[On-screen title] Rashida Dungarwalla, Registered Psychologist

Having mixed emotions might be experiencing two or more emotions that are conflicting or opposing one another.

[On-screen title] Ask a therapist: How to cope with mixed emotions, with Rashida Rungarwalla

Any time there's going to be some loss or grief or a change in your life you're probably going to experience a whole range of emotions, and some mixed emotions surface.

[On-screen question] Why do mixed emotions feel so hard?

Sometimes we feel that we can only experience one emotion and that emotion is the only true emotion at that time. But what we know in reality is that we can actually experience two emotions and truths at the same time.

[On-screen question] Are mixed emotions okay?

When you get asked to go out with friends or when you get asked to do something, a part of you might want to go out but then a part of you wants to stay home. That doesn't mean either of those experience are any less valid or true than the other, they're both just coexisting at the same time.

[On-screen question] What can you do about these mixed emotions?

So personal boundaries are anything that can help us conserve our energy and anything that helps feel that we are living a life with what we value and what's important to us at that time.

A personal boundary can be sometimes saying 'no' when we feel that a part of us really wants to stay home and recoup.

Another personal boundary that we could put in place is a traffic light system. This is a colour system that we can start to put on our calendars and this is separating different activities, things that we have on in life, into a red, orange or green colour or category. 

And then when we look across at our week or month and we see that the majority of the things in our calendar are red, which are usually things that are taking a lot of our energy, maybe then we need to put in place some more green activities, which are quite nourishing and give us some energy back. This is a really good visual cue for us to have a look at our day, week or month and see what is it looking like - is it looking like so much in the red zone, or is there also green zone in there.

Experiencing mixed emotions is part of the humnan condition. It's what makes us all human beings, it's very valid, normal and it's a common experience.

If you are starting to feel that some of those emotions are becoming overwhelming, they're impacting your day to day life, that's when I would say that it may be time to talk to someone that you trust and that you feel safe with about how to process those emotions.

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