Meditating with an overwhelming emotion

It gets really hard for me to meditate when there is something really important happening in my life, something that triggers overwhelming emotions such as fear, anger or total despair. Avoiding them is not a solution, they don't simply go away. I try the usual method to deal with them (seeing for what they are and repeting "fear...fear...fear..."), but it seems those big emotions and events can block or even stop my meditation. I'm 100% sure I'm not the first one to face this "challenge", so any advises on how to deal with it would be great.