Suppression of Feelings

Sam is a very charming man. On the outside he has a perfectly sweet persona. But, Sam suffers from an unconscious split in his personality. On the inside he has practiced and been accustomed to suppressing his real feelings throughout his entire life. This was and has been his way of coping and surviving in his world. His split? Sam uses a senseless wall of words that confuses people, pushes them away and forfeits any chance of any kind of love getting inside of Sam, even though he has a lovable side.

Sam periodically runs into a lot of conflict with many different situations and people. He becomes the center of attraction with his drama. Every so often, he breaks out of his very sweet persona and starts accusing other people of doing harmful things to him. Most of these events carry little evidence of what Sam imagines and explains. His relationship with his mother has been long, storied and filled with conflict. Sam has tried to get away from her as far as possible. He is a classic example of a person who gets swallowed up in the role of the victim. Paradoxically, when his crazy side emerges he becomes a perpetrator and victimizes many other people who have no idea why he is in such conflict with them.

Sam is conflict oriented to the dismay of everyone around him. So, what's the problem? Sam has habitually suppressed his feelings. He builds up a series of resentments and does not know how to get his feelings outside of himself where he can examine their validity. After a while Sam suppresses so much of his feelings that he no longer knows why he has become so rigid and inaccessible to any attempt to penetrate his wall of defenses. To further complicate his life situation, he creates a whirlwind of chaos and confusion for those around him. He becomes destructive and eventually alienated from those who could be close to him.

Suppression of feelings is a common defense. It also creates a lot of displacement, projection and acting out of long forgotten buried feelings. That's what suppression does. It is the burying of feelings as a somewhat neurotic coping mechanism with a life that has shut down access to deeper feeling realms.

The Antidote? Never let feelings become so buried that you do not know what reality is anymore. Repression is the end result of the habitual use of emotional suppression. It has become a bad habit and a destroyer of happiness and good relationships.

I will not go into how Sam's resistances were finally penetrated by those who chose to work their way through his seemingly impenetrable wall of suppressed feelings and defenses. The individual who finally broke through to Sam was deeply committed and motivated to getting Sam to open up. This hero of the story used very powerful questions for a long and persistent amount of time that eventually caused Sam to start opening up. The feelings of the episodes began to pour out, and a healing started to take place. There is a great truth at the bottom line of suppressed and repressed feelings. But, first the person needs to create a pathway to that deeper truth.

Talking, free association and good questioning helps bring out the truth. Sam began to reveal a series of episodes that accumulated over time which led him to his current interpersonal crises. If you can't talk about your feelings or express them, they will eventually seep to the surface and beg to be acknowledged. When those repressed feelings accumulate, an emotional explosion may occur and everything starts spilling out. The great way to overcome repression and suppression is to work your feelings on a continuous basis.

Rule: Don't allow suppression of feelings to become a habit. Choose to express and ventilate in the most appropriate and therapeutic manner possible, otherwise you will act out and not reach a resolution. (Read my book Feeling People, available at PsychotherapyHELP.com)

I have mentioned that suppression of feelings eventually leads to conflict and disorder. The therapeutic releasing and expressing of those suppressed emotions creates a clearing away. But, it does not necessarily constitute a cure. Much acting out of repressed feelings comes about because there are deep bottom line buried pains and traumas that are deeply embedded in the brain and the physical system. A full emotional blowout, a powerful catharsis, a complete abreaction, a full scale total primordial release eliminates the prototypic early issues that created the template for acting out. Systematic release of deep feelings leads to a complete overhaul of the emotional system, eliminates destructive behavior, acting out, depression and anxiety. It opens the way and ultimately creates a life of transcendence, happiness, relationship and emotional success.

This is the beginning of positive psychology, especially when it is integrated with many other personal growth strategies and tools.

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Coaching, therapy and counseling, with my very powerful strategic methods, can change your life to a point of optimal experiences and ecstatic love. Don't waste time. These powerful methods are things that you will never learn in any school. Let my 45 years of teaching, coaching, counseling and therapy put you in that place where you can actualize what you might have missed the first time around. Decide to get busy and prepare to work hard and benefit from the rewards. You're only an email (phannigphd@att.net) or a phone call (818-882-7404) away from greater happiness, joy, peace, and emotional prosperity. Contact me now. What are you waiting for?

Paul J. Hannig, Ph.D. MFT
PsychotherapyHELP
www.psychotherapyhelp.com
phannigphd@att.net
T: 818-882-7404