It Just Burst Open

I was trying carefully to open a bag of candy and, I guess I was pulling too hard, because it just burst open. The pieces of candy spilled out all over the table.  Fortunately, I was able to gather most of it and place it in the candy bowl.  Life is sometimes like that bag of candy, it just bursts open and spills out.  I was seeing a couple at the Counseling Center and the wife was always quiet.  I assumed that she was very shy or timid. However, during one of our sessions, she just burst open and spilled out all kinds of frustration and anger toward her husband.  Most of her frustrations caught him completely by surprise.  At least, he said that he never knew she felt that way.  Somewhere an author has written about what he labeled as "gunny-sacking our anger."  The image is that we toss our frustration and aggravations over our shoulder and into our gunny-sack where all those memories are collected.  We that stuff behind us in our gunny-sack, everything seems fine.  One day we toss something into our gunny-sack and it bursts open and spills out all.  We seem to have over-reacted to that one incident and the folks around us ask, "Where did all of that come from?"  I think the healthy habit is not to have a gunny-sack collecting our frustrations and aggravations, but to speak them as they happen or shortly afterwards.