Emotional Repression: How To Stop Suppressing Your Feelings
Many people struggle with discrediting their emotions, adopting a ‘get on with it’ approach to life. This is totally fair, since most of us weren’t taught what to do with big emotions. Instead, we learned to push them down, or wait until they pass. But ignoring how we feel doesn’t make the emotions disappear, it just makes them louder later on when they reach a point of overload. Learning to work with your emotions, rather than against them, is a skill. And like any skill, it get’s easier with practice. This guide will help you to start valuing your emotions, notice when they show up and learn to accept them without judgment.
1. Start Valuing the Importance of Emotions
One of the common reasons people struggle with discrediting their emotions, stems from an underlying belief that emotions are fundamentally ‘bad’. You can tell yourself your emotions are valid as much as you want, but unless you believe it, you may struggle to feel it. Inherently, the first step to stopping emotional suppression is to start acknowledging the vital role emotions play. Emotions are critical for survival. From an evolutionary perspective, crying signals to the community, ‘this person needs comfort’. Emotions are our mammalian brain’s way of getting our needs met. Just like our body signals tiredness to push us to rest, emotions also drive us to act. For example, fear triggers us to take precautions, and anger triggers us to defend ourselves or set boundaries.
Yes, there are limits to emotions, otherwise we wouldn’t have our ‘reasoning’ brain. However, pure logic leads to paralysis. Neuroscience research analysing a man referred to as EVR, who lost parts of his brain that generate emotions but had his reasoning intact, found he had difficulties even making small decisions, like choosing a restaurant. Why? Because he was unable to determine what ‘felt better’. Essentially, logic can compare facts, but it cannot assign value to guide us in decision-making in the same way that emotions can. Starting to see the value the role of emotions plays in your life, is the first step in refraining from suppressing them.
2. Begin Noticing Where your Emotions are in the Body
Typically, we feel emotions in our body before we are able to name what we are feeling. For example, you might notice tightness in your chest, tension in your shoulders or a racing heartbeat when you are feeling anxious. You might like to try incorporating a ‘body scan’ exercise to connect with your body and emotions. Click here to give a simple body scan exercise a go. If a body scan isn’t for you, you can try a ‘body check-in’ by asking yourself simple questions, such as: ‘Is my body feeling tense or relaxed?’ or ‘Am I feeling low energy or high energy?’ The How We Feel app can help you check in with your mind and body by segmenting emotions into high-energy pleasant or unpleasant, or low-energy pleasant or unpleasant. For example, high-energy unpleasant might be associated with feelings of anger or frustration, whereas high-energy pleasant might be associated with feelings of playfulness or confidence. This free app might be a helpful tool in helping you to tune into your body and emotions.
3. Name and Accept your Feelings
Now that you are mindful of your emotional experience, you can name and validate yourself. When you do this well, you can even cut the intensity of challenging emotions by about half. To do this well, it is good to be specific, not generic. For example, ‘I am feeling disappointed’ instead of just ‘sad’. Be sure to practise distance from your emotions by using the ‘I notice I am feeling X’ format. Another tip is to speak to yourself like you would a friend. If your friend went through a breakup, you wouldn’t say ‘get over it’. You would say, ‘it makes sense you are feeling hurt; rejection is tough’. Mirror this when speaking to yourself. For example, if you are feeling stressed, you can say to yourself, ‘I can tell I am feeling quite stressed, which makes sense given how much I have got on at the moment’.
These are such simple tricks that they often get undervalued as a strategy, but are crucial for self-soothing. Big emotions, like anxiety, often get worse when you are resistant to the feeling. If you make room for the emotion, you allow it to flow through you and pass more readily. If you like, you may also incorporate other strategies to help you move through difficult emotions without suppressing them. For example, you may like to use mindfulness or distraction techniques. Just remember to name and validate your feelings before using any strategies to avoid ongoing patterns of repression.
In short, emotions aren’t obstacles to overcome, they’re signals to understand. When you start valuing them, noticing them in your body, and naming them without judgement, you build a kinder relationship with yourself. It takes practice, but each time you pause and acknowledge what you feel, you’re teaching your nervous system that it’s safe to feel. And that’s the foundation for real resilience.
