Shamed To Feel - Killing The Emotions Inside Us For Fear That Feeling Them Will Kill Us
Emotion: " This hurts so much. Please listen to me."
We live in a society which promotes emotional avoidance. We apologize when we cry. We equate being strong with never displaying any sign of vulnerability. Emotions are for the weak. Seeking therapy is seen as an indicator that something is wrong with you.
How Our Parents Made Us Cut Ourselves Out From Our Emotions
We may have turned off the switch to access our emotional realities because our parents were not welcoming of our emotions. They may have rejected, dismissed or punished us for expressing ourselves. Consequently, we have internalized the all-too-damaging message that emotional responses are to be suppressed at all cost. We have been shamed to feel, which is a tragedy in of itself. Our parents have denied our very humanity - a process that is our very nature.
This may have led us to shame as well those closest to us, particularly our romantic partners, to feel. We are terrorized by the idea of even coming close to feeling the ocean of emotions that sits within us - we will make sure the ones close to us won’t turn on the switch to their emotional world. Any sort of emotional talk and we're out of here!
Our Body's Plea For Help
Our nervous system is begging us to befriend him, to at the very least acknowledge his presence. Out of fear of getting hurt to feel, just like we have as children, we will push any emotions that come to the surface far far away. We'll go as far as playing the pretending game - pretending that we have such perfect control over our emotions that we can pretend they simply don’t exist.
Playing this -fake it till your nervous system believes it- game is extremely harmful for our emotional health in the long haul. With time, we may actually suceed in shutting completely down our emotional system - meaning that we no longer feel emotions that we should feel when a situation that typically elicits some form of emotional response happens to us. We killed the emotions within us for fear that feeling them would kill us. Again, this internalized perception mostly made its way into our brains as children.
It is never too late to bring our natural capacity to feel all of the feelings back to life! We need to remind ourselves that all of our emotions are valid. That we are worthy of being cared for and listened to. That our parents' inability to receive our emotions with kindness and compassion has nothing to do about our worth as a human being - but all to do with their own unhealed wounds.
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