Bottling Up Emotions - Your Battle Against the World

All you have to do is google 'The history of mental health' and be shocked at the way we used to shun mental health and the gruesome methods in which we thought would help sufferers achieve 'normality.' But finally, after so many thousands of years of the human race gracing this earth we call home, we are in a position where we are recognising the importance of mental health and realising that it's okay not to be okay. For me, it was the death of Robin Williams that brought it home; I sat there in front of the news having misheard the name and thought 'Oh, Robbie Williams has died. Shame." I think being corrected afterwards made the whole ordeal that ever more shocking for me! I thought of the larger than life man I knew whose wit had no limit and smile never ceased. It suddenly struck me how powerful the mind is and its uncanny ability to produce genius and destruction in equal measure, and it scared me to think it had the capability to bring down a man like Mr. (ROBIN) Williams who, to my mind, was indestructible.

For a number of reasons, it's only been recently that I decided to be a bit reflective and investigate into the sides of mental health that touch a bit close to home. What research I compiled was both a mixture of enlightening and heartbreaking, suddenly so many things made sense and fell into place and, would you believe it; there are people in the world who have suffered the same demons! It's been my mission of the past few months to put it all into words. Perhaps it might help someone else see how some pieces fit together.

Like in all things, everyone has a unique way in which they process and handle their worries and woes. While some will scream it from the rooftops to any Tom, Dick and Harry that'll listen, others may tend to keep it to themselves until they've made sense of it all in their head before disclosing to others. Today, though, I'm considering the people who fall through the gaps and develop, like I have, a habit of bottling everything up. It's natural for everyone to want to keep things to themselves now and then and often it's not necessarily the first thing people think of when talking of mental health.

"Bottling things up? That's ridiculous! You just tell people what's wrong!" Said to me recently. Yes, it should be that simple, but you have your reasons: You want to be strong for others, others aren't as strong, they can't handle it, you don't want to appear weak, you don't want to burden others with your problems, they've already got their own troubles without having to listen to yours as well, there are other things more important so what does it matter if you get a little bruised along the way... The list continues.

Often it isn't even a case of just keeping things to yourself, sometimes you don't even know what you feel. You spend a lot of time ignoring and not accepting your feelings, so whenever you feel something; sad, angry, scared, you turn your back on it and try to convince yourself that you do really mean those words you say to everyone, "I'm fine." Hopefully, you'll forget about it, maybe they'll just disappear. They don't, you know that, but you can live in hope.

You can do that for days, weeks, even longer, constantly putting on a show for the world. But you're constantly tired, it's exhausting leading a double life. On some days it gets you down because you start to think no one cares, they mustn't do if they can't see that anything is wrong. You have to really remind yourself that that's the point, it's hardly their fault when you're that good of an actor that they seriously have no idea!

Life goes on and this silence persists as more worries. Something happens, you brush everything you feel under the carpet, ignore it and carry on with your day. All the while, your emotions have nowhere to go and without any relief, your worries sit in the back of your mind growing until they're bubbling over and raging nearly out of control. Then one day, all it takes is something as small as knocking over the salt for you to lose it. Your emotions take over, finally getting the expression they needed, your entire world goes into meltdown and God help anyone caught in your warpath! After the blood, sweat and tears, you're left feeling tons better, but looking a fool, because no one can understand where it all came from. Sometimes neither can you, you might have woken up that morning genuinely believing that everything is fine and dandy, and that makes your outburst all the more shocking to you. Other times you might feel the tip of the iceberg within you, each second another kick to the time bomb resting on your chest.

So, you're a bottler. What does that mean? It means you're pretty damn hardcore. Leading a double life has made you tough and cold-blooded, but you're often incredibly attentive to the needs of other people. Maybe acting in a way or saying all the things that you want others to say to you to get you to talk and feel better. However, it comes at a price. More often than not, those who bottle up things have low self-esteem, perhaps not obviously and not always, but just enough to stop you in your tracks every now and then. Maybe you fear certain situations or don't trust yourself in your abilities, maybe socially or practically. Whatever the case, this crack in your esteem is more than enough for you to stop you from expressing yourself.

And we must stop! Me included, because it really isn't worth the blood, sweat and tears. On top of all the aggro we put ourselves through, we risk our health on catastrophic lengths. There's more than enough research to support the notion that suppressing emotions can build enough stress (often unnecessary) to knock years off your life, and even make you more likely to develop things like high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease, and cancer.

