Emotional Suppression makes us Less Powerful
We mostly suppress emotions as a way to avoid expressing them. All social groups beginning with the family, develop their own sets of good manners and behaviors which govern the acceptable and unacceptable times for emotional expression. A society full of people all spontaneously expressing their emotions threatens unending chaos. In order to form polite, civil, working groups, individuals must somehow control their emotional energies. Maturing socially means learning to rein in our natural (but childish) tendency for emotional expression.
Yet while emotional suppression may sometimes serve a useful purpose, inhibiting the free flow of emotional energies over the course of a lifetime causes serious damage to our bodies, minds and spirits. Our efforts to stifle emotion become a stifling of life itself. Though the symptoms vary, most people die from a slow suicide of self strangulation. Therefore we must understand just how badly emotional suppression injures us, even as we find healthier ways to deal with ever flowing emotional energies.
When we suppress an emotion, the energy of that emotion does not go away. Instead it subsides, it sinks deeper. Rather than resolve the emotional energy through some form of response, we choose to hold it inside. Though the immediacy of the feeling may pass, the energy does not. We hold it deep inside and, typically it stays inside.
Mass becomes energy as energy becomes mass. Although emotional energy forms the most subtle stuff, it is stuff nonetheless. If you hold enough of this stuff inside you, then you become energetically “stuffed up,” which carries the same implications as a stuffed nose, stuffed colon, stuffed arteries, or even owning too much stuff.
Energy moves within the body in regular currents and beyond in radiant fields. As emotional suppression becomes an unconscious habit and emotional energy becomes stuffed inside, the free movement of vital energy gradually degrades. Think of a wide rushing river into which one daily throws several large stones. Over the course of a lifetime the river becomes clogged, diminished, and sluggish. Likewise, over the course of a human lifetime the habitual suppression of emotion energy clogs and diminishes the once rushing river of light.
As we clog and diminish the flow of emotional energy we block and interfere with the fundamental design and function of the human organism. This causes system wide dysfunction, with most biological processes failing to operate at full efficiency. Life spans shorten and creative potential declines. Sickness, disease, and general unhappiness all take a larger than necessary role in the human drama. Our bodies and minds struggle through energy-starved lives, while suppressing great wells of life force within.
Emotional suppression inflicts injuries in specific places of the body. This occurs when, especially as children, we must suppress extremely traumatic emotions. The child who has just suffered a severe violation or who has suddenly learned of a huge loss will experience a great burst of emotional energy in response. If for immediately compelling reasons the child suppresses that emotion, then all of the child’s surging energy becomes forcefully jammed somewhere in particular in the body.
Yet while emotional suppression may sometimes serve a useful purpose, inhibiting the free flow of emotional energies over the course of a lifetime causes serious damage to our bodies, minds and spirits. Our efforts to stifle emotion become a stifling of life itself. Though the symptoms vary, most people die from a slow suicide of self strangulation. Therefore we must understand just how badly emotional suppression injures us, even as we find healthier ways to deal with ever flowing emotional energies.
When we suppress an emotion, the energy of that emotion does not go away. Instead it subsides, it sinks deeper. Rather than resolve the emotional energy through some form of response, we choose to hold it inside. Though the immediacy of the feeling may pass, the energy does not. We hold it deep inside and, typically it stays inside.
Mass becomes energy as energy becomes mass. Although emotional energy forms the most subtle stuff, it is stuff nonetheless. If you hold enough of this stuff inside you, then you become energetically “stuffed up,” which carries the same implications as a stuffed nose, stuffed colon, stuffed arteries, or even owning too much stuff.
Energy moves within the body in regular currents and beyond in radiant fields. As emotional suppression becomes an unconscious habit and emotional energy becomes stuffed inside, the free movement of vital energy gradually degrades. Think of a wide rushing river into which one daily throws several large stones. Over the course of a lifetime the river becomes clogged, diminished, and sluggish. Likewise, over the course of a human lifetime the habitual suppression of emotion energy clogs and diminishes the once rushing river of light.
As we clog and diminish the flow of emotional energy we block and interfere with the fundamental design and function of the human organism. This causes system wide dysfunction, with most biological processes failing to operate at full efficiency. Life spans shorten and creative potential declines. Sickness, disease, and general unhappiness all take a larger than necessary role in the human drama. Our bodies and minds struggle through energy-starved lives, while suppressing great wells of life force within.
Emotional suppression inflicts injuries in specific places of the body. This occurs when, especially as children, we must suppress extremely traumatic emotions. The child who has just suffered a severe violation or who has suddenly learned of a huge loss will experience a great burst of emotional energy in response. If for immediately compelling reasons the child suppresses that emotion, then all of the child’s surging energy becomes forcefully jammed somewhere in particular in the body.
