Meta feelings: "I am frustrated that I am frustrated, which is making me more frustrated."

An hour after I published my last blog about how well I was managing my thoughts and feelings in the moments leading up to having guests over, I went from “I am the Queen of Zen” to crying on the bed, trying to self-soothe.

What transpired between those two moments?

It started when Brad fell asleep on the couch. We agreed that we were going to take a break from our to-do list from 3:00 to 4:00 and then resume our household duties. It was 3:53 p.m. when I heard him snoring.

Naturally, I was annoyed, but I have been reading “Atlas of the Heart” by Brene Brown, and she talks a lot about resentment. After decades of studying human emotion, Brene realized that she had classified “resentment” in the wrong “emotional family.” It does not belong to the anger family. It is function of envy.

If you are feeling resentment toward a person, you should try asking, “What do I need that I am afraid to ask for?” instead of “What is this person doing to piss me off?”

What did I need that I was afraid to ask for? I needed help continuing to prep for guests. I decided to take a bath, reset my emotions, and wake him at 5:00 p.m. to enlist his help. When I got out of the bath, he had already woken up, thank goodness. But that was not the situation that caused my emotional relapse.

Our guests were scheduled to arrive at 6:30 p.m., and we had already planned for them to bring over pizza. In addition, Brad and I decided we were going to make a charcuterie board for “grazing” throughout the night. I already had the entire board planned when Brad decided he wanted to prepare STEAK for the board. I said, “I thought we could do the turkey sausage and the ham we already have.” Disregarding me, he started digging through the freezer to find a piece of steak.

At this point, I start to feel anger.

I didn’t want to start bickering, so I went to the bedroom and sat on the bed. I then started experiencing “meta feelings,” which is a new term that I recently learned in a podcast, which I had not yet learned in therapy.

Put simply, meta feelings are the feelings we have ABOUT our feelings.

What do I mean by that? I was frustrated. But more than that, I was frustrated at myself for BEING frustrated, which, no surprise, was compounding my original frustration.

I was trying to quickly therapize myself and reframe my thoughts. I was asking questions like this:

“Why are you feeling frustration? Is frustration an accurate name for your current emotion?”

“Is this really about Brad and the steak, or is this about something else?”

“Why are you so easily frustrated, Lauren?”

Then, finally, I said to myself, “STOP. JUST STOP. You are ALLOWED to feel an emotion without trying to work through it. Just BE frustrated for two minutes without analyzing it or trying to change it. Your two minutes start now.”

So, I sat there. I sat there frustrated.

Then, I went out to the kitchen and announced, “I would like to name an emotion.”

Brad said, “Okay.”

I said, “I am frustrated. We have guests arriving in an hour, and the reason I wanted us to do a charcuterie board is because it’s easy to prepare. It doesn’t require any prep work or dishes. All the food is finger food. It frustrated me that an hour before guests arrived – guests who are already bringing the main entrée – you decided to make steak in a kitchen that I just cleaned. There are a dozen other things I would rather you focus on right now that aren’t making steak.”

He said, “Okay, why don’t I just make 1/3 of this steak, and once I put in in the sous vide, you can tell me what you’d like me to work on?”

I said, “Thank you. I want to reiterate that you did not frustrate me, but rather, that I am experiencing frustration. I am making this distinction in the language I choose to remind myself that I am in charge of my own emotions. I just wanted to name the emotion out loud to another human being, so that I could accept it and move on from it.”

Later that evening, about a half hour before the guests arrived, I said, “Brad, I would like to name another emotion.” I continued, “I am anxious. I know that Brooke is my best friend in the entire world and we text 24/7, but I have this irrational fear that we won’t have anything to talk about.”

Do you want to know what Brad said?

He said, “If that’s the case, we will just watch sports.”

He didn’t trivialize my anxiety. He didn’t say, “Oh my gosh, that is SO silly, Lauren. It’s Brooke!”

90%+ of the things I am anxious about never happen, including my best friend and I not having anything to talk about. I am certain Brad knew that that particular fear would not come to fruition in real life, but he also knew that he can’t always meet my emotion with logic (he learned that in couples therapy). So, he leaned into my anxiety, and he offered a rational solution to an irrational fear.

“We’ll just watch sports.”