Bottling up negative emotions like anxiety and anger can disrupt the normal function of your stress hormones called cortisol. This results in lowered immune function and an increased risk of developing a chronic illness. Not expressing your emotions is also a gateway to developing mental health conditions.
“There is some evidence that bottling up your emotions can lead to physical stress on the body,” says Dr. Mullen. “The stress caused to the body can lead to increased diabetes and heart disease risks. Other effects can be memory difficulties.”
“The reasons we sometimes—or most times—bottle up our emotions can vary, but they all seem to stem from a fear of vulnerability. Out of this fear, we react through self-protective emotional measures,” says Dr. Colleen Mullen, PsyD, LMFT. “Bottling up emotions provides a false sense of emotional safety.”
“Suppressing your emotions, whether it's anger, sadness, grief or frustration, can lead to physical stress on your body. The effect is the same, even if the core emotion differs,” says provisional clinical psychologist Victoria Tarratt.
It's not an uncommon experience and it's called anhedonia. Simply put, anhedonia is when you lose interest in the social activities and physical sensations that you once enjoyed. It's a symptom of many mental health conditions, including depression, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.
Stronger negative emotions.
When you don't acknowledge your feelings, you are allowing these emotions to become stronger, according to a study from the University of Texas. Emotional outbursts are "your body's way of releasing that pent-up emotion," says clinical psychologist Victoria Tarratt.
Sometimes the working memory impairments of ADHD allow a momentary emotion to become too strong, flooding the brain with one intense emotion.” Thomas Brown, Ph. D., explains why (and how) ADHD sparks such intense anger, frustration, and hurt.
Smothering or bottling up emotions is suppressing one's feelings rather than expressing them openly and honestly. Also known as expressive suppression (ES), it is a common technique used to regulate difficult emotions such as fear, anger, and sadness or hide them from others.
Reticent means either quiet or restrained. If you're reticent about your feelings, you like to keep them to yourself, and you're probably quiet in rowdy groups where everyone is talking over each other. The original meaning of reticent describes someone who doesn't like to talk.
Emotional blunting can be temporary, lasting from a few minutes to a few hours at a time. It can also occur over the long term, from months to years. It all depends on the underlying cause. Experiencing emotional blunting may affect your relationships and how you feel about yourself and the world.
Symptoms of emotional stress can be both physical, mental and behavioral. Physical symptoms include: Heaviness in your chest, increased heart rate or chest pain. Shoulder, neck or back pain; general body aches and pains.
' Emotional repression is all about avoiding emotional suffering. It is a coping style used to hide and push away negative emotions. Emotional repression can be thought of as a defense mechanism, where people defend themselves from the negatives and focus instead on the positive aspects of who they are (Garssen, 2007).
[ ap-uh-thet-ik ] show ipa. See synonyms for apathetic on Thesaurus.com. adjective. having or showing little or no emotion: apathetic behavior.
Crying easily can be a symptom of depression, anxiety, or a lot of stress in your life. Since HSPs feel so deeply and can experience sensory overload, we're more susceptible to strong feelings of depression or anxiety. We might feel alone in our sensitivity or isolate ourselves to reduce excess stimuli.
Suppression gets held in the body and creates a host of downstream effects, including anxiety, depression, stress-related illness, all the way to substance abuse and suicide.
Alexithymia is when a person has difficulty experiencing, identifying, and expressing emotions. It is not a mental health disorder but has links with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), eating disorders, and various other conditions.
What is Schizoid Personality Disorder? Schizoid personality disorder is one of many personality disorders. It can cause individuals to seem distant and emotionless, rarely engaging in social situations or pursuing relationships with other people.
Feeling as if you don't care about anything anymore may be related to anhedonia or apathy. Anhedonia is a mental state in which people have an inability to feel pleasure. It is often a symptom of mental health conditions such as depression, bipolar disorder, and substance use.