Pitfalls of Suppressing Emotions and Pros of Processing Them

“The way out is through.” –Robert Frost

We live in a world where most of us are uncomfortable with our emotions. We have been trained to often see them as problems instead of important information. Managing emotion can be challenging and overwhelming, especially if we weren't taught how to, or no one has accompanied us through a challenging emotion. We all struggle with emotions at times.

Suppressing emotions is a common coping mechanism used to deal with difficult, overwhelming, or unwanted feelings. If you suppress your emotions often, there’s nothing wrong with you; it can just have limitations in certain contexts. It is, though, a natural response when there hasn’t been or isn’t trust or safety in your family or social circle to be vulnerable or feel and express your feelings. While emotional protection is intended to protect us, if overused, this strategy takes up vital brain and body energy that could have otherwise been used to focus on important tasks of your day like work, studying, family time, social outlets, etc.

For decades now, research has suggested that emotional suppression can be counterproductive in most cases. Emotions are meant to come out and at least be heeded and attended to. Built-up, suppressed emotion usually creates physical and emotional health problems in the body, like pains, aches, and frustration, and drains us of vital physical and mental energy. It can also harm relationships, as we bond through sharing our emotional experiences with each other.

Learning to befriend, recognize, identify, and manage your emotions can help you live a better, happier, and more fulfilling life.

Knowing what you’re feeling can be hard at first if you haven’t been able to seek support or haven't found a healthy emotional outlet yet, like exercise, writing, drawing, or listening to certain types of music. Emotional processing abilities or muscles, like any muscles, weaken without practice. The good news is that it’s natural and healthy to process emotion, just like it’s natural to eat, sleep, or breathe.

Don’t get discouraged if it’s very difficult at first, as you can get better at this with time, effort, and practice; your brain and body are meant to learn to process emotion. Accurately identifying a feeling has been shown to help you address it and then process and express it after. I recommend first learning to identify the emotion, then second learning how to process it.

Emotion identification: What am I likely feeling and how do I know?

The core emotions are disgust, anger, shame, guilt, sadness, fear, and happiness. Others are pain, hopelessness, regret, remorse, and stuckness. To learn not to suppress emotion, which is unhealthy, we need to practice identifying, making sense of, and expressing our feelings; so first we have to know what they are. Feelings show us the problem and the solution to the challenges we face. The situation that triggers our emotion(s) can also help us understand ourselves and know what we need. For example, if your partner cheated on you, you’re likely to feel anger, hurt, disappointment, and/or sadness. Those feelings would then reveal that you’d need to assess whether to break up, get closure, and/or seek couple therapy.

Relationships and closeness are built on sharing emotions and experiences; if connecting in relationships is a dance, the music is emotion. We bond by sharing emotions and experiences with each other.

Listening to our own emotions; understanding, processing, and sharing them with others; and them sharing theirs with us is a main way humans connect in most cultures. As you may have guessed from the metaphor, "dancing together" does not work well without the “music” of emotion. There are many different coping mechanisms that people use, but some of the most common ineffective strategies of emotional suppression include (1) avoidance, (2) numbing, and (3) escape.

• Avoidance is when you try to avoid thinking about or dealing with the thing that is causing you stress, often with distractions, like scrolling social media or watching Netflix.
• Numbing is when you try to numb yourself to the pain or stress by using drugs, alcohol, other substances, or compulsive behaviors like pornography, gambling, or out-of-control shopping.
• Escaping is when you try to physically escape from the situation that is causing you stress by running away or leaving.

More specific cons of suppressing emotions

Avoiding, numbing, and escaping generally lead to negative consequences. People who do this may seem to be in control on the outside, but on the inside, this emotional suppression tends to take a toll on the mind and body (i.e., affected sleep and decreased immune function), as well as the person’s work, education, and relationships. This leaves them much less in control, not more. Although well-intended, all three of these common modes of emotional suppression give the emotions more power and can start to control and confine their life. Emotional suppression also often leads to problems such as anxiety, depression, and even physical health problems like heart issues and chronic illnesses. Additionally, suppressed emotions often come out in other ways, such as road rage and aggression.

Emotions Essential Reads

How to Know When You’re Being Emotionally Manipulated

Coincidence or Fate? It Depends on Your Mood

Pros of identifying and processing emotions

What skills have you recently learned that surprised you when you learned them well? Cooking? Learning a language? Learning your emotions is a similar skill you can learn. When you take time to understand your emotions, it leads to a more positive outlook on life, better relationships, and improved physical health. Working through them and expressing them enables us to improve our mental and emotional health. The human brain is simply not designed to ignore emotional information. The good news is it’s never too late to learn to manage your emotions. If our lives are a journey or trip, emotions are the inner compass or GPS system, revealing our most important and pressing needs. Without seeing your GPS (emotions), it’s hard to get to your destination on your trip. For example,

• If you’re feeling sad, we know you need comfort or lost something important.
• If you’re feeling angry, you likely were mistreated and need to fight back or protect yourself.
• If you’re scared: you’re likely anticipating a bad thing happening and need to protect yourself or leave a dangerous situation.

So, the next time you're feeling a strong negative emotion about something, when it’s safe to do so, either alone or with a safe person, I invite you to resist the urge to bottle it up, and instead acknowledge your feelings—identify them in your mind to yourself, verbally or in writing, and let them out in a healthy way. A “healthy” way can mean in a supportive or therapeutic group format, exercise, meditation, journaling, and reaching out to your social supports, among others.

When we try to suppress our emotions, not only do they not just go away; they can even grow stronger and fester in our bodies and mind. Ignoring emotion is, thus, like tuning out essential signals to and from our body and brain, obstructing your success and ability to take care of yourself and act wisely and intentionally.