Causes And Consequences Of Repressed Feelings

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

How do repressed feelings arise? What are the consequences? What are the negative and positive aspects of this process?

In every family system there is a feeling that is conventionally considered negative, and accordingly, its manifestation is treated badly. For example, a child is not allowed to feel anger in the family circle, swear, bully and fight, shout: “Mom! You are bad! . For the manifestation of such feelings, he is punished - they beat him, restrict communication, restrain him with a contemptuous look and ignore him.

It is at this moment that the child realizes that his behavior is unacceptable and unworthy: “My family does not accept this. They will stop loving me, they will abandon me and reject me. Better then, I reject my feelings and do everything not to experience them. I have to match my family in order to be accepted by my family. This decision is easy to explain - every person has a need to belong to some system (family, education system, team).

This is how we, together with our family, learn not to feel any feelings. It can be not only anger - envy, aggression, jealousy, etc. Most often, if it says “we are never jealous, we are never angry,” it means that the feeling is forbidden for a person.

Absolutely all senses fulfill their function. For example, if a person stops feeling anger, he will not be able to defend himself and give back to the offender, he will not even be able to take something useful and pleasant for himself from the world around him. As a result, people believe that a person is modest and a little withdrawn. There is one more nuance - when a person hides from himself a huge number of feelings, the problem is in childhood. Why is this happening? To be good, you need to have good and positive feelings. Accordingly, a person begins to hide his real emotions from himself, but the people around him feel false.

As a result, as a rule, there is no trust in the person: “There is something incomprehensible in him, I'd better stay away from him, just in case! This person cannot trust himself. " What's the catch? It will not work to hide your feelings forever behind a dense screen - periodically the veil falls (for example, during periods of emotional stress, in a state of alcoholic intoxication or during an illness), and real feelings break out. Depending on what feeling is being experienced at a given moment in time, the situation may resemble a "funnel of trauma" or an affective state. As a result, a person becomes even more ashamed and scared of the fact that he cannot control himself. In reality, these feelings are simply not familiar to him, therefore, deep down in his soul, the questions arise: “What is it that lives in me?

This is something scary, isn't it? " Often, it is against the background of such experiences that people turn to therapy. A lot of energy and strength is spent to suppress and contain unwanted feelings. Every minute in the subconscious it sounds: "I'm not angry, I'm not angry!" A person may not notice this whole process, but the psyche is working hard to process one, then another feeling. As a result, 2/3 of consciousness can only be spent on keeping emotions in the "box" so that it does not open and release something outside.

Many people who have undergone the course of therapy note that after the sessions they began to feel inner fullness, as if “there were more of them”: memory and perception improved, IQ became higher. What is the reason for this? The thing is that the psyche does not work inward to contain traumas, but outward, for development. As a rule, the developmental process starts only after working through some of the traumatic experiences (including feelings that were forbidden in the family).

A rather unpleasant and terrible experience for a child when he wants tenderness, love, attention and care, but in the family the manifestation of such feelings is not accepted, as a result it becomes a systemic non-experience of tenderness. When, in adulthood, a person with such a childhood trauma begins to like someone, he will be skeptical about the manifestation of feelings of tenderness: “I want to feel tenderness for this person, but this is unacceptable! That's impossible! . Thus, an escape from intimacy is manifested. Why? The person believes that he ceases to belong to his family.

At the moment when the psyche cannot withstand internal stress and is no longer able to further restrain all feelings, they burst outward, onto the body: regular headaches, stomach pains, pressure, maybe even frequent or sluggish flu begin.

Alas, in the CIS countries, about 90% of the population is sure that a colossal level of emotional stress is normal! They are used to living in a constant emotional tone. As a rule, restraining the repression of each of the emotions corresponds to a certain muscle clamp: anger - in the hands, shame - in the pelvic region, etc. The American psychoanalyst Alexander Lowen and Otto Rank, a follower of Sigmund Freud, once worked on this issue.

Thus, holding back emotions affects tension in the body. However, it is sometimes impossible to see this connection the first time, it is worth carefully observing your life for some time.

What do we lose if we don't show anger? We cannot protect ourselves emotionally and physically, we deprive ourselves of the opportunity to take something from the world, to “grab” ourselves a piece under the sun. In addition, people often think of such people that they are modest and lethargic, do not have their own opinion.

What do those devoid of envy lose? Relatively speaking, a connection with oneself. “White” envy is a kind of indicator of a person's striving for a better life: “I want to live like this person! I want to have hair like this! I want to have such skills! “Black” envy becomes at the moment when there is too much gulf between a person and who he wants to become (“That's it, I can't reach such heights!”), So he makes things worse for himself.

When tenderness is repressed, we lose love within ourselves. Love is rarely born out of emptiness; it begins with deep tenderness. When this feeling remains within us, there is no pleasure in giving away a part of ourselves and receiving warmth in return, it is very painful.

By suppressing our feelings, we still lose something. You need to know the real cost of such losses and make a conscious decision for yourself: to work on showing hidden feelings, not to perceive them as forbidden and live life to the fullest, or to shoulder an exorbitant burden and constantly live the emotions that were forbidden in childhood.