Although we can't control the fact sh*t happens, we can work on our own response to it, says psychotherapist Kyle MacDonald.
"We can approach life like a lifelong learning process where we can keep being open and flexible and doing what works as life throws things at us," he tells Kathryn Ryan.
Listen to the interview
Photo: Supplied
Kyle MacDonald writes a mental health column for the NZ Herald and co-hosts NewstalkZB's award-winning radio show The Nutters Club. He is the author of Sh*t Happens: Lessons for dealing with life's ups & downs.
When people hit a rough patch in life, they'll often say 'What good is talking gonna do?' but language is a powerful way to start recognising, accepting and validating distressing emotions, MacDonald says.
"We need other people, unavoidably, to actually help us manage our day-to-day emotional experiences, and often understand and particularly the blind spots, the bits that we might be struggling to see clearly in our own behavior or thoughts and feelings."
Many of us grew up without learning how to describe our emotional experiences in words, he says.
"Generally, people who struggle with emotional distress tend to struggle to be able to wind that volume knob on their emotions down.
"Being able to describe an emotion with words often can be enough to start that process of regulation and winding the experience down."
It can be helpful to describe emotions to yourself in writing or to other people, McDonald says, as safe relationships are the most useful tool for managing our emotional world.
"People are the most useful thing when it comes to emotion regulation, but they can also be the most damaging thing when we talk about people's childhood experiences. Often it's that trauma in [historic] relationships that is actually what they're really struggling with."
People are often unaware of the lessons they learned in childhood about how to respond in relationships and what to expect from others, he says.
"The environment we grew up in the environment that we grow in shapes us, it shapes what we know about our emotional world. And it shapes what we expect of relationships, and it shapes how we respond to ourselves internally when it comes to those emotions.
"Often, we don't have a clear understanding of the way in which our childhood shaped us, particularly if there's not really big, obvious traumas that we can draw a circle around and that everyone would agree was trauma."
Often a person's need for psychological separation from a family member will land them in therapy, he says.
"They're trying to figure out how to have a relationship with a parent that continues to be stuck in a way of being that can be quite hurtful or not understanding. And getting to the point where you set some boundaries and some limits where that relationship is really hard because of that attachment relationship, right? We're hardwired to be attached to families and parents, even if they're harmful … Putting ourselves first and often grieving the loss of the possibility of change is really important for those family relationships."
Forgiving someone who's hurt you in the past might be something a person needs to do for their own peace of mind but isn't essential for healing, MacDonald says. Finding a way to be more compassionate towards ourselves is much more important than forgiving other people.
"When trauma or abuse has happened, I don't believe that we need to forgive anybody other than ourselves."
Grieving the loss of another person is one of the most painful human experiences but also very natural, MacDonald says.
"If anyone's out there and they're experiencing grief, what I would say is it gets easier over time. And what makes it easier is actually allowing the feelings to come and go and to find ways to honor the value of the experience. Find places where it's okay to talk about it. And if you're someone who's listening, be okay with someone needing to talk about it potentially for quite a long time. Particularly people who've lost children, they just need to talk about that person. And it can feel uncomfortable or you can feel like it's not healthy because it feels like it's gone on and on and on but it's so important to them."
To help process distressing emotions, exercise can be helpful, he says, and also breathing techniques of which there are many to try.
"This is not fixing the problem. But it can certainly start that process of regulating and helping to manage some questions."
Where to get help:
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The National Network of Family Violence Services NZ has information on specialist family violence agencies.