Emotions are like a beach ball – the more you try to keep them under the water, the stronger they will be when they resurface.
Our society in general has a complicated relationship with emotions. On the one hand, people are condemned if they are perceived as such “too emotional” as long as they put “rationality” on a pedestal and praise people who display this quality.
On the other hand, emotions are a natural human phenomenon that society tends to forget or ignore. Unsurprisingly, this can result in us not being able to deal with our feelings. So when this basic experience happens, it’s not uncommon for people to suppress their emotions.
However, as a psychotherapist, I have seen that bottling up our feelings can have unintended consequences, especially for those who identify as Highly Sensitive People (HSPs), who feel our emotions more deeply than our non-HSP peers.
7 Reasons HSPs Shouldn’t Suppress Their Emotions
1. It is not healthy in the long run.
When we try to suppress a natural human experience—be it our hunger, thirst, pain, fatigue, or emotion—we can only “successfully” do so for a limited time. Eventually, our innate need becomes strong enough to overcome our repressive abilities.
This is especially true for HSPs, as is our tendency to feel our emotions more deeply makes it even harder to keep them away. A metaphor I often use is trying to submerge a beach ball. Since this goes against the natural state of the beach ball, it requires considerable effort to achieve it. However, even with this effort, the beach ball can only stay underwater for so long before it bounces back to the surface. And the bigger the fight, the more power the beach ball will have when it comes out again. The same applies to our emotions. No matter how hard we try, we can’t suppress our emotions forever. And when they reappear, they will be even stronger than before.
2. Like it or not, your body is keeping score.
In the book The body keeps scorepsychiatrist and author Dr. Bessel van der Kolk describes how trauma affects our physicality. Specifically, research has shown that individuals who have experienced trauma are more likely to develop physical conditions later in life, including diabetes, autoimmune disorders, and heart disease.
Emotions, particularly strong (e.g trauma-related) to live in the body. If they are suppressed instead of processed, it can lead to negative physical consequences, as documented by van der Kolk. Since we HSPs are already more prone to experience physical ailments when we are not exposed, we may be especially vulnerable to this.
3. Suppressing emotions makes them (rather) scary.
If we consistently suppress our emotions, they become alien and unknown to us. If this is the case, actually experiencing the emotions can be a scary (or scarier!) experience as we are unsure of what to do. Chances are, we do everything we can to avoid this discomfort, which can often result in us getting involved “emotional buffering”, turning to maladaptive coping mechanisms that temporarily numb our emotions. For example, we can tape ourselves to our phone and mindlessly scroll through social mediabinge-watching Netflix or playing video games, or even abusing substances, binging or restricting our meals, or engaging in self-harming activities.
These behaviors can be temporarily helpful in managing our emotions. Ultimately, however, they perpetuate the idea that we are unable to manage our emotions by reinforcing them with escapism, even for a limited time. This contrasts with adaptive coping skills that help us navigate our feelings.
4. Detaches from his authenticity.
As HSPs, one of our primary qualities is authenticity and vital to living our best lives in general. An important aspect of authenticity is the connection with our emotional experiences. Indeed, knowing what we feel, the reasons and purpose of our feelings, and how we communicate those feelings are all part of connecting with our authentic experience.
However, when we suppress our emotions, we disconnect from an essential part of our being, and thus from our authenticity. Suppressing our emotions is essentially lying to ourselves. Keeping in touch with our authenticity is especially important important to HSPs because of our strong connection to our intuition. Consequently, when we live outside of our authenticity, our intuition tries to guide us back to a place where we live in harmony with our authenticity, inducing anxiety. Conversely, when we allow ourselves to feel our emotions, it later allows us to know ourselves better.
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5. Emotions are a necessary part of the human experience.
Emotions are a vital part of living. Life is impossible without experiencing a wide range of emotions. This applies not only to the harder things like sadness, guilt, anger, and fear, but also to the more positive ones like joy, contentment, excitement, and fear. peace.