The specific location will relate in some way to the specifics of the situation. If the child suffers physical injury, then emotional suppression may occur at the site of the injury. If the child contracts into a grimace or a frown, then emotional energy may lock in the muscles of the face. Anywhere that the child experiences pain or tension during the traumatic event whether it be clenched firsts, upset stomach, spanked bottom, abused genitals, becomes a likely place to harbor suppressed emotional energies. And unless the child later experiences deep healing, the suppressed energies of a traumatic event remain embodied forever.
When a strong charge of vital energy contracts in the body for a long period of time, the energy eventually becomes matter. The energy literally becomes an unhealthy, pathological mass. Suppressed emotional energy can become tumorous, harden arteries, stiffen joints, weaken bones. Suppressed emotional energy can precipitate the onset of cancer in any system or organ of the body. Suppressed emotional energy can undermine the immune system and make a body vulnerable to innumerable illnesses.
Emotional suppression deforms the body. Whenever we suppress an emotion we physically contract some part or parts of the body. In time we develop patterns of repeated emotional suppression, which means that specific parts of the body must engage in chronic tension. Such long term chronic tension eventually alters body form and posture, invariably for the worse.
The “character lines” etched into an older person’s face result from years of tensing the face while struggling with emotional energy. A permanently hunched upper back reveals a person who never made peace with burdens and responsibilities, just as a caved in chest shows us someone overwhelmed with unresolved grief. Years of fearing and resisting sex can tilt the pelvis back and away from other people. Angrily clenching the jaw will eventually grind the enamel off teeth, just as chronically clenching toes will shorten tendons in the feet, with ramifications throughout the body.
Emotional suppression leads to misshapen bodies. The tree will grow as we bend the twig. As human bodies grow, incalculable bending comes from the chronic physical contraction of emotional suppression.
Emotional suppression renders us less capable and responsive. Ideally, energy-in-motion empowers us to deal more effectively with the changes and challenges of life. Through the unconscious habit of suppressing emotional energy, we misplace the very essence of effective response. The person who habitually suppresses all feelings of fear will stand frozen in the road unable to leap out of the way of approaching traffic. The person who suppresses all feelings of sadness will fail to fully resolve painful losses and may always suffer from chronic grief.
When a strong charge of vital energy contracts in the body for a long period of time, the energy eventually becomes matter. The energy literally becomes an unhealthy, pathological mass. Suppressed emotional energy can become tumorous, harden arteries, stiffen joints, weaken bones. Suppressed emotional energy can precipitate the onset of cancer in any system or organ of the body. Suppressed emotional energy can undermine the immune system and make a body vulnerable to innumerable illnesses.
Emotional suppression deforms the body. Whenever we suppress an emotion we physically contract some part or parts of the body. In time we develop patterns of repeated emotional suppression, which means that specific parts of the body must engage in chronic tension. Such long term chronic tension eventually alters body form and posture, invariably for the worse.
The “character lines” etched into an older person’s face result from years of tensing the face while struggling with emotional energy. A permanently hunched upper back reveals a person who never made peace with burdens and responsibilities, just as a caved in chest shows us someone overwhelmed with unresolved grief. Years of fearing and resisting sex can tilt the pelvis back and away from other people. Angrily clenching the jaw will eventually grind the enamel off teeth, just as chronically clenching toes will shorten tendons in the feet, with ramifications throughout the body.
Emotional suppression leads to misshapen bodies. The tree will grow as we bend the twig. As human bodies grow, incalculable bending comes from the chronic physical contraction of emotional suppression.
Emotional suppression renders us less capable and responsive. Ideally, energy-in-motion empowers us to deal more effectively with the changes and challenges of life. Through the unconscious habit of suppressing emotional energy, we misplace the very essence of effective response. The person who habitually suppresses all feelings of fear will stand frozen in the road unable to leap out of the way of approaching traffic. The person who suppresses all feelings of sadness will fail to fully resolve painful losses and may always suffer from chronic grief.
The person who habitually suppresses anger will feel forever oppressed and victimized by the inevitable violations of life. The person who suppresses feelings of sexual pleasure will drive little satisfaction from lovemaking and may manifest various forms of sexual deviation. We need our emotions. They provide us with the vital force to think creatively and act decisively. The more successfully we suppress our emotions, the less successfully we do anything else.
Energy moves in both directions, inwards and outwards. Obstructing the flow in one direction is obstructing the flow in the other direction. The less you express, the less you feel and the less you feel, the less you express. For all its power, love cannot flow through an individual riddled with and crippled by chronic suppression. Every act of emotional suppression contracts your inflowing emotional energy and thus diminishes your experience of energy expanding love. The more you condition yourself to emotional suppression, the less loveable you become.
Suppress any feelings of sadness and your capacity for love diminishes. Suppress and feelings of anger and your capacity for love diminishes. Suppress any emotion whether positive or negative, easy or difficult and your whole emotional experience, including and especially your capacity for love, diminishes. The opposite is true, anytime you allow yourself to feel and express emotions; you increase your capacity to experience love.
