Nearly everyone hides their feelings sometimes as the case my be. Let’s say your partner reveals something which was meant to be kept secret at a family gathering. You’re upset and felt embarrassed, but you pretend everything was fine and waited till you get home where you can talk alone and pour out your emotions. You personally choose to pretend and hide your feelings by not causing an argument in presence of your extended family and that was the way best for you. Occasional emotional suppression which means hiding feelings won’t cause any problems as long as you work through them in a healthy and productive form. It can become a problem or rather an issue, however, if it becomes part of you, turned to a pattern and affects your ability to communicate authentically with families, friends, and even with colleagues at work.
While growing up as a child, a lot of us were taught to hide our emotions and it grew to become part of us. When a girl is hurt and needs to let out her emotions you would hear an adult say "Don’t cry, Big girls don't cry". Or say to a boy “man up” or to “toughen up" when he’s hurt forgetting that hidden emotions can lead to anger. A person can appear composed doesn't mean they aren't hurting. They might be reluctant to show their vulnerability to others. You wouldn't know the person was hurting because they hide their feelings and emotions behind a fake smile in order to not have to explain to people why they are sad. The emotions you see people express aren't always a clue to the pain they feel. They then often take their pain and swallow it with addiction to booze, drugs, food, work just to mask up the suffering. And sometimes they inflict pain on themselves to make the actual hurting disappear, but this doesn’t hide the real pain that they truly feel.
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When people are down, sometimes, they don't want to hear "Cheer up!" Or be told how to feel. They want to know you care about how they feel not imposing how they ought to feel on them. The goal isn't always to feel better. Sometimes it's just to be understood by a good listener.
Why People Hide Their Emotions
To avoid being hurt
People often hide emotions to protect their relationship. For instance, When someone you care about does something that is upsetting, you might choose to hide your annoyance but definitely their actions bothers you. And if they react negatively when you tell them how you feel, you could end up triggering conflict. So, instead, you choose to avoid conflict by hiding your feelings. This desire to avoid pain is often formulated by lack of trust in yourself and others. And if someone has manipulated your feelings in the past, you might fear trusting someone new with your feelings again to avoid getting hurt.
Lack of confidence
This one tend to be the most common reasons why people hide their feelings. And it start with growing up as a child, receiving messages that your opinions and feelings don’t matter. This often happens when parents, caregivers and peers judge or criticize you for expressing your emotions, shutting you out as a kid, eventually, you may no longer feel safe expressing your opinions and feelings as you grow older, so the only way is for you to hide them to prevent further criticism.
Not to reveal weakness
Most persons find it difficult to control their emotions so the only way to make them feel safe is to hide it. So as not to worry over revealing certain emotions that would lead others to judge them and believe they can’t manage their feelings. As a result of this, they hide their grieve, fear, and frustration.
Occasionally concealing emotions is quite normal. It might even seem to be the best option in a tense situations or public place. But when you hide your feelings because of the fear on how others will react, you end up denying your own self. This might seem like the perfect way to avoid conflict and emotional pain, but later in no time it will come back to bite you in the end.
In my own case, most times I would say, I prefer to live things unsaid for the sake of peace. But do you know I end up hurting myself the more by keeping everything I was supposed to say to myself, boiling in my head in deep thoughts just because I do not want conflict. And if I had pour out my emotions to address the issue it would long be off my mind and I have my peace. And that’s how it has been for sanity sake.
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Learning how to express emotions automatically isn’t always easy especially in an adult stage. But with the help of a therapist, it can come easy in gradual process which would empower you to communicate more openly, without letting fear of the potential consequences hold you back.
Thank you for your time, and for reading
See you in my next post 🤗
