Repressed emotions: what are they, why are they saved and how to release them

It seems that some emotions have a right to exist and others must be hidden. Sometimes it is fear that is rejected, sometimes it is anger, sometimes it is sadness or joy. From the impact they have abroad, as children, we learn to accept or filter our emotions, giving the right to some exist and to be manifested, while others, not pleasant, are repressed and frozen or replaced by accepted emotions and encouraged. In this Psychology-Online article, we will see what are repressed emotions, why are they stored and how to release them.

Index

1. What are repressed emotions
2. What are the repressed emotions
3. Symptoms of repressed emotions
4. Consequences of repressed emotions
5. How to release repressed emotions

Repress feelings that they do harm does not mean to make them disappear; in fact, generally they get stronger and bigger, due to all the pressure it takes to keep them hidden. Not paying attention to the more difficult emotions or trying to distract yourself from feeling them doesn't make them go away.

The psychoanalyst Winnicot has coined the expression self-containment, which means facing the most painful or difficult emotions alone, that is, the opposite attitude of asking for help. Therefore, the people who indulge are those who have given up, or never started, addressing the environment around them in case of discomfort. The result is the taking of an attitude of impassivity, what could be called "playing a bad hand well", or continuing "straight on your own way".

All emotions are essential for our safety and well-being, they are all fine and we need them. But we are used to considering some emotions negative, not only because they disturb our stillness, but also because society has attributed a moral value to them that marks them as reprehensible. This is the case of:

• Go to
• Sadness
• Jealousy
• Guilt

This cultural process has hurt us a lot: denying or suppressing anger or aggressiveness Without finding other means of escape, for example, it has generated increasingly frequent totally irrational explosions of violence. On the contrary, the attribution of an absolutely positive value to joy and serenity made them become the only emotions we wanted to experience, feeding an unrealistic expectation. In this article we specifically talk about Anger Attacks: Why They Happen and How to Control Them.

In ancient medicine, the organs were considered the place of emotions and influenced by them, but the current psychosomatic approach reevaluates this conception, recognizing emotions as a crucial role in our health condition and in the origin of disorders. The relationship between the emotions and the organs of the body is partly physiological and partly symbolic:

• The intestine is scrambled for fear and anxiety, one of the organs most related to emotions.
• The heart is the metronome of our moods, since emotions alter the rhythm of the heartbeat and they can affect blood pressure.
• The stomach ache it signals undigested emotions, as nausea and burning are often a reflection of our moods towards people and situations that we cannot swallow.
• Other symptoms are, as we said, outbursts of anger or acute emotional disturbances.
• Another symptom that emotions are repulsed is not being aware of what they feel said emotions and see them as negative. For example, believing that one never gets angry or never feels angry.

Repressed emotions can erase all the joys and pleasures of life: when the world of emotions not shared, loneliness and fear may be felt, because unshared painful feelings tend to grow up. Repressed emotions reappear in the form of neurotic symptoms, physical illness, or compulsive behaviors, causing suffering to themselves and often also to others. It is like the principle of physics that states that energy can never be destroyed, only transformed.

Alexander Lowen, father of bioenergy, has often stated in his works that all strongly retained emotions, not adequately expressed, can become objects of somatization. Here we explain What is somatization in psychology. In other words, repressed, held, unprocessed feelings and emotions can sometimes be expressed indirectly through the body in the form of physical discomfort and pain. Forced anger, withheld pain, withheld fear, unexpressed joy, unspoken feelings, often can cause physical discomfort until creating true biochemical modifications within the organism. Retaining emotions is undoubtedly one of the highest sources of stress for the body. Some of the common related disorders are:

• Fibromyalgia
• Chronic fatigue
• Tension headache
• Somatization disorder
• Spastic colitis (irritable bowel)
• Psychosomatic dermatitis
• Chronic pain

Let's see some keys to release repressed emotions:

1. Let's listen to each other, precisely paying more attention to body signals which the physicist tries, too often in vain, to send us. Do we perceive a tension within us? A background murmur? A chronic dissatisfaction?
2. Once the message is received, we try to read it, understand its sourceWhat part of us is trying hard to come out on top? The more we get used to staying, the more difficult it will be to start this process at first.
3. To educate and educate ourselves in the expression of emotions and feelings, it is necessary, first of all, that all of them be welcomed as natural expressions, precisely because they all have their own place within the person.
4. To welcome means accept calmly, naturally, without reproach or belittling or mocking, and to embrace naturally you need to take time and think about what is happening.
5. When you have repressed feelings, you can ask someone for help that can understand us: you don't always have to put up with it, alone.

This article is merely informative, in Psychology-Online we do not have the power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.

If you want to read more articles similar to Repressed emotions: what are they, why are they saved and how to release them, we recommend that you enter our category of Emotions.

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