Do you keep your emotions in check? Are you often trying to avoid “losing control” at all costs?
How often are you holding back, withdrawing, or distancing yourself in self-protection? Does crying in public feel like something to apologize for—even when you’re grieving?
A stiff upper lip ignores how and why your emotions work. It’s okay to be strong. But keep in mind that strength takes many forms. There is beauty and empowerment in the ability to acknowledge and accept how varied emotions can be. In fact, burying, avoiding, and diminishing your emotions may cause you to miss out on important seasons of growth and insight. Let’s consider some emotional basics before you miss too much:
What kind of emotions are you experiencing?
Primary emotions?
As you might imagine, this is what we feel first. Such reactions occur automatically, without conscious thought. Some common examples are joy, fear, sadness, and anger. Primary emotions are often transient.
Secondary emotions?
This is what you feel next. Primary emotions sometimes cause secondary emotions. However, this next wave of feelings usually arises thanks to the sudden appearance of complex chains of thinking. Therefore, secondary emotions are far more complicated, nuanced, and lasting.
Do we underrate our emotions?
Emotions and their importance are indeed often underrated. Many of us focus more on our abs or weight loss than our feelings of sorrow, longing, or guilt! Meanwhile, what we feel and why we feel it may explain exactly how our appearance came to seem so important. Think about it:
If we express discomfort? We are called “negative.”
If we share feelings openly? We’re labeled “dramatic.”
If we disagree reasonably? We might earn the label “difficult.”
If we show grief or sadness? We are considered “weak.”
The desire to seem “normal”, okay, or in control may lead us to suppress our emotions. So, we learn to hide emotion and be strong. We attempt to take one for the team and stuff the way we feel into a mass of roiling, confusing, undefined responses.
Why is it harmful to suppress our emotions?
Perhaps the most important answer to this question is: You can’t suppress your emotions. Unexpressed emotions will manifest somehow, somewhere—even if that means they are aimed inward.
Eventually, avoiding emotions will hurt your health, undermine your relationships, crush your self-esteem, squelch your creativity, and so much more.
Translation: We need to accept and respect our emotions to live well.
6 Ways Expressing Your Emotions is Useful and Powerful for Optimal Living
1. It releases stress.
Stress—good or bad—needs release. Emotions are the valve. Do the internal work to best learn how to regulate that valve.
2. It keeps you healthy.
Less stress and self-control improve your health. Bottled-up emotions wreak havoc on our bodies.
3. It allows for better communication.
How can others know who we are and what we want unless we express our emotions? Similarly, when we know how other people feel, we can develop more trust with them.
4. It enables deeper relationships.
Ask yourself why you like another person. Your answer will usually involve descriptions of the emotions you feel in response to them. Being around someone who suppresses their emotions can negatively influence your connection with them.
5. It drives you towards your goals and purpose.
Feeling and expressing passion is a driving force for success in any realm. Emotions fuel creative expression. Appreciating our emotions allows us to wake each morning with a sense of mission.
6. It makes you who you are.
Are you the person who cries at sad TV commercials? How many people know you as the one always ready to laugh or offer words of support? Expressing your emotions puts you and others in touch with the truest version of who you are.
Tuning into our emotions is something we can learn. But it helps to have help. Working with a therapist is a proven path toward this goal.
Our emotions exist to guide, protect, and improve us. Avoiding them hurts us and keeps us linked to our pasts, trauma, and unhealthy relationships. Accepting and understanding our feelings will open us up in ways we didn’t even know existed.
Whatever path you choose, bring your emotions along. Share them and let them inform you. Let’s talk more about this soon. Read more about depression counseling and contact me soon for a consultation.