend can make a difference.
A place where we can say:
“That really hurt.”
“I’m still scared.”
“I’m angry about what happened.”
“I thought I was coping, but maybe I’m not.”
“I don’t know what I’m feeling yet.”
For someone who has experienced miscarriage or pregnancy loss, this can be particularly important because life often expects them to move forward very quickly.
In reality, if the pregnancy ends, the emotional experience doesn’t end with it. And when another pregnancy comes, all those previous experiences can come with it too.
Then hope may come together with fear. Excitement may come together with anxiety. Wanting to connect with the pregnancy may exist alongside the instinct to protect yourself from another possible loss.
There is space for all of those emotions. Because silence doesn’t mean it didn’t hurt. Emotions we don’t talk about don’t simply disappear.