RAW OR WAR: Why You Should Stop Suppressing Your Emotions Now
Breaking the Cycle: Cry as if your mental health depends on it, because it does.
I cried like a baby last night and it is okay.
Some emotions are messy, some are intense, some are “inconvenient”.
I think I had them all last week, hence the cry-out-loud Friday.
Overwhelmed for a few days, suppressing, not having enough time to pause and hear my own emotions, I couldn’t take it anymore.
In such situations, one move and you feel like you are breaking.
Spoiler alert uno: You may feel broken but you are not.
Spoiler alert dos: You have been strong for too long so your emotions tell you - or yell at you: “Be even stronger and release us now”.
Once I released - cried a lot, talked a lot (incoherently), wrote a lot - I felt reborn.
I even laughed (which felt impossible 30 minutes prior).
Then I reflected on what drove me to this point.
Suppressing vs Repressing: What is the difference? (and how does it feel different?)
Suppressing emotions means you are consciously deciding to shove them aside.
You are fully aware that you are pissed off or sad, but you choose to bottle it up and deal with it later (or never.. until the body releases them in its own way).
Emotional suppression is that short-term strategy you feel like you need to use “just this once” to get over something without an “inappropriate” emotion.
It might sound something like:
I am going to pretend that I am not furious right now because flipping my lid at this business meeting might not be the best career move.
Repressing emotions, on the other hand, means that your brain is deciding to shove your emotions aside.
You aren’t all that aware of it happening, and you might not even realize how your mind is influencing your behaviour or feelings.
Emotional repression is that long-term strategy your mind has gotten accustomed to for the sake of survival.
Regardless of which one you identify more with, how you, I, we handle emotions can either make us or break us.
SUPPRESSED: The Short-Term Fix That Backfires
The choice to hide the emotions is yours.
Ouch.
Suppressed emotions make sure that your sympathetic nervous system - your Superhero mode - is activated much longer than it should be.
(I think mine did not turn off for a whole week.)
Get to know your nervous system:
This Superhero overstimulation brings:
A sympathetic overdrive that keeps your heart up, spikes your blood pressure and your body keeps churning out more and more stress hormones.
If not dealt with, it can lead to anxiety, insomnia, high blood pressure, and even a weakened immune system.
The parasympathetic branch - the chill mode - feels impossible to reach.
You feel like you can’t rest (and that you could cry a little more, or a lot more) because all the stress hormones do not allow for your parasympathetic system to do its job properly.
So, you and your body don’t get the time to heal and recover.
REPRESSED: The Silent Killer
The choice to hide the emotions is made by your brain, which makes emotional repression a whole different beast.
When I had to deal with that (as well, yes, I have had it all!), I remember drawing a tornado: you kind of feel like something is off, then you see it (in body and immune system collapse, let’s say), then it hits you back. A spot-on metaphor?
Even if you are not consciously aware of your repressed emotions, your body is, so you can partially sense that there is an imbalance in the making.
(If you relate to this, nurture Body Consciousness ASAP.)
Few signals are being sent to you thanks to the Superhero Sympathetic mode, keeping you slightly triggered. All the time.
This is called low-grade, chronic stress and it manifests in tension headaches, digestive problems and troubles with the heart - as if you don’t have enough on your plate already.
While suppressing your emotions means that you are overstimulating the Superhero, in repressing your emotions you sabotage the Superhero.
And paralyse the Chill Mode.
Imagine this, your body already works as if a background program is slowly wearing it down so there is not enough battery to turn on the chill mode.
While your body deals with the hidden stressors, your parasympathetic nervous system will never be able to fully activate.
“Do tears not yet spilt wait in small lakes?
Or are they invisible rivers that run toward sadness?”
―Pablo Neruda, The Book of Questions ―
Why crying my eyes out allowed me to laugh again?
The short answer:
The long answer:
The truth is, most people shy away from crying.
Crying is a natural response to a variety of emotions - sadness, frustration, even overwhelming joy.
It is our body’s way of processing and releasing emotional tension.
It is our body’s way of self-regulating.
The parasympathetic nervous system is supported to do its thing and help us rest and digest.
When we cry, especially those deep, sobbing cries, our body switches gears from the sympathetic branch (fight-or-flight) to the parasympathetic (release-rest-and-digest).
Our body slows down its heart rate, deepens our breathing, and soon - a wave of calm washes over us.
Chronic high levels of cortisol lead to all sorts of health problems.
Cortisol is a hasty little hormone that is pumped out when we are stressed, and the emotional tears contain this little bugger.
When you cry, you literally flush the cortisol out of your system (there is plenty of research that shows that our cortisol levels drop after a good crying session).
We cleanse the body from cortisol and welcome neurotransmitters that help in mood regulation and pain relief, namely oxytocin and endorphins.
We soothe our brains and activate the rest-and-digest mode.
It is not only an immediate cortisol-drop relief, it is a form of long-lasting self-regulation.
Think of crying as emotional maintenance.
If we ignore the feelings and bottle them up - just like we have been told to do, unfortunately - we set ourselves up for a breakdown.
Letting it all out - even through crying - helps you begin processing what is going on.
Treat it as such - as a beginning.
Our body hits reset on our emotional state, our actions lead the way onwards.
I had to switch from “I” and “you” to we.
We are taught that crying is a sign of weakness.
We are shamed away from our raw emotions.
We are shamed away from our raw emotions without realising that
the opposite of “raw” emotions is “war emotions”,
war with our emotions.
I don’t want to be at war with my emotions.
I want to be at peace.
From my beginning to yours,
From my peace to yours,
Katrin