Repressed emotions: what are they and how do they affect us?

Repressing emotions can lead to psychological problems due to a domino effect.

How many times have we repressed our emotions and do we know how to identify them? If we knew how damaging it can be to have repressed emotions for a long time, we would surely try to be more assertive and release them more often.

While everyone has repressed emotions everyone has repressed emotions at one time or another, we may try to hide how we feel.We can be very difficult to hide how we feel too many times, but trying to hide how we feel too many times can bring us many problems. Here's why.

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, to 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 so in an obvious way, but they 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 ourselves, avoiding to behave in different ways.We can avoid behaving in ways that are not very adaptive in the long run.

Naturally, everyone has their own way of interpreting the world. Our history of experiences together 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 can never understand because we always receive it "processed" by ourselves. That is why each person can interpret the world in a very different way, feeling in very different ways. 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, emotions are not repressed, but are not properly identified and, when misinterpreted, are misunderstood. and, when they are misinterpreted, they can end up hurting us because we do not know 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.

The importance of releasing our emotions

People tend to 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 will get us into trouble is keeping how we feel hidden. What remains hidden for too long can crystallize and become a very wearing and harmful experience. Emotions are like energy and, as in the world of physics, nothing is created or destroyed, but transformed. That repressed emotion may turn into 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 others. It may be that one of the reasons why we feel bad is because someone has said or done something that has not felt good to us, but we cannot talk about liberation if that implies taking away some freedom from others. Our words must be duly reflected upon before they are said.

The importance of releasing our emotions, in an appropriate way and without harming others, is that if we repress them, they can reach us. 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 doing things so difficult.We behave in a more irrational and irrational way, and our criteria for doing and saying certain things are altered. We behave more irrationally and impulsively, making more mistakes and saying things that we will surely regret. Therefore, we should never promise or argue when we are angry or sad, and we should first try to calm down and keep a cool head.

Why do we repress our emotions?

Repressing how we feel is not healthy at all, bringing with it physical and emotional health problems. With this in mind, why do we repress our emotions? The answer lies in how many of us have been raised, especially in Western societiesespecially in Western societies, where we are taught that some emotions are socially acceptable while others are more appropriate for more intimate and personal contexts.

There are positive emotions and negative emotions. Among the former we find joy, happiness or love, while among the latter we have fear, sadness or anger. Traditionally, it has been considered that positive emotions are the "good" ones, those that we should feel and show to others, while negative emotions are the "bad" ones, those that we cannot show to others or that should only be shown in very specific contexts, such as at a funeral.

Although these ideas have been losing strength, especially thanks to emotional education and the overcoming of the dichotomy of good and bad emotions, the truth is that today we still have a rather bad idea of sadness or anger, being perceived as temperamental weaknesses. The person who gets angry or sad easily is perceived as someone emotionally unregulated, sometimes socially maladjusted, sometimes socially maladjusted.sometimes socially maladjusted or someone who does not know how to enjoy life and takes things too much to heart.

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 are socially acceptable.

But despite all this, we must understand that all emotions are useful as long as they appear in the right contexts and according to the circumstances. It is true that positive emotions are more pleasant than negative ones, but the latter should 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 we can really have a problem of adaptation. The harmful thing is not to feel negative emotions, but to try to hide them..

Emotions guide us to know how to act in certain situations. If we ignore them we lose our behavioral compass, and at the same time we expend a great deal of energy that will wear us down physically, mentally and emotionally. We cannot be bad all the time.

What does repressing emotions involve?

Repressed emotions are going to hurt us. If we do not let them out or we do not manage them properly, they will accumulate to such an extent that we will not be able to stand them any longer, and our health will suffer and it will be necessary to resort to different professionals, both doctors and psychologists, to try to fix the 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, and we may do so in a very violent way both physically and verbally. We will become emotional pressure cookers that will explode hurting those who are close to us in a real emotional outburst.

2. Somatization

Body and mind are related for better and for worse, and repressed emotions are proof of this. Being in constant psychological tension can bring with it multiple health problems such as headaches, headaches, headaches, headaches, headaches, headaches, headaches, headaches, headaches such as headaches, backaches, Gastrointestinal problems, dermatological reactions and tiredness.

It is important to say that if we have any of these problems, before assuming that it is due to repressed emotions, it is very important to see a doctor to make sure that it is not due to a medical disease 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 necessary to see a psychologist, start psychotherapy and learn strategies to assertively release this emotional tension.

3. Depression and anxiety

Poorly managed emotions can bring with them 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 because we do not know the cause of our emotional tension, we may begin to feel worse, reaching the point of developing a depressive or anxiety disorder.

4. Medication dependence

Closely related to somatization, it often happens that after feeling back pain and headaches, we resort to drugs. These drugs 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 entails a high risk of falling into an addiction problem. a great risk of falling into a problem of addiction because, on the one hand, the pain will not disappear because its cause is emotional and, secondly, because the person taking the drugs may overdo it with the quantities 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 to release them, in addition to learning to properly manage our emotional state. For this reason it is so important to go to psychotherapy from time to time, learning the right emotional tools to prevent emotions from getting trapped inside us.