6 Signs You’re Bottling Up Your Emotions
Have you ever put dry ice in a bottle?
As the CO2 turns into gas, the bottle gradually expands
with pressure until, with a sudden pop, the bottle explodes.
Bottling dry ice is exactly like bottling up your emotions;
there’s a time limit before the metaphorical bottle explodes,
and it can be hard to release the pressure.
The first step in properly processing your emotions
is to recognize that you’re closing yourself off from them.
So here are six signs you’re bottling up your emotions.
1. You Rarely Yell or Cry, But You Can Erupt Over Small Issues
Let’s say your partner drops a cup and breaks it
while washing the dishes, and you suddenly feel your blood
boiling with this overwhelming anger.
Your outburst over this relatively minor issue can be a sign of deeper,
more suppressed troubles in your relationship or personal life.
In a study by the University of Texas,
researchers had one group of subjects watch horrifyingly
disgusting film scenes while suppressing any reaction
or emotion they felt.
Afterwards, the first group was significantly more aggressive
than the second group of subjects
who were allowed to express themselves.
The study, published in Social Psychological and Personality Science,
shows how bottling up your emotions can actually
make them more powerful.
2. You Distract Yourself Whenever You Start to Feel Uneasy
Do you find yourself mindlessly scrolling through Instagram
or guiltily binge-watching hours of a TV show?
A telltale sign of suppressing your emotions is avoidance.
You engage in self-destructive behaviors like drinking or smoking.
You try to escape by watching TV, playing video games,
or even oversleeping in order to avoid thinking about how you feel.
3. You Feel Like You’re a Different Person Around Others Than You Are By Yourself
Bottling up your emotions can create a divide between
who you think you are and how others see you.
You might feel exhausted, anxious, or jaded in private,
but your friends may see you as confident and calm.
In fact, you may even be the clown of your friend group.
If you avoid expressing yourself,
you may feel like you have two separate faces
and that no one truly knows you.
Perhaps you’re not sure yourself who you are.
As activist Bryant McGill states,
to know yourself is to love yourself and to welcome
and love all the emotions that come with you.
4. You Often Feel Uncomfortable Around Highly Emotional People
If you suppress yourself, you might think that crying
or screaming is embarrassing or bad, but more subtly,
you’ll just feel uncomfortable around highly emotional people
who visibly express their emotions.
You might struggle with how to react
or how to offer comfort to them in their time of distress,
especially if emotions hold a sort of stigma
and pain for you personally.
5. You Experience Life From a Third-Person Perspective
Maybe you’re at the mall with your friends,
and everyone is laughing and joking around,
but you feel as if you’re observing the fun rather
than fully engaging in it. You feel distant from others.
You may also find intimacy difficult and have only a few close friends.
By bottling up your emotions,
you distance yourself from how you feel.
It makes not only anger and sadness harder to express,
but also expressing happiness and joy.
6. You Avoid Confrontation and Never Address the Cause of Your Emotions
Perhaps you feel powerless over your own life.
You’re unable to think deeply about your emotions,
nor can you talk to others about how they make you upset.
Even if you bottle your emotions, you can still feel angry and sad,
but instead of finding the cause of the negativity,
you numb yourself to the pain.
You fear any sort of confrontation, and you avoid your emotions,
just like you avoid emotional people.
Psychologist Perpetua Neo explains that emotions shouldn’t
be so fear-inducing; they exist for a reason.
In fact, she calls them our “first intel in a war”
because they’re often a sign that something is wrong and needs fixing.
You can learn to let in your emotions
and use them to identify changes that need to be made in your life.
