What Happens To Us After We Have Suppressed Our Feelings?

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

There are many ways to prevent yourself from experiencing a feeling, to pretend that it is not. We all do this from time to time, and on the one hand, this is a common thing. On the other hand, locked energy requires a splash. If emotions do not find an "officially permitted" outlet, they choose from the following options.

1. Uncontrolled outbreaks

The easiest way to explain this is in anger and irritation. If we regularly get annoyed, but try not to show it, anger builds up, and at some point any little thing can become the last straw that overflows the cup. The risk group includes, of course, peaceful, polite and accommodating people. In other words, those who are afraid of conflict and strive to please others. Those who do not express, but "save". This mechanism manifests itself very clearly, many films have been shot about it, for example, the old, but well-known "I've had enough" and "Anger Management".

But this same mechanism does not only work with anger. This is about other feelings too. For example, suppressed fears can manifest as phobias, nightmares, and panic attacks. And sentimental people who can be moved to tears by a movie or story are, as a rule, those who have a lot of unlived sadness inside. Here are a couple of examples.

I was approached by a woman with panic attacks. After the second decree, her relationship with her husband cooled to the degree of a neighbor. And attempts to fix something did not lead to anything. For a while she lived in this state, then another man appeared in her life, and she began to think about divorce. It was then that these panic attacks appeared. Outwardly, everything was fine and calm, but inside she was tormented by two fears. Firstly, it is scary to leave your husband for another, because building a new relationship is not so easy, and most importantly, there are no guarantees that everything will work out there. On the other hand, it’s scary to leave everything as it is and live your whole life with your “neighbor”. It turns out that she is caught between two fears and cannot choose any of the options. Anxiety accumulated for a long time and manifested itself in the form of panic attacks. When, as a result of our work, she was able to cope with fears and choose how she wants to build her life, the panic attacks disappeared by themselves.

Parents addressed a boy of 8 years old. The boy is unsure of himself, anxious, almost immediately into tears. Several times he cried at school right in the classroom, which caused ridicule from classmates. He came into my office carefully, quietly sat down on a chair and tried to make himself invisible. He answered my questions in monosyllables, almost without looking at me. He looked as if he was greatly guilty in front of me, and I scold him for no reason. In the conversation, we found out that his parents forbid him to cry, and that he must be brave and strong, because he is the future defender of his homeland (dad is a military man). As a result, the child finds himself in a situation where he is not accepted, shamed, scolded and tried to remake. Of course, this does not help him in any way to cope with his tears; on the contrary, it adds despair that he cannot cope. The more he tries to restrain himself, the more he looks like a cup into which tea is poured "with a slide." One drop - and everything will spill out. It was difficult to convince his parents to let him cry, but when they went to this experiment and accepted their son even with tears, the boy became bolder very quickly. It may seem paradoxical, but after two weeks, he learned much better to control his feelings and cope with tears.

Summary. If you periodically have any uncontrollable feeling about a small matter, this means that in fact it often arises in you and you accumulate it, and you notice only when it becomes uncontrollable.

2. Unconscious actions

Usually, people do not attach importance to slips, mistakes, reservations and random actions, but in vain. The discovery that these accidents are far from accidental was made a hundred years ago by Sigmund Freud. He described this in his work The Psychopathology of Everyday Life. Who wants to study this topic in detail, this is the primary source.

Several years ago I noticed that quite often I "accidentally" cut myself when I peel potatoes or rub something on a grater, or I could walk and stumble over a corner. At such moments I began to ask myself what I was just thinking. And then I realized that each of my such minor trauma is associated with the fact that I felt guilt or shame and unknowingly punished myself for "bad" thoughts. Once I stopped blaming myself too much, the injuries stopped.

One day my classmate forgot my name. It was strange, because by that time we had been studying together for several years. Now I understand that he was angry with me for something.

Everyone with children knows that tasks that children do not like (emotion - disgust), they tend to forget:

- What did I tell you to do?