Emotional suppression causes fatigue. Suppressing strong emotion does not occur easily. It requires an act of forceful muscular contraction, stifled breath, and mental denial to engineer the origin suppression of an emotion. The stronger the emotion, the more force required and it requires continuing contraction and denial to sustain such suppression. Without the expenditure of great quantities of energy, emotional suppression could not and would not occur. As the persona ages, more and more vital energy is tied up in sustaining suppression. All of which just plain wears us down.
Emotional suppression undermines the healthy function of body and mind and stuffs inside the rushing energy of effective response. To make matters worse, emotional suppression requires that we permanently commit significant amounts of energy to keeping everything stuffed away, unfelt and unnoticed. This places heavy demands on our daily resources. So much of the chronic fatigue that afflicts people stems from this unconscious sustaining of emotional suppression. Though we have access to great wells of vital energy, we can only lose so much to the dynamics of suppression before we become chronically weakened.
Emotional suppression energetically disconnects us from the rest of our world. The energy fields that surround a healthy human being extend outward to touch and meaningfully connect with other people and the environment. Through these vital energy connections we experience oneness and can communicate with others in the most profound and satisfying ways. Positive emotions such as love, compassion, empathy, intimacy and trust only occur between people who can connect energetically. Telepathy works in the same way, we experience better nonverbal communication with those with whom we have the greatest intimacy simply because we have more energy links through which to transfer information.
The more we expand our energy-selves, the healthier our relationships become. Conversely, the more we suppress our emotions the less we can energy-connect with others and the more difficulty we have with basic human relationship. A tight and chronically suppressed person has contracted his or her energy fields in and away from others and becomes effectively disconnected and less able to relate.
All forms of communication seem difficult for the “energy disabled”. When we have the sense that another person just “doesn’t get it”, it indicates some degree of energetic contraction and disconnection we have from one another. The most sincere efforts at verbal communication quite literally go nowhere once we have severed our energy links. Even worse, we sever our innate capacities for feeling other people. We cannot experience empathy, compassion, trust or love without the genuine oneness engendered by vital emotional energetic connection.
Such disconnection takes an enormous toll. The worst behavior occurs between those who become energy disconnected. All of our violence, wars and oppressions, racism and sexism can only be perpetrated by those who have cut themselves off from “the other”. We cannot intentionally hurt another person, animal, plant or ecosystem with whom we experience living oneness. Before we actively attack or exploit another person or group we must first sever our common links. Before we lash out, we must first suppress, contract, disconnect and separate.
Being truly in control of our emotions is to be able to choose when to express them and when to not to. When we express, we express powerfully and authentically.
Emotional suppression undermines the healthy function of body and mind and stuffs inside the rushing energy of effective response. To make matters worse, emotional suppression requires that we permanently commit significant amounts of energy to keeping everything stuffed away, unfelt and unnoticed. This places heavy demands on our daily resources. So much of the chronic fatigue that afflicts people stems from this unconscious sustaining of emotional suppression. Though we have access to great wells of vital energy, we can only lose so much to the dynamics of suppression before we become chronically weakened.
Emotional suppression energetically disconnects us from the rest of our world. The energy fields that surround a healthy human being extend outward to touch and meaningfully connect with other people and the environment. Through these vital energy connections we experience oneness and can communicate with others in the most profound and satisfying ways. Positive emotions such as love, compassion, empathy, intimacy and trust only occur between people who can connect energetically. Telepathy works in the same way, we experience better nonverbal communication with those with whom we have the greatest intimacy simply because we have more energy links through which to transfer information.
The more we expand our energy-selves, the healthier our relationships become. Conversely, the more we suppress our emotions the less we can energy-connect with others and the more difficulty we have with basic human relationship. A tight and chronically suppressed person has contracted his or her energy fields in and away from others and becomes effectively disconnected and less able to relate.
All forms of communication seem difficult for the “energy disabled”. When we have the sense that another person just “doesn’t get it”, it indicates some degree of energetic contraction and disconnection we have from one another. The most sincere efforts at verbal communication quite literally go nowhere once we have severed our energy links. Even worse, we sever our innate capacities for feeling other people. We cannot experience empathy, compassion, trust or love without the genuine oneness engendered by vital emotional energetic connection.
Such disconnection takes an enormous toll. The worst behavior occurs between those who become energy disconnected. All of our violence, wars and oppressions, racism and sexism can only be perpetrated by those who have cut themselves off from “the other”. We cannot intentionally hurt another person, animal, plant or ecosystem with whom we experience living oneness. Before we actively attack or exploit another person or group we must first sever our common links. Before we lash out, we must first suppress, contract, disconnect and separate.
Being truly in control of our emotions is to be able to choose when to express them and when to not to. When we express, we express powerfully and authentically.
[MM July 10, 2010]
