Bottling up negative emotions like anxiety and anger can disrupt the normal function of your stress hormones called cortisol. This results in lowered immune function and an increased risk of developing a chronic illness. Not expressing your emotions is also a gateway to developing mental health conditions.
Smothering or bottling up emotions is suppressing one's feelings rather than expressing them openly and honestly. Also known as expressive suppression (ES), it is a common technique used to regulate difficult emotions such as fear, anger, and sadness or hide them from others.
Suppressed emotions stay in the body. The effects of suppressed emotions include anxiety, depression, and other stress-related illnesses. Such suppression can lead to alcohol and substance abuse.
While we can't completely eliminate emotions – nor would we want to – we can manage our emotions in such a way that we stay in the driver's seat. This is known as emotional self-regulation. When you develop strong emotional regulation skills, your mental health can improve significantly.
The thing we must remember is that feelings occur for a reason and, just as the body needs to breathe to stay alive, you also need to express your emotions to stay healthy. Our pain, if not let out appropriately, can appear as anger or even rage. If held in, it can tranform into depression or apathy.
Bottling up negative emotions like anxiety and anger can disrupt the normal function of your stress hormones called cortisol. This results in lowered immune function and an increased risk of developing a chronic illness. Not expressing your emotions is also a gateway to developing mental health conditions.
She says the resulting emotional stress can impact your blood pressure, memory and self-esteem. Longer term, there's an increased risk of diabetes and heart disease, says Victoria. And avoiding emotions can also lead to problems with “memory, aggression, anxiety and depression”.
Stronger negative emotions.
When you don't acknowledge your feelings, you are allowing these emotions to become stronger, according to a study from the University of Texas. Emotional outbursts are "your body's way of releasing that pent-up emotion," says clinical psychologist Victoria Tarratt.
Emotional overload often comes from having conflicting feelings, too many feelings happening at once, or not being able to act based on your gut feelings. We have emotions for a reason – they're there to tell us something.
Take time to slow down and be alone, get out into nature, make art, listen to music while you cook your favorite dinner, meditate to cleanse your mind and relax your body, take a bubble bath or a nap to restore.
[ ap-uh-thet-ik ] show ipa. See synonyms for apathetic on Thesaurus.com. adjective. having or showing little or no emotion: apathetic behavior.
Major depressive disorder (MDD)
MDD episodes can last between 6 and 18 months or longer. If you start treatment soon after you experience the first symptoms, you might be more likely to recover and prevent future episodes.
In the short term, it can cause pesky problems such as irritability, anxiety, and poor sleep. But over time, repressing your tears can lead to cardiovascular diseases such as hypertension — or even cancer.
That's completely fine, so long as you're not bottling your emotions up. That being said, if your inability to cry worries you or you're struggling to connect with your feelings, it's important that you take time to explore this. Because it might be a sign that there's something else going on under the surface.
Sometimes the working memory impairments of ADHD allow a momentary emotion to become too strong, flooding the brain with one intense emotion.” Thomas Brown, Ph. D., explains why (and how) ADHD sparks such intense anger, frustration, and hurt.
If you find yourself experiencing moods and emotions that are so intense, that you struggle to calm yourself down, you may be showing signs of being emotionally unstable. You may not possess the skills necessary to calm yourself down, meaning your emotions tend to become more and more aroused.
It's important to note that only a mental health professional can diagnose a mental health condition. Therefore, the only way to receive a definite answer to the question, “Do I have a mental illness, or am I overreacting?”, is to get in touch with a professional at an accredited treatment center.
It affects your confidence and self-awareness, as well as how you interact and communicate with others. You may feel numb or disembodied at times - unable to connect to your bodily sensations, express your emotions or maintain feelings of intimacy.
Negative social experiences and overreliance on social media can make it more difficult to feel emotionally linked to other people. Sometimes a lack of connection might be related to the presence of a mental health condition such as anxiety or depression.
Selective mutism (SM) is an anxiety disorder in which a person who is otherwise capable of speech becomes unable to speak when exposed to specific situations, specific places, or to specific people, one or multiple of which serving as triggers. This is caused by the freeze response.
Intrusive memories
Recurrent, unwanted distressing memories of the traumatic event. Reliving the traumatic event as if it were happening again (flashbacks) Upsetting dreams or nightmares about the traumatic event. Severe emotional distress or physical reactions to something that reminds you of the traumatic event.