It’s Normal to Hide Your True Feelings—And Here’s Why It’s Okay to Stop
- Yvette Smit
- May 2, 2024
- 2 min read
Do you recall a time that you were made to feel your experience of something or someone was not acceptable?
Welcome back—I'm glad you’re joining me again. I hope the reflections from our last post have encouraged you to expand your perspective. Now, let’s dive into a topic that often feels challenging, but is essential for growth: embracing and articulating unpleasant emotions.
In our previous posts, we explored the power of self-reflection and realising growth through new perspectives. Now, we take another crucial step in self-discovery: recognising and expressing our emotions, especially the uncomfortable ones. Often, articulating our emotions can feel daunting. Society tends to encourage us to suppress or ignore what we consider to be "negative" feelings, yet these emotions are an inevitable part of the human experience. Understanding that others share similar struggles can bring a profound sense of freedom and connection.
For many of us, if our emotional experiences were not supported during childhood, it can be difficult to access, feel, share, and move through our emotions as adults. We may have unknowingly learned that our feelings were unacceptable, leading to a sense of shame that silences us and stunts our emotional literacy. This creates a barrier to fully experiencing and expressing ourselves in an authentic way.
Counselling provides a safe space free from expectations, assumptions, conditions, or judgments, allowing you to fearlessly confront these beliefs and limitations. It’s in this space that you can articulate absolutely anything—the emotions, the thoughts, the experiences you’ve kept hidden, with the understanding that it is all valid and worthy of expression.
How often do you find yourself filtering or suppressing your true feelings about a person or situation? What do you fear would happen if your most “unacceptable” emotions had to be known by others?
Expressing our emotions authentically is a powerful step in the journey of self-discovery and healing. If you’re ready to explore this path, let’s connect.
