Conceal vs. Reveal

We tend to hide or mask our emotions around others for one of two reasons—to avoid judgment from others, or to avoid potential conflict, thereby “protecting” our relationships.

In the first case, we may believe that having a particular emotion, or showing that emotion, makes us weak. This may come from hearing messages like, “Real men don’t cry,” or “Women are too emotional. If you cry at work, you’ll never be taken seriously.”

In the second case, we may believe that expressing emotion to another person could trigger an even more uncomfortable experience than the emotion itself. This often comes from a lack of trust in ourselves and others to handle sensitivity, conflict, or a difference of opinion in a mature way.

While these things may be true at times, and navigating our emotions around other people requires discernment, we often suffer from what psychologists call “one-trial learning.” We have a hurtful or traumatizing experience with showing emotion in one situation or with one person, and we “learn” that showing emotion isn’t safe—full stop. We adopt blanket rules and apply them even in situations where sharing emotion may be beneficial.

When we stifle our emotions, we run the risk of hurting our relationships and ourselves. When left unexpressed, emotions can build in intensity until they can no longer be suppressed. This explosion of emotion can be much more disruptive than the original feeling ever would have been. Additionally, leaving relational frustrations unaddressed can lead to a build-up of resentments, or perhaps the loss of the entire relationship. While it’s difficult to address sensitive topics, not doing so doesn’t eliminate the conflict—it just delays it.

What messages have you absorbed about displaying your emotions? What might change in your personal experience or your relationships if you were willing to be more vulnerable or honest with those around you? Around whom are you able to practice being more vulnerable?

If you’re still feeling unsafe in expressing your feelings, you may want to consider seeking out someone who is trained in offering a supportive, non-judgmental environment, like a coach or therapist. By dipping your toe into emotional expression with an objective, skilled listener, you can begin to teach yourself that emotions don’t need to feel threatening, and you can notice the qualities that make someone a safe person to share with.

Judge vs. Explore with Curiosity

Tell me if this sounds familiar. Something happens that makes you feel angry. You feel angry for a minute or two, and then the internal monologue begins. “Are you really getting upset over this? You are such a baby. It’s such a little thing—you really shouldn’t let stuff like this bother you.”

Judgment happens when we infuse our emotional experience with negative connotations and associations. When we judge our emotions, we’re not just contending with the original feeling—we’re dealing with our feelings about our feelings. 

Underneath the judgment, you’ll typically find one or more assumptions:

• We should feel happy all the time. Feelings like anger, sadness, frustration, etc. mean that we’re a negative person.

• Emotional reactions should always match the intensity of the source. If our reaction is bigger, we’re just being “over-dramatic.”

• Emotions should always make logical sense. 

Here’s the reality. We are emotional beings who experience an entire range of feelings. This is healthy and natural. Sometimes a seemingly small thing triggers a big reaction—because it wasn’t about the actual event, but what the event means to us. And finally, we are not logical beings. Our emotions don’t have to make sense to mean something to us.

At their essence, emotions are neutral. They are simply signals that give us information about how we are experiencing and perceiving our reality. Feelings of distress give us clues about our unmet needs, unhealed trauma responses, or limiting beliefs. When we judge them as good or bad, right or wrong, we forget to see them as they truly are—useful.

Instead of derailing ourselves with judgments, it can be helpful to practice curiosity instead. “What is this feeling revealing to me?” is a powerful question.

The more you understand your feelings (which only happens when you acknowledge them and practice self-compassion), the more empowered you are to make thoughtful choices about what you want to do next. 

Isolate vs. Connect

Do you feel the need to isolate yourself when you’re upset? Many people grew up with the practice of “time out,” or got the message from friends or family that they’re “bringing the group down” if they were upset. Be happy, or go away—we absorb that message as children and begin to believe that we’re only acceptable or valuable to others in certain circumstances. If you’re struggling, you’ll be abandoned. So we take that into adulthood and withdraw when what we really need is support.

Instead of “time out,” what we often need is “time in”—the space to process or calm down, but with the loving and supportive presence of people who care about us. We can then feel safe with our emotions, because we know that we are loved and secure no matter what we’re feeling. Our emotions won’t compromise our connections.

Leaning on our friends or family is rarely the burden on them that we think it is—it’s actually an invitation to deeper relationships. When our loved ones see us sad, mad, or struggling, they know us more holistically than if they only see us happy. The best relationships consider it a privilege to support us when circumstances are less than ideal.

When you feel the impulse to isolate yourself, are you doing so because you truly want time alone, or because you’re worried about being a burden to others? What might it look like to lean more on trusted companions? 

If you’re stuck, here are some phrases that might be helpful:

“I’m having a really bad day, and I need some comfort. Can I have a hug?”
“I’m in a funk and don’t think I’m up for going to the bar. Can we have a chill glass of wine at my house instead?”
“I’m having some conflict at work and it’s really messing with my head. Can I talk it through with you?”

