Holding Yourself Back Requires a LOT of Energy

Have you ever felt completely drained after spending the day pretending to be “okay” even though you weren’t? What about if that’s what you have been doing the past day, week, month or even years?

Without even realizing it, we often suppress our emotions in attempts to avoid conflict, protect others, or feeling that your emotions are either invalid or “wrong”. These emotion suppressions force our brain and body to work over-time: a part of you wants to feel the emotion and let it go, while another part of you is trying to push it down – so down, you try to block it out of your memory. Your prefrontal cortex, which is the part of your brain responsible for self-control and decision-making, is forced to monitor this emotion and the event or memory attached to it. This makes you stuck in the past, relieving the cycle of abuse all because we do not want – or can not safely yet – feel the emotion that is bottled down.

This in turn affects your body, releasing cortisol and adrenaline in your body, which is interpreted as stress. Cortisol and adrenaline help you cope in the short term, but over time, it accumulates, affecting your sleep, food intake, and more. Stress increases inflammation in the body, and can eventually wreck havoc, both mentally and physically.

Have you noticed that most things in your life are just repetition?

Holding yourself back forces you to be put into similar circumstances to give yourself the closure you so desperately want. This inner conflict between feeling the emotion and trying to kill it is you spending energy constantly gaslighting yourself that everything is ok.

Emotions are safe: you just were taught they weren’t

It’s ok to feel and ok to express. You don’t have to express your emotion all at one time, it’s ok to take small, steady steps toward honoring your true self and how you truly feel about your emotional self. (And if you do end up crying a river and breaking down, that’s ok, too!) Your emotions aren’t the enemy; they are your guidance system trying to show you how to help you be whole again. Rather than holding back, take a deep breath and ask yourself, “What am I feeling? How can I honor this feeling in a way that feels safe?”

So ask yourself the question: are you actually tired, or are you tired of pretending to be happy when you’re not?