Repressed Emotions: What They Are And How They Affect Us
How many times have we repressed our emotions? Do we even know how to identify them? If we knew the damage that having long-repressed emotions could cause us, we would surely try to be more assertive and release them more often.
Yes ok everyone has repressed emotions at some pointTrying to hide how we feel too many times can bring us a lot of problems. Below we will discover why.
We could say that repressed emotions are those that we do not want or simply ignore. They are those feelings that we want to hide, hide in the deepest possible part of our being. However, no matter how well hidden they are, sooner or later they come to the surface. They may not do it in an obvious way, but it will certainly be disruptive to our way of being, affecting our behavior and our psychological and even physical well-being.
Emotions are part of our lives. Knowing how to identify them and avoid burying them is a way of knowing our identity, since we will have the answer to why we feel a certain way and why we behave the way we do. Detecting our emotions allows us to understand ourselvesavoiding behaving in ways that are not very adaptive in the long term.
Naturally, everyone has their own way of interpreting the world. Our history of experiences along with the way we perceive and feel, together with our opinions and beliefs, are filters of the reality that surrounds us, a reality that we will never be able to understand because we always receive it “processed” by ourselves. That is why each person can interpret the world in a very varied way, feeling in very different ways as well. Knowing how we interpret the world is a way that will allow us to improve as people, gaining health and well-being.
We must pay attention to our emotions and the clues our body gives us about how we may be feeling. Sometimes, emotions are not repressed, but rather they are not properly identified. and, when misinterpreted, they can end up hurting us by not knowing what is happening to us. By knowing what we feel and giving voice to our emotions, we free them from repression, and consequently prevent them from wearing us down psychologically.
People tend to hide what we feel because we believe that it is not important or even that expressing it could cause us problems. However, the reality is that what is going to cause us problems is keeping how we feel hidden. What remains hidden for too long can crystallize, becoming a very exhausting and harmful experience. Emotions are like energy and, just as in the world of physics, nothing is created or destroyed, but rather transformed. That repressed emotion may become a behavior that we later regret.
Releasing our emotions should not be taken as a synonym for spitting things out without thinking about them first.. Being assertive means knowing how to express what we feel and think but in a way that is not harmful to other people. Maybe one of the reasons we feel bad is because someone has said or done something to us that did not sit well with us, but we cannot talk about liberation if that means taking away a certain freedom from others. Our words must be properly reflected before being said.
The importance of releasing our emotions, appropriately and without harming others, is that If we repress them, they can become so intense and last so long that they prevent us from thinking lucidly., causing our criteria for doing and saying depending on what things to be altered. We behave more irrationally and impulsively, making more mistakes and saying things we will surely regret. Therefore, we should never promise or argue when we are angry or sad, and first we should try to calm down and have a cool mind.
Why do we repress our emotions?
Repressing how we feel is not healthy, bringing with it physical and emotional health problems. Considering this, why do we repress our emotions? The answer is found in how many of us have been raisedespecially in Western societies, where we are taught that there are emotions that are socially acceptable while others are more appropriate for more intimate and personal contexts.
There are positive emotions and negative emotions. Among the first we find joy, happiness or love, while in the second type we have fear, sadness or anger. Traditionally, it has been considered that the positive ones are the “good” ones, those that we must feel and show to others, while the negative ones are the “bad” ones, those that we cannot teach to others or that should only be shown in contexts. very specific, such as at a funeral.
Although these ideas have been losing strength, especially thanks to emotional education and overcoming the dichotomy of good and bad emotions, the truth is that today we still have a fairly bad idea of sadness or anger, being perceived as temperamental weaknesses. Anyone who gets angry or sad easily is perceived as someone who is emotionally dysregulated.sometimes socially maladjusted or who does not know how to enjoy life and takes things too personally.
Because of this stigma, it is common for us all to try to repress our emotions, fearing that others will judge us negatively. We tend to deny and camouflage our negative emotions, masking everything under a false facade of happiness and joy, those emotions that we have been taught are socially acceptable.
But despite all this, we must understand that all emotions are useful as long as they appear in the appropriate contexts and depending on the circumstances. It is true that positive emotions are more pleasant than negative ones, but the latter must be felt at the appropriate times, because if not, if they are hidden, they will end up emerging later, at times when they are not appropriate, and that is where where we can truly have an adaptation problem. The harmful thing is not feeling negative emotions, but trying to hide them.
Emotions guide us to know how to act in certain situations. If we ignore them, we lose our behavioral compass, while at the same time we expend a large amount of energy that will cause us to wear out physically, mentally and emotionally. We can’t be bad all the time.
What does it mean to repress emotions?
Repressed emotions are going to hurt us. If we do not let them out or do not manage them properly, they will accumulate to such a point that we will not be able to hold on any longer, in addition to the fact that our health will suffer, making it necessary to resort to different professionals, both doctors and psychologists, to try to fix the problem. damage. The main problems of repressing emotions are the following:
1. Emotional outburst
If emotions accumulate and we do not release them in any way, sooner or later they will come out in a violent way.. Repressing emotions will cause us to explode over time, which can be done in a very violent way both physically and verbally. We will become emotional pressure cookers that will explode, hurting those around us in a true emotional explosion.
Body and mind are related in good and bad ways, and repressed emotions are proof of this. Being in constant psychological tension can bring with it multiple health problems. such as headaches, back pain, gastrointestinal problems, dermatological reactions and fatigue.
It should be said that if we have any of these problems, before assuming that it is due to repressing emotions, it is very important to go to a doctor to make sure that it is not due to a medical illness or health condition that can be treated through Medicine.
If we discover that all these discomforts are due to anxiety, stress or depression, it will be necessary to go to a psychologist, start psychotherapy and learn strategies to assertively release this emotional tension.
3. Depression and anxiety
Poorly managed emotions can lead to other psychological problems, including depression and anxiety.. There are several reasons for this, but among them we find the fact that if we do not know why we feel this way, feeling great uncertainty and worry about not knowing the cause of our emotional tension, we may begin to feel worse, reaching the point of develop a depressive or anxiety disorder.
4. Drug dependence
Closely related to somatization, it often happens that after experiencing back pain and headaches people resort to drugs. These medications may have been prescribed by a professional, but it often happens that, in reality, the affected person prefers not to see a doctor and opts for self-medication.
This implies high risk of falling into an addiction problem because, on the one hand, the pain is not going to disappear because its cause is emotional and, secondly, because those who consume the drugs may overdo the amounts and duration of the treatment.
No matter how many pills we take, if our problem has to do with repressing our emotions, it is clear that what will fix it is releasing them, in addition to learning to properly manage our emotional state. This is why it is so important to go to psychotherapy from time to time, learning the appropriate emotional tools to prevent emotions from becoming trapped inside us.
