Don’t be so emotional. A statement, I’m sure you’ve heard at least once in your life. But should you ‘not be so emotional’ what happens? Where do they go?

Suppressing emotions is an interesting topic and usually a key talking point during the early stages of client sessions and for very good reason.

If you don’t face suppressed emotions, you’ll stay stuck in getting over it mentality, and it’ll become impossible for you to heal.

I’m going to jump straight to the solution – find an outlet. Avoid the temptation to rely on another to become, or be the solution to finding resolve or emotional release. It is not their responsibility – it is yours. 

Building a coping mechanism to channel emotions is the better alternative than attempting to suppress or diverts emotions into other aspects or areas of life, which are working. This is sadly, and usually what happens – sabotaging the positives in order to provide an emotional boost.

I’ve spoken about the need of three before – in short – if one element of life fails you need to divide that emotional load equally to more than one. If you divert to just one other then that load becomes too much and equally falls to the same fate.

Avoid at all costs contaminating the good in your life.

For most – emotions (movements) overtake our bodies and minds, and all we can do is act on them or wait for them to pass – the issue in large, is they don’t have a clock; time release and the waiting may be difficult. 

At other times, we are able to suppress emotions. It is not only that we fail to act, we do not let ourselves experience them or at least not fully. Ignoring and suppressing that coiled spring well in the knowledge that it will rear its head one day.

What does it mean to not allow oneself to feel something? Where in such cases, do emotions go? How can they come back with a vengeance years later?

Mislabelling.

For most, blocking the experience of an emotion by mislabelling it is the fastest way to ‘move on’. Sometimes, we label sadness as anger, because sadness is weakness — it shows another’s power to inflict on us an unknown injury, pain and discomfort — while anger preserves our dignity and allows us to demonstrate strength.

We may, conversely, interpret anger as sadness, especially when we see anger as inappropriate, as when people are angry at the loss of a loved one. In such cases, we allow ourselves to feel something but not the truth.

In these cases of mislabelling, you might believe that the pain is long gone, but it only moved from the conscious to the subconscious mind where it gained more power over your behaviour.

What happens with the emotions deflected or suppressed temporarily? 

When emotions, particularly negative ones, run deep, when they go to the core of our being and it may not be possible to restore inner peace without yielding to them.

Of course, there are various reasons why postponing emotions may have valid reason. In a time of war, for instance, it may be a survival strategy. If you have small children, you may owe it to them to keep it all together until they are old enough to accept a vulnerable parent and see for themselves.

But for most parts suppressing emotions is NOT a good idea…

So what can be done?

Motion unleashes emotion. MOVE. Whenever it feels difficult to connect with your emotions, move your body. For instance, next time when you get upset, instead of start arguing with someone, get out the house and go for a run, walk or hike. Just get moving.

Improve the quality of your language. You are not a VICTIM so don’t talk like one. Reword your language to ensure that it points you into a good direction. This rewires paths within your brain.

Write it down. This is an old yet powerfully working technique. Write anything that is on your mind for about 15 minutes. At the beginning, you might think, it’s worthless, but after couple of minutes, you’ll get to the core of the real issue.

In summary – emotions are only real for you; so don’t make it about anyone else, they cannot be the solution.

Thanks for listening; there are hundreds of thousands of podcasts, articles and videos out there, and every time you share, like and subscribe, you help me help more people. For more articles remember to visit the website BenjaminBonetti.com and if you think it is time, then take advantage of the introductory sessions that can be found on the booking page.

 

 

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