There is a particular kind of discomfort that comes with being angry.
Not just the anger itself.
The moment afterward, when you start wondering whether you’re allowed to be angry.
Maybe it wasn’t that serious.
Maybe they didn’t mean it that way.
Maybe you’re being too sensitive.
Maybe you should look at it from their perspective.
Maybe there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation.
And before you’ve even had a chance to feel the anger, you’ve started arguing it out of existence.
I’ve done this.
I think a lot of us have.
We are very good at moving quickly from I am angry to here is why I shouldn’t be.
Sometimes that’s useful.
Sometimes understanding the context really does change how we feel.
But sometimes I wonder what we’re missing when we rush past the feeling to get to the explanation.
Anger doesn’t need to be a verdict
I don’t think every feeling is a verdict.
Being angry doesn’t automatically mean someone else is wrong.
Being hurt doesn’t automatically mean someone has done something unforgivable.
Feeling resentful doesn’t necessarily mean a relationship needs to end.
A feeling can be information without being an instruction.
That distinction matters to me.
Because I don’t want to live in a world where every emotion has to become an action.
I don’t want anger to mean say something immediately.
I don’t want sadness to mean cancel everything and process.
I don’t want resentment to mean someone needs to pay attention to this right now.
Sometimes the feeling can simply be there.
I’m angry.
That’s it.
No courtroom.
No verdict.
No five-point argument explaining why the anger is justified.
Just the recognition that, for whatever reason, this is where I am right now.
We are often very eager to feel better
There are so many ways to leave a feeling before we’ve really been in it.
We distract ourselves.
We find something productive to do.
We call a friend.
We scroll.
We make a joke.
We look for the silver lining.
We tell ourselves someone else has it worse.
We try to understand why the person behaved the way they did.
We forgive before we’ve admitted we’re hurt.
We turn the whole thing into a lesson.
And sometimes those things are exactly what we need.
I’m not arguing for sitting in every unpleasant emotion indefinitely.
I’m not suggesting that feeling terrible is inherently virtuous.
But I think there’s something worth noticing about how quickly we sometimes reach for an exit.
Especially when the feeling is inconvenient.
Especially when the feeling doesn’t fit the person we want to believe we are.
I don’t want to be angry.
I don’t want to be resentful.
I don’t want to be jealous.
I don’t want to be disappointed.
I should be grateful.
So we try to make the feeling smaller.
Or prettier.
Or more reasonable.
Or useful.
Anything but simply there.
What if you didn’t need to do anything with it?
This is where wallowing gets interesting to me.
Because I don’t think wallowing has to mean indulging every feeling until it becomes your entire afternoon.
Sometimes it can be much simpler.
Something genuinely sucks.
And for a little while, you let yourself admit that it sucks.
You don’t look for the lesson.
You don’t force gratitude into the room.
You don’t tell yourself that everything happens for a reason.
You don’t immediately ask what you’re going to do about it.
You just let yourself be disappointed.
Or angry.
Or sad.
Or scared.
Or thoroughly, gloriously not okay about something that really isn’t okay.
And maybe you say something to yourself that feels almost embarrassingly obvious:
This hurt.
I’m angry.
I didn’t want this.
I really wish this had gone differently.
There is something strangely freeing about not requiring yourself to make the feeling useful.
Feelings don’t have to earn their keep
I think productivity culture has seeped into our emotional lives in some strange ways.
We want our grief to teach us something.
Our anger to motivate us.
Our sadness to deepen us.
Our mistakes to make us better.
Our difficult experiences to make us stronger.
And again, sometimes they do.
But what if they don’t?
What if you are just sad today?
What if you’re angry because something was unfair?
What if you’re disappointed because you wanted something and didn’t get it?
What if you don’t discover a beautiful insight hiding underneath the whole thing?
Does the feeling become wasted?
I don’t think so.
Not everything valuable has to produce something.
You don’t have to emerge from an afternoon of being miserable with a new personality and a five-year plan.
Sometimes you emerge having simply felt what you felt.
And perhaps that is enough.
There is a difference between feeling and feeding
I think this distinction matters, too.
Because when I talk about wallowing, I don’t mean rehearsing the same grievance for hours so that the anger gets bigger and bigger.
There is a difference between feeling a feeling and feeding it.
Feeling might sound like:
That really hurt.
I’m so angry.
I wish this hadn’t happened.
Feeding it might sound like:
And another thing.
And remember when they did this?
And you know what else I hate?
One can create space.
The other can sometimes create a spiral.
I don’t think we need a stopwatch to tell us which is which.
We can notice.
Am I actually feeling this?
Or:
Am I keeping myself angry because letting go feels harder?
And even that isn’t a moral judgment.
Sometimes we’re not ready to let go.
That’s information, too.
Maybe staying with a feeling changes our relationship to it
One of the things I like about allowing a feeling some room is that it doesn’t necessarily stay exactly the same.
Anger might soften into disappointment.
Disappointment might reveal grief.
Grief might simply become tiredness.
Or nothing changes at all.
Maybe you’re still angry tomorrow.
That’s okay.
The point isn’t to manipulate the feeling into becoming something more comfortable.
It’s to stop requiring yourself to perform comfort before you’re ready.
There is a difference between:
I need to feel better.
and
I can feel this.
The second one gives us somewhere to stand.
You can be in it without staying there
This is probably the part I most want to hold onto.
Because I don’t want wallowing to become another rigid rule.
Now I must feel my feelings properly.
Now I have to sit with this for exactly as long as necessary.
Now I can’t distract myself because that would mean I’m avoiding.
No.
Sometimes you genuinely don’t have the capacity to sit with something.
Sometimes dinner needs making.
Sometimes your child needs you.
Sometimes work needs doing.
Sometimes you need to watch something stupid for twenty minutes because you are exhausted.
You can take a break from a feeling.
You can come back to it.
You can feel it for five minutes and then decide you’ve had enough for today.
You can feel it again tomorrow.
You can have a good afternoon while still being angry about something.
None of this needs to become a performance.
Maybe permission is the useful part
Perhaps that’s what I mean when I say wallowing can be healthy.
Not that feeling bad is good.
Not that misery is meaningful.
Not that every emotion contains some profound truth waiting to be excavated.
Just that sometimes we need permission to not rush.
Permission to be angry before we’re reasonable.
Permission to be sad before we’re grateful.
Permission to be disappointed before we’re philosophical.
Permission to say:
This really sucks.
And not immediately follow it with:
But…
Maybe we don’t need the but yet.
Maybe we can just be here.
For a little while.
And when we’re ready, we can move.
Not because we finally made the feeling productive.
Not because we found the lesson.
Not because we proved we are emotionally healthy.
Just because eventually, there is somewhere else to go.
And perhaps having actually been where we were makes it a little easier to leave.
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