Sometimes It’s OK to Be Emotional

On a tough day, you may feel as though you’d like to hide in a corner and let your frustration and sadness just wash all over you. However, you know that, as a grown-up, you just have to be strong. Children cry when they’re upset, not mature adults.

However, the suppression of emotions can also take its toll when this becomes a regular way of coping. Physiologically, the immune system doesn’t like it when it has to work overtime to stifle negative feelings, particularly as this can lead to unhealthy outcomes such as inflammatory reactions. Even the brain gets tired.

From the perspective of cognitive theories of coping, there is no one “best” way to handle the flood of negative emotions that occur when everything seems to be going wrong. Generally, though, there is a hidden assumption that it’s better to try to fix things than to just hope for the best or emote all over the place. This view might be changing, though, as a new large-scale study suggests.

The Value of Emotional Coping

According to University of California Irvine’s Michael Hoyt and colleagues (2024), it’s not altogether clear that emotional expression is all that bad. Research on the relationship between “emotional approach coping (EAC)” and health provides mixed results. EAC could “exert a salutary impact on physical and psychological health,” but so far research fails to show specific “outcomes across health domains.” The purpose of the UCI study was to subject these previous studies to the rigorous method known as meta-analysis, in which results from a large group of previously conducted studies are fed into one statistical formula.

Before turning to the specifics of their method, it is important to break EAC down into its subcomponents, as defined by the authors. EAC is made up of the facets of emotional processing (EP) and emotional expression (EE). In EP, you acknowledge your feelings and try to understand them, and in EE, you communicate your feelings through verbal and nonverbal methods.

Perhaps a good friend snubs you, and you’re feeling hurt and betrayed. In EP, you would try to analyze your feelings and perhaps figure out why the snub felt so bad. In EE, you would tell your friend, or someone else, as a way to obtain relief.

There can be a downside to EP, though, as Hoyt et al. suggest: “EP could dissolve into negative repetitive thoughts.” EE is usually good for mental health, but it could also backfire if you express your emotions at the wrong time and place.

Testing Emotional Coping’s Plusses and Minuses

Across an astounding 32,400 studies pulled out of online databases, only 86 studies met the criteria for inclusion such as using a pure measure of EAC, being subjected to rigorous review before publication, and using quantitative methods. This still left a large enough sample size to permit the authors to run statistical tests as each study used, on average, samples of 220 participants.

To give you an idea of how EAC was measured, rate yourself on EP with this item: “I take time to figure out what I’m really feeling,” and on EE with: “I feel free to express my emotions.” The health domains included a range of physiological markers (e.g., cortisol levels), mental/emotional distress, life satisfaction, positive affect, engagement in fulfilling social roles, resilience (self-esteem, autonomy), and what the authors called “risk-related psychological adjustment” consisting of neuroticism and appraisals of threat.

The balance sheet reveals where EAC has its advantages and disadvantages. Overall, there were benefits to EAC in terms of health-related biomarkers, physical health and functioning, and resilience. EAC seemed to take its toll on emotional and mental health domains and risk-related psychological adjustment. The authors reasoned that neuroticism and perceptions of threat could result in an intensification of negative emotions, versus resilience-related factors that allow people to engage perhaps in more effective emotional processing.

These findings support what cognitive theories have said all along, which is that “coping efforts are not inherently adaptive or maladaptive.” What the findings do show is that the maladaptive side of emotional coping comes about when processing mechanisms get stuck and focus only on the negative. It’s possible, then, that EP without EE becomes the culprit in leading to poorer health outcomes.

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Using Emotional Coping to Your Advantage.

One clear implication of this large and well-conducted study is leaving your emotions unexamined isn’t the best strategy for maintaining your health. When it comes to coping, the findings also highlight the “approach” part of EAC. You “intentionally” process and express your emotions, not just let them wash over you as a response to bad situations.

Another implication related to earlier studies by Hoyt and colleagues (2016) is based on the distinction between constructive and unconstructive uses of EP. In constructive EP, you make some sort of plan, and in unconstructive EP, you ruminate. Rumination appears to be where emotional coping becomes a problem. If you can plan based on the understanding you derive from your processing of the situation, then you are on your way toward managing the stressful situation. With respect to your seemingly unending set of daily challenges, with constructive EP you would acknowledge that you’re feeling panicky, but then come up with a set of priorities to put those challenges on some sort of schedule.

EAP, the UCI authors go on to suggest, could be an important component of interventions in medical settings. Previous studies have shown benefits of emotion-based therapy for patient populations such as cancer survivors. People in chronic pain, similarly, have seemed to benefit from therapy based on promoting EAC.

To sum up, the ability to unpack and then use your emotions toward a positive end appears to have benefits to physical and psychological health. Your emotions may not always be the most pleasant, but they can guide you to a more fulfilling life pathway.