Pent-up Emotions

There are times in our lives when we feel emotionally blocked and when we don’t know exactly how to express what we are feeling. We may not even be able to figure out how we are really doing. We just perceive something vaguely without our being able to clearly see the contours of the whole.

The fact is that at some moments in our lives, for various reasons, our emotions get pent up. They seem like they’re trapped in a cage that they don’t want to get out of, and at the same time they create that feeling of discomfort in us that can affect our bodies and our relationships with others.

“Each of us is the maker of our own weather. We determine the color of the sky of the emotional universe in which we live. “

Fulton J. Sheen

Has this happened to you before?

Take a minute to think about it.

You may have had a few months of sadness before, but were unable to cry to let these feelings out or share them with others. Perhaps you felt completely powerless in the face of a situation that you found unfair, but you kept your silence. You didn’t know how to identify your anger over disappointment. Maybe you didn’t show how happy you are because you were afraid that you might hurt other people’s feelings or maybe you just had the feeling that you didn’t know how you felt , what you wanted or what The direction your life has just taken.

You kept all of that to yourself. You have clung tightly to this poison, like a person holds an expensive treasure in its embrace.

Whatever the situation you are going through, you do not know how to fully express yourself and therefore you suppress your emotions. These are then kept pent up, which means nothing other than that they are blocked and accumulated in you.

If you keep your emotions within, they become a burden, which in turn creates a dangerous emotional burden that is difficult to carry. Sometimes it even affects our body.

We have to dig a little deeper

If we no longer know and feel what we are feeling, whether consciously or unconsciously, we also lose the connection to ourselves.

Feelings are necessary and there is a point that we should feel them. It is really important that you allow yourself to feel it. It is a privilege to express them, because they form a connection with which we can get to know ourselves and our needs better.

What happens in most cases, however, is that we have learned from childhood to suppress our emotions because they were thought to be dangerous and it therefore seemed normal to deny them and keep them under control. In this way, we forget the ability to experience it from childhood. The result is that they show effects in the subconscious part of our mind.

But our emotions cannot be overcome if they are not expressed. Then in some way they still stay in us, in our body and affect us.

The problem is, pent-up emotions can develop into a habit of how we deal with life. As adults, we then have the feeling that it is totally normal to block one’s emotions and in this way protect oneself from emotional pain.

So then, in addition to the other burdens, we load ourselves into a great heap of suppressed pain, which continues to grow, blocking our real needs and replacing them with the wrong ones. That way we will never be able to develop and grow, so we limit ourselves.

The connection to what we feel breaks off and we no longer take responsibility for it. Our inner voice then falls on deaf ears and we only live superficially with a kind of autopilot.

Maybe we’re scared of having feelings. Maybe it’s difficult for us to express what happened to us on an emotional level and maybe we don’t want to have to go through such pain again. However, regaining the ability to express one’s feelings is a fundamental step if we are to get well.

As we mentioned earlier, the problem begins where we pent up or suppress what we feel. If we are unable to see our own wounds, we go through our lives numbly, as if we were sleeping, because feelings, our emotions, are energy and if we do not express them we will eventually lose them completely.

There is nothing wrong with getting ourselves to do it from time to time – and this is especially true in situations that are particularly important to us – to look at our current feelings and reflect on them for a few minutes with honesty.

It is necessary that we accept the full range of our feelings in order to have a full life. But we should also be careful not to act out it in too extreme forms. The secret is the right balance, a healthy mediocrity.

It is not so much about the intensity of the feelings, but rather that we are aware that our emotions can serve as indicators or as an alarm for what is going on inside us.