Getting to know your feelings

So, one of the things that has come up a lot for me in my practice is, I guess, grief. My mom died when I was young (6) and I didn't really have the facility to experience the loss and sadness (or at least I don't remember experiencing it) that goes with losing your mom. So often, when I sit zazen or am being present, these feelings, which I think I never really felt, come up.
They don't come up nicely or subtly or under my command or control. They tend to hit me, literally hit me, like a person running straight at me full force. It often takes my breath away and, unless I'm sitting down, kind of doubles me over so that I have to sit down.
This happened to me, this past week, as I was sitting at my kitchen table, eating dinner. A thought/ realization came up, took my breath away, made me incredibly sad, and, I think, made me cry.
When this happened, I did what I normally do when this feeling comes up: I let my body feel it. I take a breath, I keep letting my body feel it, sometimes take another breath, and then just kind of sit there, still, kind of in-waiting for my body to do what ever it's going to do with this feeling. Then, depending on how much it hit me, I either go back to what I was doing or give myself some space and time to kind of recover from what I just experienced- to kind of adjust to this shift or awakening. Sometimes I kind of nurture myself, give myself some quiet time- not so much to debrief what happened, more to kind of settle, rebalance, like something that teeters back and forth being given space and time to find the place where it's grounded.
When it happened this week, I noticed something about it. I noticed how I responded to this feeling.I noticed that, when this feeling of absolute loss/ grief comes up for me, I just feel it. Or, more accurately, I kind of let it feel. I tolerate it. I give it the space and time it needs. I actually experience it.
And I thought about that. I thought about why I do this with this feeling. I think that the reason that I do this with this feeling is that I know this feeling. I'm familiar with it. It has hit me a ton of times. It's like, my thing, at this point. And because of that. I'm fine with it. It's not so much that I'm fine with this feeling, I certainly don't enjoy the feeling of complete and sudden absence of a significant person in my life. However, I know this feeling. I've sat with it a ton of times and so when it comes up, I just let it.
And then I thought about other feelings in my life. In particular, I thought about anger. I thought about anger because that very same day, I had yelled, at third graders. I had been angry and frustrated and I had yelled at them, in anger. It was not nice, it was not pretty, it was sad and I wished that I hadn't done it. They were sad, I'm sure they were hurt, all around it was not such a good thing.
But I noticed that when I got angry in my classroom, I didn't actually feel my anger, I just acted it out. I didn't take a breath like I do when I experience grief. I didn't step back and feel it in my body. I just reacted to my anger, just spurted it out onto a class of third graders. There wasn't any space for my anger- it just went from a feeling to a yelling immediately.
And then I thought about my experience with anger in general. I realize that I don't feel anger very often. Honestly, I don't know if anger doesn't come up for me very often or if it does come up and I don't notice it or what. I just know that I am not so familiar with anger. It doesn't come up for me in zazen, it's not something that I experience on a regular basis. And I think it's ineresting that when it does come up for me, I don't actually feel it. It just goes off and takes over and I let it go crazy. And I wonder if anger does that because I don't know anger so well. I haven't let myself experience my anger. I don't actually know anger the way I know grief.
And I know it sounds funny but I kind of decided that I needed to get to know anger. I decided that when anger does come up for me (in my classroom or in my relationships), I needed to actually feel it, notice it, experience it- give it the same time and space that I do grief and loss.
And so the next day, when I started to get mad at the kids, I let myself get mad. I didn't yell, I didn't act it out, I just actually felt anger in my body- let it run its course. It turns out, that it didn't last all that long. It also turns out, that I can be mad and not yell. I was surprised by this. My normal response to anger is to yell and make whatever is hurting me stop hurting me. But this time, when I just felt it, it just felt. It didn't have to actually go anywhere. What I thought I had to express could actually dissipate instead, seemingly by letting it exist in me.
But really, for me, this isn't so much about the specifics of anger, I think it's more about actually getting to know your feelings. It seems like, the more you know yourself and your relationship with these feelings, the less likely they are to control you- the more likely you are to tolerate them, the more likely you are to experience just them, not your attempt to control them or act them out.
I don't know- that's probably not true, I'm sure there are emotions that will take me over no matter what I do. But still, it seems like a good practice, to kind of study myself around these emotions, see who I am with them and to do this by actually experiencing the feelings when they come.