7 reasons Emotional release is crucial for your mental health
Many of us suppress our emotions for a variety of reasons. We may not have felt safe expressing strong emotions in childhood, or we may have learned to suppress emotions from our parents. Some people believe it is inappropriate or unacceptable to express negative feelings. Others think it makes us appear weak. Sometimes we don’t express our emotions because we may fear that others just won’t understand. However, emotional release is vital for our mental health and wellbeing.
1. Suppressing emotions can cause stress
When you repress emotions, they do not go away. In fact, they can have even more serious effects on your body, causing a rise in blood pressure and flipping you into fight or flight mode and making you stressed. Though we think we are successfully repressing emotions, our bodies and nervous systems know differently and over time, this can cause major damage to our bodies and our sense of well-being.
2. Suppressing emotions can cause poor sleep patterns
Suppressing emotions only works while you are conscious. When you sleep, you are less able to squash down the feelings. They may emerge as bad dreams or a feeling of anxiety that prevents you from sleeping well. Poor sleep has a negative impact on the body and mental health.
3. Suppressing emotions can cause mental exhaustion
Attempting to suppress emotions is a lot of work. Being constantly on the alert for the emergence of negative feelings puts a strain on our systems that become exhausting. We use up huge amounts of energy and psychological reserves just keeping the emotions at bay.
4. Suppressing emotions can cause money problems
When you suppress a negative emotion, you have difficulty remembering not just the event but also the time period and events surrounding it. This can cause gaps in our memories that can be worrying.
5. Supressing emotions can harm relationships
Those who suppress emotions have more problems with relationships than those who express emotions easily. When we fail to have good relationships, this has a negative effect on our well-being and mental health.
6. Suppressing emotions can cause damage to your temporal lobe
The temporal lobe is the part of your brain that is associated with mood stability. If you are suppressing emotions, you are interfering with its work. Over time this can cause a reduction in the temporal lobe function and difficulty keeping moods stable.
7. Suppressing your emotions can cause serious mental illness
Suppressing emotions prevents the brain from working properly and efficiently. Its ability to see situations objectively becomes impaired which can lead to mental health problems such as anxiety and depression and sometimes substance abuse.
