The Healing Realm

Bottling up your emotions essentially means suppressing your innermost feelings. It is when a person avoids venting what he or she really feels. Many people bottle up their emotions, pretending they don’t exist. When emotions are repressed or suppressed, they don’t disappear like many people think, instead they linger in the background, influencing our thoughts, behaviors, and overall mood. This unprocessed emotional energy often manifests in chronic stress, anxiety, depression, and other mental health issues.

One of the most immediate consequences of emotional suppression is increased stress. When people push their emotions down, it creates an internal pressure that builds over time. This pressure triggers the body’s stress response, or the “fight or flight” response, releasing hormones like cortisol, a hormone meant to help the body cope with short-term stress. However, when this stress is prolonged resulting from constant emotional suppression, it will likely lead to chronic stress.

Neurolaunch.com provides high-quality information about all things related to psychology, human brain function, and behavior. Its article, Turning Off Emotions: The Science, Consequences, and Healthier Alternatives, says “at first glance, the ability to turn off one’s emotions might seem like a superpower. Imagine never feeling hurt, anxious, or sad again!”  The article goes on to say, “In the short term, emotional suppression techniques can provide a sense of relief and control. They might help you maintain composure during a stressful work presentation or avoid an awkward confrontation with a friend. But it’s crucial to understand that these benefits are often fleeting and come at a cost.”

I want to emphasize that consistently suppressing your emotions, avoiding them, and refusing to process them does come at a cost. The article further says,

The long-term psychological effects of habitually suppressing emotions can be severe. It’s like constantly swallowing your words—eventually, you’ll choke. Chronic emotional suppression has been linked to increased rates of anxiety, depression, and even post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). When we consistently push our feelings aside, we deny ourselves the opportunity to process and learn from them, stunting our emotional growth and resilience…But it’s not just our mental health that suffers. The impact on physical health and well-being can be equally concerning. Studies have shown that people who regularly suppress their emotions are more likely to experience a range of health issues, from headaches and digestive problems to cardiovascular disease. It turns out that what we feel in our hearts can quite literally affect our hearts!

There are negative effects on relationships as well which the article elaborates on.  There are many studies that provide convincing evidence that ignoring emotions do indeed harm us. A 2019 study titled, Consequences of Repression of Emotion: Physical Health, Mental Health and General Well Being, concluded “it is clear that expressing  one’s true  emotions and the feeling is crucial to physical health, mental health, and general well being, while a reliance on concealment gives rise to a barrier to good health.”

 In another 2019 study, International Journal of Psychotherapy Practice and Research, it was concluded that  people who repress their emotions are at higher risk for health problems. This study documented research that linked emotional repression with a wide range of both short-term and long-term illnesses, including cancer, heart problems, and physical pain.

According to the results of the study titled, Emotion Risk-Factor in Patients With Cardiac Diseases: The Role of Cognitive Emotion Regulation Strategies, Positive Affect and Negative Affect (A Case-Control Study) “having poor emotion regulation strategies is a risk factor for succumbing to cardiovascular diseases; therefore, it is suggested to help the health of the population by the recognition of emotion regulation strategies in people…”

In the June 2019 study, Does suppressing negative emotion impair subsequent emotions? Two Experience Sampling Studies, it concluded that “these findings add ecologically valid support to the growing body of evidence showing that emotional suppression is not only an ineffective emotion-regulation strategy, but also a costly one.”

In one 2016 study, researchers analyzed historical studies of hiding emotions and they found that hiding negative emotions could increase a person’s risk of stress and depression over time.

Every study related to emotion suppression concluded that doing so is harmful. The bottom line is, refusing to face your emotions will come at a cost, will harm you physically, mentally, and socially. Long term suppression of emotions causes numerous health issues. 

Research suggests that suppressing emotions is associated with high rates of heart disease, as well as autoimmune disorders, ulcers, IBS, and gastrointestinal health complications. Pushing feelings away leads to physical stress on your body. Studies show that holding in feelings has a connection to high cortisol, the hormone released when enduring stress, and that cortisol leads to lower immunity and toxic thinking patterns. Over time, untreated or unrecognized stress can lead to an increased risk of diabetes, problems with memory, aggression, anxiety, and depression.

There is no question, suppression of emotions stresses the body. It is said that stress is the source of all dis-ease. The American Psychological Association’s article, Stress effects on the body, says “stress affects all systems of the body.” 

It is imperative that you learn to process, express, and accept what you are feeling. The fact is, emotions remain in the body until they are acknowledged and expressed. I had to learn the hard way as I started facing my emotions after physical symptoms developed. I assure you, long term suppression of your emotions will harm you!

Author Vironika Tugaleva  says,

There is no great reward for being emotionally withdrawn, no pity prize for bottling your frustration. No one is coming to congratulate your chronic self-repression. By opening up, maybe you will inconvenience some people. Maybe you will trigger some conflict. Maybe you will be rejected, criticized, judged. Everything comes with a price and everything has its compensation. Authenticity may require pain, but it also opens the doors to joy, creativity, self-respect, empathy. Self-repression, on the other hand, costs you all the beauty of the world in exchange for a prison of comfort. Is it really worth it? Isn’t it time to break free?