Numb vs. Experience

One of the most common ways we respond to uncomfortable feelings is to numb ourselves. This may look like distracting ourselves with media, anesthetizing our body with substances like food, drugs, or alcohol, or escaping into consumerism. Whether used as a means to dull emotional pain or to spike the reward centers of our brain, the effect is the same—temporary relief. When the effects wear off, we find ourselves back where we started (sometimes worse off, if the choices we made to numb ourselves caused us to act out of character or in opposition to our values and long-term goals). The discomfort we tried to avoid has been patiently waiting, lurking under the surface.

We all use entertainment, substances, and distractions once in a while, and they can be helpful tools when we feel unequipped or constrained from facing our feelings in that particular moment. But it’s also important to remember that this may not be helpful as a long-term solution, and we can benefit immensely from building our capacity to face and feel our feelings.

So what does “feeling your feelings” really look like? Here are some tips from therapist Becky Belinski:

• First, acknowledge that you’re feeling something. We may get so accustomed to numbing that it’s harder to even notice that we’re feeling off.

• Next, work to identify and label the feeling. Are you feeling good, bad, neutral? Try to be as specific as possible (ex: bad→angry→frustrated→disrespected). Getting more specific helps you understand where the emotion may be coming from. If this practice feels difficult, using a tool like an emotion wheel may help.

• Observe the emotion in your body. Where are you feeling it? Is it a pit in the stomach? A hot flush in your cheeks? A tension behind your eyes? Locating the physical sensation helps you stay with it in the present and can also give you clues about what you’re feeling and what may be causing the emotion.

• Remember to breathe, be patient, and show yourself compassion. Sitting with an emotion is fundamentally about acknowledging it and allowing it to be there. It’s not judging, critiquing, trying to change it, or trying to make it go away. It’s about understanding it. Your emotions are not good or bad—they are information about how you’re currently experiencing reality. When you spend time with them, giving them non-judgmental attention instead of distracting yourself, you are giving yourself the tools to make mindful decisions moving forward.

Over-identify vs. Observe Mindfully

A common temptation when experiencing difficult emotions is over-identification. Especially when we experience that emotion often, it’s easy to assign more weight or meaning to it than is necessary. We might believe that, because of its frequency or emotional intensity, it says something about who we are.

Therapist Lindsey Antin reminds us, “A feeling is not an identity that has a mind of its own and gets to run your life. When we over-identify with feelings, we may start to feel that they are truth—permanent states, even—that take control and determine our life paths. Feelings are just responses to certain events and people, and while many events have a certain predictability of feelings that follow, they are still just a part of our emotional selves.”

I once heard a great metaphor for keeping emotions in the proper perspective. Imagine that your emotion is a cloud. It’s real, it’s valid, and it’s there to be acknowledged. But you are not the cloud. You are the sky. Clouds (emotions) float in and out of your consciousness by the hour, by the day, by the week. They are there to be noticed, but once you have seen them, they are free to float away. They don’t define you and they don’t stay forever.

Next time you’re tempted to take on an emotion as an identity, pay attention to your language. Remember not to turn feelings into broad statements about yourself. There’s a big difference between saying, “I’m feeling sad because I wasn’t invited to that event” and “I’m never wanted or included.”

Cut Off vs. Complete

When our bodies experience stress, our first impulse is to look for a way to remove ourselves from the stressor. For example, let’s say you get stuck in traffic and you’re running late. You’re getting agitated and worried. At the first opportunity, you find a way out of the traffic and continue on with your day. With the stressor gone, you assume that’s the end of things.

But did you know that your body needs more resolution? Our bodies are actually designed to complete a stress cycle, with a beginning, middle and end. 

Authors Emily and Amelia Nagoski describe our emotions as tunnels. To fully complete the emotional experience, we need to go all the way through to get to the light. Most of the time, when we feel something and take action to address the source of the emotion, we think we’re done, and we exit the tunnel through the side door. We deal with the source of the feeling, but we forget to fully express/resolve the feeling itself. And so it lives in our body, and over time we become emotionally exhausted and burnt out.

Here are some ideas for completing your body’s full stress cycle (from the book Burnout: the Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle) Essentially, these are behaviors that signal to your body that it is safe, and you can shift into relaxation.

• Move around—stress is physical, so moving your body around through any type of exercise is a great way to complete the cycle

• Breathe—just one or two minutes of deep breathing can help calm your vagus nerve (try five seconds in, hold for five, breathe out for ten)

• Connect deeply—spending quality time with a loving presence (talking or engaging in physical affection) can help release trust and bonding hormones like oxytocin

• Laugh, cry, scream—let your emotions out! Expressing pent-up emotions releases stress

• Do something creative—doing something creative can reignite feelings of excitement, enthusiasm, and energy

React vs. Respond

As we go through life accumulating experiences, we develop habitual patterns of thought and behavior in response to certain triggers. The more that trigger is activated and we engage in the same reaction, the stronger the neural pathway is in our brain. Some of these pathways become so strong that they feel automatic.

