Repressed emotions: what they are and how they affect us

How many times have we repressed our emotions? Do we know how to identify them? If we knew the damage that having repressed emotions for a long time can bring us, surely we would try to be more assertive and release them more often.

Yes OK everyone has pent-up emotions at some pointTrying to hide how we feel too many times can lead to a lot of problems. We will find out why below.

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Repressed emotions and their consequences

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 well hidden they may be, sooner or later they will 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 we make.

Detecting our emotions allows us to understand ourselves, avoiding behaving in non-adaptive ways in the long term.

Naturally, everyone has their own way of interpreting the world. Our history of experiences together with the way we perceive and feel, coupled with our opinions and beliefs are filters of the reality that surrounds us, a reality that we can never understand because we always receive it "processed" by us themselves. 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 in 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, the emotions are not that they are repressed, but that they are not properly identified and, when misinterpreted, they can end up hurting us by not knowing what happens to us. Knowing what we feel and giving voice to our emotions, we free them from repression, and consequently we prevent them from wearing us down psychologically.

The importance of releasing our emotions

People usually hide what we feel because we believe that it is not important or, even, that expressing it may bring us problems. However, the reality is that what is going to bring us problems is keeping how we feel hidden. What remains hidden for too long can crystallize, becoming a very exhausting and damaging experience. Emotions are like energy and, as in the world of physics, nothing is created or destroyed, it is transformed. That suppressed emotion may turn into behavior that we later regret.

Releasing our emotions should not be taken as a synonym of 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 they do not It has done us good, but we cannot speak of liberation if that implies taking away some freedom from the rest. Our words must be duly reflected before being said.

The importance of releasing our emotions, properly 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 clearly, making our criteria of doing and saying according to what things are altered. We behave more irrationally and impulsively, making more mistakes and saying things that we surely regret. Therefore, we must never promise or argue when we are angry or sad, and first we must try to calm down and have a cold mind.

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Why do we repress our emotions?

Suppressing how we feel is not healthy, bringing with it physical and emotional health problems. Given this, why do we repress our emotions? The answer lies in how many of us have grown up, especially in western societies, where we are taught that there are socially acceptable emotions while others are more suitable 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", the ones that we should feel and show to others, while the negative ones They are the "bad" ones, those that we cannot teach others or that should only be shown in very specific contexts, such as at a funeral.

Although these ideas have been losing strength, above all thanks to emotional education and overcoming the dichotomy of good emotions and bad, the truth is that today we still have a pretty bad idea of ​​sadness or anger, being perceived as weaknesses temperamental. Those who are easily angry or sad are perceived as emotionally dysregulated, sometimes socially maladjusted or who does not know how to enjoy life and takes things too seriously.

Because of this stigma, it is common for all of us 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 to be socially acceptable.

But despite all this, we must understand that all emotions are useful as long as they appear in the right contexts and depending on the circumstances. It is true that positive emotions are more pleasant than negative ones, but the latter should be felt at the appropriate moments, because if not, if they are hidden, they will end up emerging later, at times when it is not their role, and that is where we can truly have a problem of adaptation. 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, at the same time that we expend a great amount of energy that will cause us to wear ourselves out physically, mentally and emotionally. We can't be bad all the time.

What does it mean to suppress 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 an extent that we will not be able to take it anymore, in addition our health is going to suffer, making it necessary to turn to different professionals, both doctors and psychologists, to try to fix the hurt. The main problems with 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 violently. Suppressing emotions will cause us to explode over time, being able to do it very violently both physically and verbally. We will become emotional pressure cookers that will explode, hurting those nearby in a true emotional outburst.

2. Somatization

Body and mind are related in good and bad, 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, skin 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 it is not due to a medical illness or health condition that can be treated by medicine.

In case we discover that all these discomforts are due to anxiety, stress or depression, it will be It is necessary to go to a psychologist, start psychotherapy and learn strategies to assertively release this tension emotional.

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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 concern By not knowing the cause of our emotional tension, we may begin to feel worse reaching the point of developing a depressive disorder or anxiety.

4. Drug dependence

Closely related to somatization, it often happens that after feeling back pain and headaches, drugs are used. These medications may have been prescribed by a professional, but it often happens that, in reality, the affected person prefers not to go to a doctor and chooses to self-medicate.

This implies high risk of falling into an addiction problem because, on the one hand, the pain will not disappear because its cause is emotional and, secondly place, because whoever takes the drugs may go overboard with the amounts and duration of treatment.

No matter how many pills we take, if our problem has to do with repressing our emotions it is clear that what is going to fix it is to free them, in addition to learning to properly manage our state emotional. For this reason it is so important to go to psychotherapy from time to time, learning the appropriate emotional tools to prevent emotions from being trapped inside us.