How Repressed Emotions Make Us Sick

the most curious and hazardous feature of the way we're built lies in the difficulty we have registering what we actually feel our vast and strange Minds get filled with thoughts that go unsifted and with feelings we don't have the courage to look at we might be angry or sad while lacking any Act of awareness that we are so or guilty or envious without any grasp of what at play behind a thin psychological curtain and so we remain unconscious always because we are resistant to ideas that threaten our sense of calm our self-image and our gratifying Illusions about who we are we surely can't be angry because we're kind people who couldn't feel negatively about a beloved elderly relative or we can't be sad at not being invited to the party because we don't care about trivial social matters and it isn't possible that we're envious because we aren't people to covet others advantages while the greatest share of our mental apparatus privileges forgetting over understanding we do nevertheless have a conscience there's a part of us that wants the truth however bitter it might be a minor part but a notoriously insistent and ingenious part that won't leave us in peace until its case has been heard it will in in order to stir us from our revery give us all manner of problems breakdowns illnesses Twitches compulsions in the hope of letting us know that there is something we would benefit from Reckoning with when our conscience has done everything it can to alert our minds it has a tendency to set to work on our bodies more specifically it forces us to feel in the form of a symptom what we haven't felt outright as an IDE idea or Insight lack of awareness returns to haunt us as physical ailments if our intellect won't look at our anger the feeling may be sent to dwell in our lower back if our anxiety isn't being dealt with psychologically it may be relegated to our gut romantic frustration that is denied May literally begin to wreck our hearts our unfelt feelings end up as back pain constipation insomnia migraines and arrhythmias however well-meaning they might be doctors seldom know to ask the right questions they picture themselves fixing material problems caused by material malfunctions not that it might be an ex partner who has broken our kidney or a stifled rage against our father that's freezing up our vertebrae we need to do the work ourselves in order to spare our bodies some of their mute agonies we should submit them to a curious sounding exercise with our eyes closed probably while we're lying in bed we should pass over our different organs and zones and ask if this could speak what might it want to tell me what might the heart ask for the legs the shoulders the stomach our minds are probably better able to think of answers than we might presume it could be surprisingly clear once we ask the question that our shoulders are desperate for the relationship to end that our stomachs want us to take on less responsibility that our hearts want a chance to say sorry that our rib cage has had enough of pretending it's happy and that our lungs need an opportunity to scream many of our bodily ailments are ultimately mute forms of Revenge for all the thoughts and feelings we have so carefully been refusing to entertain we will feel so much better in our bodies once we have repatriated our concerns to our minds once we have reversed the process of forgetting and dared to see and endure what we've been in flight from for too long

Channel: The School of Life

Views: 840,777

Keywords: the school of life, schooloflife, education, relationships, alain de botton, philosophy, talk, self, improvement, big questions, love, wellness, mindfullness, psychology, how, to, hack, men's health, mental health, emotional health, stress management, anxiety, depression, mind body connection, psychosomatic illness, holistic health, repressed emotions, emotional suppression, bottling up emotions, mind-body wellness, emotional healing

Id: KmoCJmQFAUA

Length: 4min 19sec (259 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 10 2024