- What?

- Go for sleep now!

Or:

- Misha, have you done your homework?

- Yes.

- Did you learn the poem too?

- Oh, no, I forgot …

My colleagues and I joke that if a wife accidentally spilled tea on her husband, there are two options: if the tea was hot, then she was angry with him, and if it was warm, she just wanted attention.

Summary. Slips, slips, mishearing, accidental injury and forgetfulness are not accidental things. They perform some function and they can be deciphered by learning something important about yourself and your emotions.

3. Psychosomatics

The third way how undigested emotions can manifest itself is psychosomatics, that is, physical diseases that originate in a psychological state. A person, as it were, concludes an unconscious contract within himself:

- I'd rather experience these emotions with my body as a symptom, but I won't face them directly, because it's too unpleasant.

Many books have been written on psychosomatics, so I will give just one example.

My friends had a child with otitis media (ear inflammation) several times a year. When I got to know them better, I understood why this was happening. It was difficult for the child to withstand the constant reproaches that his parents put on him. At some point, the boy just sat down and covered his ears, which meant: “I can't hear this anymore! I want to stop hearing this!"

Summary. Sometimes quite common physical illnesses begin with suppression of emotions.

4. Crazy

Sometimes mental illness is a consequence of the fact that a person cannot cope with his emotions, or protect him from intolerable emotions. For example, one of the psychological theories of the development of schizophrenia introduces the concept of "double ligament". A double ligament is an instruction that contradicts itself, like "stay there, come here." If you communicate with a person with such instructions, his thinking is sometimes disturbed. Especially if it's a child.

As a child, a client of mine had a household duty to vacuum the carpet. When he did this, his mother always found something to find fault with, and he felt guilty. Of course, he hated vacuuming and tried to get away from this case in various ways. But then they called him a parasite and scolded him, and he was again guilty. It turns out such a crooked logic: I am guilty if I do, because I will definitely do badly, and I am guilty if I do not, because I am a parasite. In such a situation, it is impossible to get rid of the feeling of guilt, unless … stop using logic. The logic is dangerous: if one follows from the other, I will again be guilty, and it hurts. I'd rather go crazy, so at least I won't feel guilty.

Often a similar story happens with the expression of anger in children. When a child behaves aggressively, he is scolded. Then he forbids himself to show anger and tries not to show his displeasure in order to avoid reproaches. As a result, such children cannot defend themselves at school or in the yard. For this they are scolded again. Confusion arises in the child's head: I defend myself - they scold, I do not defend - they scold again. Whatever I do, I will be guilty. Children start looking for ways to protect themselves from guilt. One option is to do nothing at all without instructions from the outside. Any independent action is considered dangerous and sacrificed. Depending on the degree of impairment, symptoms can range from infantility and the desire to constantly look for a leading partner to the inability to leave the room.

Summary. Some mental illness has its origins in the upbringing and emotional state of a person.

These options do not contradict each other and do not exclude each other. Nothing prevents the unconscious from alternating ways or mixing them. For example, if a person does not want to go somewhere so much that he is accidentally injured, this is both psychosomatics and an unconscious action.

These mechanisms work unconsciously. Moreover, if we are aware of them, then they stop working. Being aware of your emotions is the key to improving your condition. The good news is that it can be learned.

Being aware and living your emotions is the best option because it saves us from all these troubles. But there is a problem here. Not all emotions are pleasant to experience, otherwise why would we try to get rid of emotions. Learning to be aware is only half the battle; something else is needed. The next step is to understand why I need this emotion now and what to do with it, how to handle it. What to do with it if not suppress it? Where and how to use it in your life? I write about this in my book "Why are emotions needed and what to do with them?"

When we know how to handle our feelings, why we need them and what their function is, they become our friends, we do not need to suppress or avoid them. And they stop being painful because we know how to deal with them.

Alexander Musikhin

Psychologist, psychotherapist, writer