India, May 27 -- When I was around eight years old, my father had his first hospitalization due to his diabetes and what followed were many hospitalizations until I was 32 years old which is when he passed away. He had unmanaged diabetes, and it came with complications as the years progressed. Ever since I could remember, my anxiety was like a constant low-grade fever--so much a part of me and yet not too obvious to other. In 2013, when my dad passed away and in the years that followed, I recognized that I had never ever given myself permission to feel the grief or even articulated the anticipatory grief that I had felt. The child in me had feared that acknowledging the grief would mean bringing a bad omen or wishing that he were dead. After he passed away, I realized that none of this was true. I, however, also recognized that I had, in an inchoate way, given myself permission to feel anxiety and fear instead. This insight about separating my feelings and naming them saved me, and even in his death my father taught me how to live again. As a result of my own experiences, one of my favourite questions to ask clients in therapy is this: 'What is an emotion you allow yourself permission to experience?' This is followed by the next questions: 'What is the emotion you don't allow yourself to experience?' My questions are also deeply inspired by a book by the director at Yale Centre for Emotional Intelligence, Dr Marc Brackett's book, 'Permission To Feel.' The answers to the above question, even after I have known the clients for a long time in therapy, continue to surprise me but they are also instructive of how different clients navigate their lives. Often, female clients, for instance, tell me of their struggle to express anger. Men on the other hand tell me that its sadness which they run away from, and find ways to distract or not acknowledge it. Grief, resentment, ambivalent feelings (experiencing mixed emotions for loved ones) top the list when it comes to emotions that most people struggle to articulate or are even aware of. Gender, the families we are raised in, and societal conditioning are all factors that play a huge role in the context of what we allow ourselves to feel or not. I remember a client once telling me how he never saw his parents get angry or fight and as he grew up whenever he experienced anger or rage, he felt he was not good enough, leading to confusion and anxiety. Another client mentioned growing up in a family where she was constantly told, 'We make a choice to get out of bad mood, so snap out of it'. As a result of this she began suppressing sadness and by the time she got into therapy, what she mostly struggled with was a feeling of numbness. Quite often, unwittingly, we think through our feelings. At other times, without recognizing, we categorize emotions into positive and negative which comes in the way of how we feel. Emotions can be pleasant or unpleasant sensations but at the same time it helps to see them as a compass that tells us something about ourselves. It helps to ask oneself, which emotions we allow for and which are the ones we make no space for. Learning to recognize, what we are feeling, experiencing those feeling and then being able to name them, is where adulting lies. It's never too late to begin that journey....