How long have you been pushing down your true feelings for?

What has it cost you?

My clients are usually at least 50 years to 65 years old and they have been pushing their feelings down for decades and it’s made them feel very stuck and unhappy. They feel like they’re just ‘existing’ and not really living.

There’s several reasons women suppress (meaning consciously push their feelings done or not acknowledge them) their emotions.

The first is they were born into a generation where most people were taught strong messages about feelings, such as:

Don’t feel.

It’s not safe to feel.

Nobody cares about your feelings anyway.

Secondly, a lot of women didn’t have other women to role model how to express their feelings in a safe, healthy way so they just don’t know how to do it.

And finally, feeling your emotions can be painful and make you feel very vulnerable.  

There’s a sense of being out of control and you’re thinking, ‘I’m supposed to have it all together. That’s the rule.’

How it hurts you to push your feelings down

Firstly, it takes a lot of energy to suppress your feelings and you end up exhausted and often feel numb and ‘frozen’ inside.

It’s not possible to feel ‘joy’ because, if you numb out negative emotions you are also numbing out your capacity to feel happy emotions.

So, you end up feeling like the ‘walking dead’ instead of truly living a joyful life.

Secondly, you risk developing some kind of addictive process to cover over your pain and then that becomes a big problem in itself.

Thirdly, your physical health is affected in the long-term.  There is a staggering high incidence of depression, anxiety, gut & immune issues and heart problems with women, and a general feeling of being unwell because you don’t feel free and safe to express yourself.

And finally, the biggest symptom that women come to me for help for is they don’t like how angry and frustrated they are.

They can only push their feelings down for so long before they snap and then this whole ugly side of them comes out. They hate their anger and then they judge themselves and then feel guilty so they push down their feelings even more.

And the cycle continues again.

So, one way they try to cope and stay in control of their emotions is to ‘live in their head’.   They cut off from their body because they don’t want to feel, and they overthink and analyse everything.

I remember when I was 30 years old I didn’t know that I’d been living like that in my head until I went to a personal development seminar where I was asked to participate in a meditation.  It was the first time I’d taken notice of my body and my breath and I became aware of how twisted and tight my stomach was. It was the biggest shock to me because I’d never thought about my stomach before and I didn’t know it was filled with really, really, tight knots. It was sad to realise that my stomach had probably been like that forever because I’d put my body through so much stress and pressure from not being in touch with myself.

So, the very first thing I encourage women to do is simply give yourself permission to feel what’s going on in your body. Just close your eyes for a minute and notice what sensations are there.  Are you feeling a churning in your belly? Are you feeling a tightness in your solar plexus? Are your shoulders tight?

If you can name an emotion, do that. If you can’t name an emotion just describe the sensations themselves.

And the most empowering thing to do is say out loud to yourself, looking at yourself in a mirror, ‘Right now I feel ‘insert description or name the feeling’ and that’s OK’

As soon as you say that out loud you send a signal to your brain that it’s safe to feel and you’ll notice you start to feel calmer quickly.

You’ve got to give yourself permission to start to feel everything and notice at a bit everything like the emotions that a lot of women don’t feel okay to admit are they’re really kind of yucky ones that nobody wants to say like jealousy and hurt and hate and guilt and shame.

And be aware that there’s many emotions that most women definitely don’t want to admit they’re feeling, like shame, anger, fear, jealously, hate, and hurt.

But by not admitting your real feelings you’ll continue to drain your life-force by not allowing the emotion to flow.

Did you know that the word ‘emotion’ simple means ‘energy in motion’? 

Yes, our emotions are just energy in our body that needs to move and be expressed so it can dissolve.

I hope this blog has been of service to you. I invite you to comment your experiences or thoughts on this topic below.

You do have the power to just be you.

Love,

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