Life-Changing Advice About Hiding Your Feelings
From the very first breath we take, we begin to experience feelings. We instinctively reveal our ability to show those feelings as we let out a bellow of tearful rage showing our dissatisfaction with our sudden change of living arrangements seconds after exiting our mother’s womb.
We never have problems expressing our feelings throughout infancy and childhood, whether positive or negative. However, by the time we reach adolescence, we are fully acclimated to the human social norm of suppressing our negative feelings.
Little-known facts about feelings revealed.
For the sake of this article, when talking about feelings, I am talking about emotions as well. There is no distinction between the two. However, feelings are different from thoughts, even though people often use the two terms interchangeably.
We experience thoughts and feelings in separate parts of the brain. Deep within the brain, the limbic system is the source of emotions, while thoughts occur in the neocortex or gray matter on the brain’s surface.
Even though we can respond to any situation with both thoughts and feelings, we prioritize our thoughts and often ignore our feelings. When this repeatedly happens, it can impact our mental wellness.
It’s OK to be confused about your feelings.
The term mixed feelings is sometimes misunderstood. Most people think they have mixed feelings if they are unsure how they feel emotionally about something. There’s a reason you often pause when someone asks you how you feel about a situation. It’s because you are not sure.
Mixed feelings occur when you have two or more emotions going on in your mind simultaneously. For example, it is possible to be both angry and sad. Other times you may feel happy and sad or angry and fearful.
Under these circumstances, one emotion may predominate only slightly over the other. As a result, you end up with mixed feelings, which is completely normal and happens more often than you think.
Feelings aren’t good or bad. They just “are.”
Going back to our childhood, we’ve been trained that some emotions are “good” while others are “bad.” Feeling happy was OK because it meant our needs were being met. But anger, fear, and sadness made people uncomfortable. So, people told you, “Don’t be sad,” or “Don’t be afraid, it won’t hurt.”
Anger was usually more acceptable from boys than girls, and fear or sadness was more acceptable from girls than boys. It didn’t take long for us to figure out which feelings we should welcome and which ones we should avoid. As the bad feelings continued, we had fewer ways of expressing them.
To deal with this dilemma, most people have dulled their awareness of emotions in general and accepted that certain feelings are just altogether bad. We’ve learned how to push them aside instead of handling them head-on because we no longer trust ourselves to do so.
Once we learn to accept feelings for what they are, which is just a part of being human, we can begin to live rich and rewarding lives.
Some feelings are cheap, and some cost you a fortune.
Of course, we know that all feelings are not equal. Some are much stronger than others. Being sad because we got laid off at work won’t affect us the same as losing a spouse.
Ignoring your feelings about losing your job may not impact your long-term because you know you’ll get another job. Ignoring the emotions associated with losing a spouse could affect you for the rest of your life.
Life events that have powerful emotions associated with them don’t just go away. If not processed and dealt with properly, they will bury themselves deep inside the subconscious mind, where they can affect your conscious thinking, decision making, and actions indefinitely without you knowing it.
How to get reacquainted with buried feelings.
A method considered a healthy practice for your mental well-being is to reacquaint yourself with lost or buried feelings regularly. This applies to positive and negative emotions.
Have you ever gone back to your old neighborhood and reminisced? Just seeing old houses and landmarks can resurrect thoughts of pleasant memories from the past. This can also stir up buried unpleasant emotions.
If you feel rising levels of anxiety and stress when reliving memories, that is a sign that those emotions have been buried and ignored. It may have been years since you felt them, but now it is like you’re reliving those past events, proving that you have not dealt with them.
Awareness is the first step in what is sometimes called the healing process. You can never put past emotional events behind you until you acknowledge their presence.
Once you have acknowledged that you’re still dealing with these emotions, you can decide how to begin the restoration process through options like meditation or talking about it with a close friend, family member, or professional.
I’ve performed this same method by looking through old photographs. Listening to your favorite old music selections can work as well. Anything that causes you to open your subconscious mind will work.
Let’s say you were in a relationship for years that didn’t end well. If you get sad every time you hear the song that was your favorite when you were a couple, then you have unaddressed issues that need to be resolved.
Think of it as a sort of housekeeping project for your mind. You are opening up hidden doors inside your subconscious mind that have been closed up for years, seeing what’s inside, and throwing out all the garbage for which you have no use. That way, no surprises are waiting to pop out when you least expect it. Repeating this process will lead to improved mental wellness and a happier existence.
