Have you heard of a social battery? A limit people may have for socialization in a single day, week, month, etc. Once the battery has been depleted, you have no more energy for anything else.
It feels like after grief, you have a battery for every emotion, even happiness. You can only handle so much of that emotion in a day.
Even when a day has been a happy day- you might be sad by the end of the day.
Sometimes happiness can come with guilt. The thought of “I cannot be happy right now, it’s not okay to be happy right now,” comes into my brain. The thought that "I could be enjoying this moment or day with the one I lost." Or you finally just reach the point where you have handled all you can handle in a day, whether it is people, a feeling, etc.
-
There is a saying that a lot of parents use for their kids, explaining that they have “big feelings” or “big emotions.” Well, adults have those big feelings and big emotions and sometimes they are too big. Sometimes adults were not trained on how to handle those big feelings and emotions.
-
I am not quite sure why people do not talk about this concept more, and why it sometimes takes a psychologist or someone working with mental health to talk about this concept with.
I want to thank my sister-in-law, Christina McKenzie, LCSW, for talking through this concept with me and helping me explain it. We both hope people can use this idea to explain their big emotions and big feelings to the people they want to share their big feelings with.