These past few weeks, I have been so busy that I fail to pay attention to my emotions. I was awash by waves of anger, disappointment, and sadness but I chose to leave an impression of indifference. I pretended as though I didn’t really care.
Unfortunately, bottling up my emotions did more harm than good. Although my intention was to pretend that I was OK, I was actually not!
I just felt like it was the right thing to do to prevent arguments or worse, a shouting match. I was putting a pressure on myself and wore a facade to hide my emotions. I knew that I was only making a fool of myself.
I was holding onto a strange belief that keeping emotions to myself will make me feel better. Again, I was wrong.
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5 Struggles of someone with bottled up emotion:
1. Giving attitude here and there is a survival mechanism you use to avoid exploding. It’s a way of slightly sedating a potential blow-up temporarily.
2. The silent treatment isn’t something you intend to use childishly, but more to get your point across. Silence is like an uncomfortable comfort zone for you to hold things in but also make it clear that you’re not thrilled with someone.
3. When you’re in a relationship and don’t want to hurt your partner’s feelings, you’ll hold things in as an unspoken favor, saving them from your potentially upsetting honest thoughts.
4. Innocent bystanders and undeserving individuals are at risk when you finally reach your boiling point. They aren’t the cause of your frustration but get the brunt of the punishment.
5. You understand how different opinions & feelings are. You may speak your mind and share your views, but when it comes to feelings you’ll hold off.
We cannot simply suppress our emotions in the long run and expect that everything will be fine. Every single emotion that we store inside just adds up and compresses to the point of explosion. This is why we need to find a way to release these emotions. It doesn’t always have to be in a way that will hurt others.
Many times by simply writing them down will work as a way of releasing them, if these emotions are very negative by nature one great technique that I learned was to write every single negative word that came to mind, feel it one last time as you write it on a piece of paper. Then burn the paper. It will work as a way to let these emotions go and you will feel more at peace.
See a full list of struggles here: Source