Spiraling out may cause us to go inward and ruminate, or it may show up as strong reactions towards others. Many of our responses are shaped by what has been modeled for us, even if we don’t like it or it seems unhelpful. If you grew up in a house where your parents yelled when they were stressed out, you may find yourself contending with patterns of explosive anger or frustration. We all have our “automatic” reactions triggered by challenging emotions.

It’s counterintuitive, but going into an emotional spiral when triggered can feel oddly comforting. Not because it’s necessarily comfortable, but because it’s predictable, and we tend to crave any sense of familiarity and control. While it may feel good in the moment to succumb to the emotion, reacting automatically limits our behavioral choices and can hamper our growth or hurt our relationships.

While it may not seem like it, there is a gap between the trigger and our response. In this gap, we have the power to slow down, to pause, and to respond thoughtfully, rather than react habitually. At first, it may be hard to notice the gap. But as you practice, you’ll find that the space in which you can interrupt the pattern is growing.

One of the best ways I’ve found to practice the pause is to take a few deep breaths. Another idea is to step away for a moment. If you are engaged in a conflict with someone you can say something like, “I’m feeling triggered and I need a moment to collect myself. I’m going to step outside and then I’ll come back.” Some people find it helpful to develop a mantra that counteracts their spiral-induced self-talk. 

What are some of your biggest or most common triggers? How can you begin to create space to respond instead of react?

Dump vs. Share with Discernment

A crucial part of building relationships with others is emotional vulnerability. Without revealing parts of yourself to others (your feelings, your beliefs, your needs), your relationships will remain surface level and may lack depth and meaning.

However, it can be easy to confuse emotional dumping with emotional vulnerability. While they both involve self-revelation, there are a few key differences to look out for.

Dumping doesn’t ask permission; sharing is considerate of others’ emotional capacity.

When you have something to get off your chest, or you’re trying to build a connection with someone, it’s important to make sure they’re ready for the conversation. This can sound like, “My partner made me really mad today and I need to vent for a minute. Is that ok?” Or, “I could really use your perspective on this problem I’m facing at work. Do you have the mental space?”

Dumping is predominantly one-way; sharing is a two-way conversation.

Sometimes, especially when we don’t ask permission, we end up talking at someone instead of talking with them. We hijack their time and attention, and they aren’t really present with us. Or, we have so much that we want to offload that we don’t make space in the conversation for their thoughts, feedback, or shared experiences. If you’re wondering whether you’re dumping or sharing, try to notice the balance of the conversation. Is there room for both people, or are you monopolizing?

Dumping is indiscriminate; sharing is selective.

Relationships are not built overnight, or through one super-intense sharing of emotions or trauma. We build lasting, trusting bonds through repeated interactions, gradually getting deeper and more vulnerable with time. When we try to rush the process, we may overwhelm others, giving them more information than they know what to do with. We also need to recognize our conversation partner’s limitations. If we’re experiencing deep mental health challenges, we cannot expect everyone to be equipped to handle those topics. It’s helpful to learn what to share, when, and with whom.

Dumping offloads our problems; sharing includes taking responsibility.

Healthy discussions may open with some venting, but they make room for feedback, thoughtful questions, and reflections on personal accountability and how you’d like to move forward. Dumping may feel like you’re getting relief and resolution, but it tends to include repetition or ruminating without personal reflection or a commitment to making appropriate changes. If you’re struggling to tell the difference, ask yourself, “Am I just looking for someone to indulge or validate me? Or am I open to a gentle and compassionate challenge to how I’m seeing this situation?”

Ignore vs. Attune To

Our emotions have an adaptive purpose. They alert us to what we perceive as threats and opportunities. They focus our attention and help us summon the motivation to respond.

When we’re experiencing certain uncomfortable emotions, it’s often our minds and bodies telling us, “Something needs to change.”

But here’s the sticking point—change can be scary. I’ve noticed that we ignore our emotions the most when we’re uncertain of what a change would mean in our lives.

Bitterness and resentment may show us that we need stronger boundaries, which means upsetting our routine dynamics in relationships.

Restlessness or apathy might mean that we’re lacking purpose—we might need to look for a new job or embark on a new adventure more aligned with our values.

When we don’t feel ready to make that change, we tend to ignore how we feel. But the side effect of ignoring our emotions is that it disconnects us from ourselves.

If you’re scared of making a change, here are some things you can try:

Journal—write about what you’re noticing in your mind and body. Not only what you’re feeling prompted about, but the resistance you’re experiencing. This is a great way to show your emotions, “I see you. I hear you. And I’m not quite ready to take action.” Staying connected to yourself in this way allows you to notice when you are ready to make a change—when the discomfort of the unknown becomes less painful than staying where you are.

Create baby steps or a safety net—ask yourself, “What would make this less scary? What’s one small change I can experiment with that leads me closer to where I’m being called to go? What can I do if this change doesn’t go the way I expect?