The Problem: Suppressing our Emotions

Imagine trying to stop a wave rolling through the ocean. Sounds futile, right? This is what suppressing emotion is like. Emotions come like waves; they arise, they build, they crash, they dissolve. They move in cycles, just like we do.

Suppressing an emotion is about so much more than simply “not feeling it.” Suppressing emotions buries stress in our muscles. It negatively impacts our bodies, the functioning of our biological systems, our mental states and everything in our lives. By suppressing emotions, we are potentially ignoring the very source of our healing.

​Philosopher and teacher, Bill Plotkin says in his book Wild Mind,

“Managed emotions result in depression. The most precise definition of depression is a bad case of suppressed emotions, emotions that have been managed instead of being felt, digested, understood, and assimilated… When a person is depressed in this way, she has a significant backload of undigested feelings piled up behind an inner dam, blocking the natural flow of her psyche and life…What the depressed person needs is to feel more, not less… Any ‘psychotherapeutic intervention’ that would try to talk her out of grief, distract her from it, or suppress it with psychopharmacology would just make her depression worse and certainly would not be therapeutic.”

A widely used therapeutic intervention for depression & anxiety in the West are SSRI’s (Selective Serotonin Re-uptake Inhibitors) such as Prozac, Lexapro, and Zoloft. These treatments are meant to “improve one’s mood,” but they do not allow for the underlying emotions to be felt and processed. They are often a bandaid, keeping us from understanding the root of the suffering.

​So what can we do to actually heal?

“Don’t turn away. Keep your gaze on the bandaged place. That’s where the light enters you.”

​~ Rumi

The Solution: Expressing our Emotions

Emotion means energy in motion. Even the word suggests that we must feel and process our emotions. But how?

Following are five effective ways to move emotion in a healthy way.



​1) Engage in a somatic practice.

Recognize that something is happening in your body.
Allow it to be there.
Investigate it by feeling it fully, with curiosity and without judgement.
​Nurture yourself with compassion and kindness.
​


​2) Remove or minimize inflammatory foods from your diet, such as alcohol, sugar, and processed options.

3) Access non-ordinary states of consciousness.