Firstly, do you agree or disagree that one can suppress their emotions?
I’m sure most of you will agree but you aint aware of what happens when you suppress them. I have a personal knowledge of a case of this sort. A patient of mine many years ago lost a parent, when he was a school student, he did not allow himself to grieve. Instead,he went on with his life; Later came a time can when he couldn’t go on like that anymore. While at workplace, all of a sudden, he kept on weeping without any reason, his tears didn’t stop for hours. The next day he came to me for therapy and sorted this out. All these years he was just redirecting his attention to something else other than the loss of that parent. Similarly, people undergoing a painful medical procedure may experience less pain if they focus on the thought of something pleasant such as the person they love most. Part of what it means to not allow oneself to feel some emotion is to not focus on that emotion’s object and instead, to pay attention to something else.
When emotions, particularly negative ones, run deep, when they go to the core of our being, it may not be possible to restore inner harmony without yielding to them. It is very important to resolve any withhold emotions or pain that one is going through. We may, perhaps, construe the avoidance of grief or any emotion as a prolonged stage of denial, a denial not of what had happened but of how unbearable it was. Crucially, sometimes, we must accept that it is not really in our power to go on as if nothing has happened.
References: Psychology Today