So what can we do to stop?

Baby steps.

Check in with your emotions everyday. Get into the habit of identifying how you feel and recognising when it changes and what it changes into. More importantly, identify why you might feel a certain way. Start off simple; "I feel tired because the rain kept me awake last night." "I feel happy because of the people I'm with." "I feel annoyed because a customer came to me in work and was rude to me." Don't be scared to identify negative feelings, in fact, embrace them! They deserve to be acknowledged just as much as the happier ones! Start slowly, maybe checking in only once a day to begin with, then move it up to maybe morning, afternoon and night, after that maybe every hour. You'll be amazed how many times your current emotions will change through the course of the day! Look out for key changes in your body language: Sweaty palms? Clenched fists or tense? Any smiles today? Lots of energy? What do you associate these things with?

More importantly, when you've decided you're angry, anxious, whatever, accept it. That's one of the fundamental problems here, as previously stated! To stop suppressing feelings, you must stop feeling ashamed of them. It's true, sometimes they'll make you do and say things out of character, sometimes they'll eat away at your insides, and sometimes they won't make any sense whatsoever. Even with all that in mind, good or bad, emotions are natural and whatever one you feel at any time is there for a reason. Sometimes they won't be logical and you won't be able to work out why you feel a particular way, but that doesn't mean to say there's anything wrong with you or how you feel. Do your best, let go of your pride and accept that that's how you feel. It's okay, no one's going to think any less of you if you're sad that the hamster died or anxious about the presentation you've got to give at work. Accept them, don't play them, don't fight them. That's how you feel, that's not a fault.

Once you've developed a routine of checking in and actually knowing how you feel, that's when you can start communicating them.

I KNOW! We're talking about not talking about things! But that, my friends, is the whole problem! It might be hypocritical for me to say at this point, but you now you need to get into the habit of actually saying out loud how you feel. Once you've mastered the means of identifying exactly what you feel and why you feel it, you've suddenly made the whole process ten times easier then what it was previously. And like with all things, once you get into it, it will become second nature.

Now, I don't mean go telling all your worries and woes to every fella who happens to wander past. Let's be honest, no one wants that! Little things, voicing to your work bestie that you're "super annoyed at the manager for changing your shifts around," or making small talk with the people at the bus stop about how good the nice weather is making you feel. Nothing particularly big and meaningful, just little things to help you get into the nature of voicing how you feel.

Alongside all these little accomplishments, have someone in the wings to help you along and a pro at picking up pieces, should you need it, and someone who you feel you can talk to about things when you feel brave enough. Pick someone you trust and feel can support you through what will be a very vulnerable experience the first few times. Ideally, someone you see regularly or have the means to see easily face-to-face. We've all got close friends who live far away, but often that's a curse in disguise, because who wants to spoil their long-distance phone calls or one-in-a-blue-moon meetings with sadness and problems? We know they say 'You can always talk to me, I'm just a phone call away' and that's great, but it doesn't really help you in what you're trying to overcome. All it does is give you an excuse not to voice what's going on in your head because a phone call takes effort and you're already expending too much of that into keeping things to yourself.

Bottling things up has always been a speciality of mine, even as young as primary school, the phrase seemed to follow me everywhere. It's been a long time coming, but I know I need to break the back of this tendency, not only for my sake, but for the people I love around me, who I know get put through the mill when I suddenly implode. They get the brunt of my frustrations and tears and what's worse, they've no idea why and are left confused and with the knowledge that they'd done nothing wrong to begin with. How is that fair? To state Sigmund Freud's words; "Unexpressed emotions will never die. They are buried alive and will come forth later in uglier ways." So writing this all down is another step in my journey and I can confidently say that, while it unearthed some tears and pushed me in ways I could never express, it was worth my weight in gold doing. Hopefully my tellings might offer someone else a little solace. I leave with a link to the webpage that kick started this whole decision to write: What made me realise there were other people in the world like me.

https://thoughtcatalog.com/christopher-hudspeth/2014/03/15-struggles-people-who-bottle-up-their-feelings-understand/

Notable research and references:

http://www.timigustafson.com/2014/bottling-negative-emotions-can-just-harmful-acting/

http://mysahana.org/2011/05/emotion-suppression-effects-on-mental-and-physical-health/