All of us have the tendency to keep silent about the painful things in our life. We tend to exaggerate joys but are extremely quick to dumb-down negative experiences. Most of us think that this practice of keeping the bad out of sight will keep it out of our lives too.
None of us can be blamed for that. Our society doesn’t teach us how we should work and deal with our emotions. It rather teaches us how we should block and avoid them. People who wear their heart on a sleeve are treated as weaklings.
Mantras like ‘get a grip’, ‘suck it up’ and ‘mind over matter’ are used to swat away our emotions. However, as I’m going to reveal in the coming paragraphs, we shouldn’t treat our mind as we treat a home disinfection service. It shouldn’t be relied on to eliminate difficult experiences.
Scroll down to read as to why:
#1: Suppressing emotions can lead to anxiety and depression
According to research, a direct line can be drawn between anxiety and depression – which are on the rise everywhere in the world – and our inclination to tamp down negative emotions. Put simply, we indirectly put stress on our mind when we try to thwart the flow of emotions.
That shouldn’t come as a surprise given the fact that most of us, when feeling down, tend to over-think our problems. This is the state when we’re the likeliest to make a mountain out of a molehill. Hence the reason why our mental health suffers
#2: Dumbing down emotions can lead to physical problems
Worse, if you decide to dumb down your negative emotions once and for all, the ill-effects won’t be limited to your emotional health. Various physical ills like headaches, intestinal problems, heart disease and even insomnia can also rear their heads.
That is to say that while we try to ignore our negative emotions with the hope that they will simply go away like the ad of a victory electrostatic sprayer running on our television, they come back and dictate our lives in ways we cannot ignore.
Conclusion
Both the reasons given above should be enough to convince everybody to express the difficult emotions they’re dealing with in life. At the same time, it can be extremely difficult for us to express ourselves, even in front of complete friends.
That is the reason why we might want to write about our difficult experiences. When we do that, we take away some of the power these emotions have placed on our personality. And by doing so, we take back the control they might want to exert on our lives.