How Do I Stop Crying at Work?

If you've ever white-knuckled your way through a work meeting only to fall apart in the car afterward, you've met the difference between containment and suppression firsthand. It's one of the most important distinctions I teach as a grief coach — and once you understand it, everything about "managing" your emotions starts to feel less like a battle.

Two very different strategies

Containment is the healthy ability to temporarily modulate how much of an emotion you express — while still honoring that the emotion is real, valid, and important. Think of it as choosing when and where to feel something, not whether.

Suppression is the attempt to eliminate, deny, or invalidate the emotion entirely. It treats grief as something threatening or shameful — a problem to be gotten rid of.