What are suppressed emotions – and how do we detect them

by jenne | Health

Usually, it is any negative emotion we tend to suppress. And whatever the negative emotion is, we can categorize it in one of those three sentiments:

 Anger
 Rage
 Hate

If we suppress an emotion, we might feel some relief in the first moment. But then, later, if we think of the anger driven situation again, it all comes back at us.

Often with greater strength than the original emotion. The unexpressed emotion is sitting in our subconscious mind, eating away on us, waiting for the next bad excuse explode again.
Can you already see what I am trying to tell you? Unexpressed emotions are an unmerry-go-round. They slumber under the surface but will remind you that they are still there. That they are still waiting for you to give them a voice. And basically, that is all your negative emotions want. Like physical pain is telling you that there is something wrong with your body, negative emotions are the messengers of your mind, of your soul, of your emotional wellbeing. There is something not right. We need to talk to you. We need you to take action; take another approach.

Don’t shoot the messenger and don’t wait until your bodily pains become the voice of your unexpressed emotions.

It does not matter how deep you bury those emotions you do not want to feel. As soon as a similar situation arises, they will be right back. Asking you the same thing over and over again – To be mindful and see what is happening in your life.
Unexpressed emotions can even follow you in your sleep. You might encounter them as sleep disturbances, restless, unrefreshing sleep and not even your dreams are safe from unexpressed emotions.
If at this stage, if you still do not pay any attention to your emotions, they will “metastasize”. By the time your unexpressed feelings have settled in the physical realm, you start to show symptoms. We speak of psychosomatic illnesses. – That is when your doctor cannot find anything wrong with your body, but you feel the pain nonetheless. Those pains are in courtesy of your unfelt emotions. By now, your entire being is so affected that you cannot overlook the pain any longer. You know you must do something.
Every feeling you have decided not to feel, not to express, will be stored in your body until it finds a way to the surface. Don’t wait until you are too ill to do something about it!

What to do, if your suppressed feelings have already made you sick.

In most instances, before your body presents you with an illness like cancer or any of the autoimmune diseases, you will experience a whole range of other unpleasant symptoms.
For example, tension caused by anger or anxiety might manifest itself in increased muscle tone. It is noteworthy to say that muscles play an essential role in the fight-or-flight response. If we suppress this response, it is turned inwardly. We might experience those unfelt feelings through chronic tension, headaches, neck and back pain, cramps, stomach and intestinal disorders and even liver ailments.

Other people might engage in addictions. This could be anything from alcohol over drugs to overeating, gambling, watching TV, reading and of course any kind of social media engagement.
Maybe you even develop a self-loathing habit, telling yourself non stop, nobody else’s life is just as unlivable as yours.
Please note, depression is a serious mental illness and should be treated by a professional.
Internalized emotions will always seek for a solution. That is the very nature of emotions. They are here to be felt.

My point is, you do not have to wait until you have stage four cancer to realize it is time to do something about the unfelt pain you are carrying with you your entire life. If your physical and/or mental symptoms are not spiralling out of control, you can start to take care yourself of the issues you have avoided all your life.

Find a quiet place and some time for you only. For this little exercise, you don’t even need to be familiar with meditation. Quietly go within yourself. Become your own Sherlock Holmes. Do some cool detective work. Get a piece of paper and write down the feelings you encounter. What are they telling you? Why are they here? Where are they hurting? If you really don’t know what those unfelt feelings are trying to say, just guess. Chances are you will be right!
If truly nothing will come to your mind and you travelled already so far into denial that you are telling yourself, unfelt feelings? Me? Then pay attention to your thoughts when you wake up at 3 am, when there is no one to talk to and nothing to do!

Something to think about: Never having time for yourself or always having to take care of somebody else could be another symptom, that you are covering up unpleasant feelings.

Whatever you do, do it with moderation. Do it like mother nature would do. Always seeking an equilibrium. – And yes, you are part of nature, even if you spend your entire life watching TV!
Again, there is no bad emotion but the unexpressed one. This is the emotion, which, over time, will make you sick. It is the emotion, which will lead you down a path you would not consciously choose for yourself. It is the emotion, which makes you lash out at your loved ones and drive away everyone you hold dear.

The reality is, it is much more hard work to suppress what you don’t want in your life, than to give your feelings a voice. Once you have acknowledged your emotions, you can find a safe way to express them. After that, they will not bother you again. Even if you have to revisit the one or other emotion over time, their stronghold over you will lessen every time you do so.

Disclaimer: Please be aware that this piece of writing is not intended to replace a doctor or other health professional.

