Denial is hereditary, passed down through generations. As our society matures, many parents are no longer swatting their children for emotionally expressing sound, as many of our parents and their parents did. Still, the encouragement to deny expression is everywhere. Denial is there in the well-meaning parent joggling a baby to “help her stop fussing”, it is there in distracting young children with TV and videos and food rewards if they would just quiet down, it is there in laws and social mores that discourage adults from being outwardly emotional, especially loudly.
– “Among Our Earliest Messages: Shut Up”
Every emotion is valid. Emotions are natural functions of a healthy body. Their roots may be sourced in past trauma, as a lot of our current emotions are charged to the extent they are due to a backlog of suppressed expression, and therefore may seem unreasonable or unjustifiable in proportion to the trigger. This is also why it is crucial to move in private, as the triggering person is often not the source of the triggered emotion. But even if they are, the charge is more efficiently released in private away from the triggerer. Doing so also helps us to shift from blaming to true transformational expression.
The “why’s” of our misfired lives are hidden underneath the emotions and often cannot be accessed mentally until the feelings of anger, grief, hurt and fear have had their say. I have found many clear understandings about what is going on with me after I have expressed emotion, but could not find that level of clarity beforehand, no matter how much I tried to get clear before expressing my feelings first.
– “Expression, Then Understanding”
Many of us have spent so long bolstering our ability to deny how our emotions would really rather express that there lie hidden many now-subconscious defenses against letting the given emotion on top fully surface. What that means in practical terms is that although we might feel more encouraged to or aligned with allowing our emotions to express than before, we might still have a difficult time getting to the tipping point where these emotions translate into sound or tears. This point is called ignition. Other terms used interchangeably here are activation or flashpoint.
– “Tips For Getting To Ignition”
Feelings are meant to be transitory experiences that spice, highlight and enhance our lives, like a musical soundtrack. When an experience cannot be processed because there are judgments or controls on the natural emotional response to that experience, the experience and the response become frozen in time within the self. This frozen place is still within the self, though not as readily accessible, until triggered. Frozen emotional essence is magnetic, and will literally draw similar experiences into manifestation to the one(s) in which it previously froze in order to trigger its release.
– “Letting Go vs. Expression”
People in leadership positions are projected upon all the time as the mommy/daddy who never gave enough or in the right way. The projections come from people carrying hurt feelings of victimization, originally at the hands of their parents. These victimized-feeling people are carrying very old, enraged and hurt feelings deep in their background, feelings related to what they did not get as children. They acquired these old feelings originally in justifiable ways, but the ones who become the projection screens in the now are their triggers, new targets of the same old held blame carried forward. The triggered people do not even realize that they are projecting past, still-held trauma onto the leader of the moment. Most of them do not even realize they are triggered. In this they are simply acting out the emotions instead of feeling and expressing them appropriately.
– “Emotional Projection”
Why do we teach boys not to cry? Because men have been seen, and still are in many people’s minds, as society’s strength, and holding back emotions is equated with strength, stoicism=strength, etc. These perceptions need to go the way of the dinosaur.
Repressed emotions are killing men, and in turn traumatize society in general when the repressed emotions act out in various ways. Express emotions safely and in private safe space, and all will improve.
Another problem with men and emotions is the outdated concept of “rugged individualism”, a.k.a. “I don’t need no help from nobody”. Many boys were conditioned to believe this by their fathers’ modeling and society at large. I have struggled with this one too, and am getting better asking for help nowadays when I need it, but my programming taught the opposite.
– “Men Need To Heal and Deal”
Over time, expressing emotions in sound and body movement curbs so-called childish behavior, because expressing these emotions instead of acting them out, and receiving resultant understandings about what they are really about helps them to “grow up” or catch up with the rest of the self.
– “Emotions Can Grow Up Too”