We are living in a world that allows us to apply filters and mask our feelings from time to time, which has us wondering whether we are allowed to live and express ourselves to the fullest extent. The Doe allows people to be themselves by being true to their opinions and openly expressing what they feel and think about world situations and circumstances.
As we grow up, we are subconsciously taught to keep mum about certain situations and pretend that everything is fine. Sometimes we don’t want to argue or make a situation worse than before. If you occasionally suppress your emotions and honest opinions, it doesn’t usually cause problems as you can work through your problems in healthy ways. However, if it turns into a habit that you cannot break yourself free from, it can affect your mental health.
Suppressing one’s emotions can turn into a pattern, which can even affect your ability to express yourself freely and authentically. If you are wondering why people hide their feelings, here are a few reasons:
Avoiding Weakness
We live in a world where emotions are seen as a weakness. People feel vulnerable when they expose their softer side to the world. Besides, emotional expression is also linked with the fear of being judged and being looked down upon by others because you failed to get yourself together. Resultantly, most people try to hide their sadness, frustration, and other “seemingly” negative emotions.
Avoiding Hurting Others
Sometimes, we also become concerned about our loved ones who are living with us. People hide their emotions to save and protect their relationships. When someone we deeply care about does something that is upsetting to us, we go out of our way to hide our annoyance to save our relationship.
This is specifically true for conflict-avoiding personalities who don’t want to trigger a conflict. Some people also doubt their own ability to handle a conflict; hence, they choose to suppress and hide their emotions altogether.
How do Suppression of Emotion Affect Your Mental Health
It can cause disruptive communication by hiding your emotion and making it challenging for you to get a clear picture and navigate through a conflict. The emotional build-up can cause you to feel angry and resentful, while you might start to avoid people and even lose valuable relationships.
Emotional suppression can also turn into a solid habit, which can happen quite unconsciously. You might also start to feel indifferent towards your own feelings. Such emotional build-up is usually caused by the pretension that you lack certain feelings and emotions, especially anger and resentment.
Suppression of emotions can lead to early death. Believe it or not, suppressing emotions has serious impacts on one’s physical and mental health, so it is essential to be honest about one’s feelings and emotions. Trust us when we tell you that you are doing yourself no favor by keeping silent about your emotions, which is why you need to be vocal.