However, if we are in the habit of suppressing our heavier emotions, it also reduces our ability to truly feel our more positive emotions. This can be particularly detrimental to the well-being of highly sensitive people, as it is our nature to feel deeply. In addition, our emotional experiences help us connect with other individuals on a deeper and more intimate level. After all, relationships are built on sharing vulnerable moments, which requires compassion. Can you imagine going through life without feeling happy after achieving a big goal? to grieve with a loved one after a painful experiencean unpleasant feeling that prompts you to change your life for the better, or do you experience complete happiness in your favorite activity? In fact, a life without emotion lacks the depth that HSPs crave and is limited in its fullness.
6. Feeling your feelings leads to better mental health.
When we suppress our emotions, it affects us negatively mental health. In order to properly navigate our emotions, we must first recognize our emotional state (“name it to tame it”) and then feel our feelings (“we cannot heal what we do not feel”). If we do this, we can effectively process our emotions. For example, you can name your current feeling, such as “anger,” and then feel your anger by working through it with someone you trust, journaling, setting a boundary with the person who upset you, or even crying—essentially working through the anger.
Conversely, when we suppress our feelings, our emotions get stuck and because of this we become emotionally stagnant, unable to process our feelings and truly heal. And when our difficult emotions are constantly lurking beneath the surface, we experience poorer mental health and overall well-being.
7. We lose the benefits of emotions.
We have emotions for a reason. Our feelings reach us faster and more deeply than our thoughts, which means that emotions move us to action the fastest. That said, one of the main benefits of feeling our emotions is that they all have a message to communicate to us. For example, since sadness often signals that our needs are not being met, it can motivate us to make changes to meet that need. This is well illustrated by the Disney/Pixar film Inside out. For most of the film, the main character, Riley, suppresses her sadness caused by her family’s recent move. In this case, Riley’s unmet need was for emotional support during this difficult time. When she finally feels and expresses her sadness, her parents provide comfort and support, meeting her needs while helping her heal and connect with her pain. joy again.
How we can feel our emotions
Given the way our society approaches emotions, many people are understandably confused about how to properly manage (and feel) them. Here are some tips I recommend to my psychotherapy clients (and use myself) to help with this process.
- Be attentive. Mindfulness often defined as “non-judgmental present consciousness”. By being aware of our current state, we can better identify when a feeling arises. We can do this by noticing our moods, thoughts and bodily sensations. Don’t forget the “non-judgmental” component – try to be as empathetic as possible to whatever emotion you’re feeling. Also, mindfulness doesn’t necessarily mean sitting on a cushion and meditating. You can be conscious if you notice the leaves falling from a tree or just listen to the birds chirping outside the window. Just sitting still, noticing and feeling the bottom line.
- Identify the emotion(s). As mentioned earlier, we must “name it to tame it.” We can actually feel and move our emotions better when we know what we feel. If you have problems, one wheel of emotionswhich lists basic basic emotions in addition to more specific emotional states, can be a useful help. For example, you may first recognize the basic emotion of madness, then become more specific and identify jealousy.
- Express yourself. We need to let our emotions out by expressing our feelings. Cryingfor example, it’s a great way to experience and feel harder emotions like sadness, anger, and fear. Listening to music or watching something with a similar mood to what we feel is another great catharsis. There are countless examples, but do what works best.
- To process the feeling. By processing our emotions, this can help us contextualize and better understand our experiences. It is included in some processing methods diary writingtalking to trusted others, or go to therapy. The latter two offer the added benefit of social support from an external source (as opposed to a friend or loved one who might be biased).
- Find the message behind the emotion and take action. As discussed earlier, our emotions are there to give us a message. Once we can discover the message behind our emotions, we can take steps to remedy the situation. For example, if it’s us feel anxious the message behind the emotions about public speaking is that it’s important to us to do it well and we don’t want to fail. Actions we can take include preparing for public speaking, seeking support from loved ones, and reminding ourselves that our value does not depend on the outcome of the event.
- Move your body. Our emotions resonate not only in our minds, but also in our bodies. After all, all emotions are coupled with physical sensations. That’s why you have to move our bodies to work through our emotions. The type of movement can depend on the emotion we are experiencing. For example, for “softer” emotions like sadness, gentle stretching can do the trick. For “stronger” emotions, such as anger, we should do more physical effort, such as running or a sport that uses force.
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