Suppressing emotions – is there more to it than not feeling the pain?

by jenne | Health

Hiding your emotions is probably something you often do. It’s something most of us do.

You silence the pain and stoke your fear and anger in the process. However, if you hide your emotions, bit by bit, it soon becomes a dysfunctional habit.

It causes mental blockages that keep you from good health, spontaneity and personal growth. And there is even more. It is not only your mental health, which suffers from your suppressed emotions. Over a long time, suppressed emotions will affect your physical health as well.

Why do we suppress our emotions in the first place?

For most people suppressing emotions begins already in their childhood. There is a difference between what seems to be hurtful to an adult, compared to what is hurtful to a child. We might be told, “what does not kill you makes you stronger”. Over time the child will learn that expressing emotions is not safe. It might feel misunderstood, maybe even ridiculed. It might learn, showing emotions is a sign of weakness.

However, it needs to be said, if a child experiences intensive and ongoing abuse, suppressing and not feeling the pain can become a survival strategy. If that is true for you, please seek help from a skilled and experienced therapist to help you integrate this part of your life. You don’t need to forget what happened to you, but you need to give your emotions a voice. You need to accept what happened to you.

Anger seems to take a special place among the full range of possible emotions. Silently most people agree, anger is an emotion best not shown. Little do they know; the only ugly emotion is the unexpressed emotion!

“When we grow up becoming adults ourselves, things do not get much better.”

Particular in western societies we are told for decades, there is nothing beyond reason. Cognito ergo sum. – I think, therefore, I am. This builds the general platform on how we think about emotions and everything we associate with them. We wrongly came to assume that emotions are holding us up from progress.

Maybe it is this wrong belief, which leads us to teach our children that crying is immature and weak. That it is better to hide our sadness. We teach them that it was unfair and impolite to respond with anger if we do not like something. We also teaching them, to be quiet; that laughing out loud shows of poor behaviour. If you want to get somewhere in life, you better show no emotion and pretend to be strong, no matter how you feel.

However, children should know, that emotions have great potential. That it is essential to understand our emotions so that we can make the most out of them. The paradigm “I think; therefore, I am” needs to shift to “I feel because I am existing”. Emotions give us life. They make us who we are.

Your emotional makeup is unique to us, and no other person has quite a psychological composition like you.

If we do not wake up sometime soon but keep on suppressing our emotions, they will take our lives little by little. Hiding your feelings hurts not only your mind. It hurts your entire being and all the people you hold dear.

What happens to our feelings when we decide not to feel them?

For most of us, feelings of anger, hate, rage, etc. are incredibly unpleasant. So unpleasant, indeed, that we suppress those feelings rather than make them conscious. Maybe we even feel shame, because of all what we have learned about those “negative and inconvenient” feelings. Suppressing them, however, comes with a high price!

Suppressed feelings do not just go away. They sit somewhere in our subconscious and slowly plot their coup on our health, our happiness, our relationships – our entire life. They start to rule our decisions making without us noticing it. Not to feel becomes an expensive habit.

This is only one of many examples:

Most people are familiar with the term “comfort food”. The name already gives away its purpose. That is not food which nourishes our bodies. This is food, which only purpose is to make us feel better. Stuffing down those emotions, we so desperately do not want to feel. Comfort food brings you more than just comfort. It brings you overweight and obesity. Now you not only have to work hard to keep your emotions at bay, but your heart also needs to work harder, and the entire skeletal frame will suffer from the extra kilos as well.

By the time there is no way to fit into your favourite jeans, we are not thinking highly about ourselves anymore either. Most likely, we will look into the mirror and loathe what we see.

If it is so unhealthy, why do we suppress feelings

We are suppressing emotions always then; when we decide, there is no room to express what we feel safely. As I have already explained, much of why we suppress feelings as an adult has its foundation in our early years. Whatever the programs, regarding negative emotions, we have learned back then, we execute today.

If you are angry because your partner says something, which touches a raw nerve, you could hurl all your anger at him. You could also go for a run around the block, calm down and then say what you have to say appropriately. Most of us, however, suppress the anger, trying to get on with life the best way we know. – We eat a piece of chocolate, tell ourselves it’s not as bad as it seems, trying to convince ourselves to find something positive about the situation or we plot revenge.

None of those solutions are healthy. Emotions are given to us, to be felt. Negative emotions are a  marker of what is wrong in our lives, where we are hurting, where we need more healing. Where we need so much more self-love!

My point here is, we made a habit of suppressing our deepest feelings, we now need to turn the rudder around and make a habit of expressing our feelings.