Another great article http://www.policymic.com/articles/54105/the-one-thing-all-men-feel-but-never-admit showing exactly how our emotional health reflects on our physical, congnitive and spiritual health.

What happens when we learn to stuff our feelings?

I don’t know about you, but I believe addiction is a feelings disease. A dis-ease, if you will. Wrestless, irratable and discontent. A body without a home or hope.

Years ago I learned to shut off my emotions. As a matter of fact I’d developed scorn for them. Mine and yours. It was a survial skill I’d developed early. Emotions equal vulneability and I wasn’t going there. To me they also equaled weakness.

At the time I never put it together. I wanted so despeately to feel close to other human beings. Of course to feel close to another human being you must first expose your emotions, and if you’re like I was, you judged them good or bad.

The good ones, happy, excited, hopeful were easily exposed.

The bad ones, sad, hurt, frustrated, lonely, resentful, ashamed, guilt, (notice how easy it is to rack up the ‘bad’ ones?) you kept to yourself. You hide them, stuffing them away deep inside.

Seems to me I had a lot more of the ‘bad’ ones, than I ever did the ‘good’ ones.

Now I don’t know where it was I learned feelings are good and bad, but it seems I’m not the only one. I was speaking with an eight year old girl about feelings recently. On paper cups I drew a happy face and a sad face. I had one blank cup with nothing on it. I asked the child to identify the smiling cup to which she replied it felt “good.” When asked to identify the sad cup she replied it felt ‘bad.’ To the cup with nothing on it she said it felt ‘good’ also.

The message couldn’t be any clearer.  Happy and nothing are good. Sad is bad.

So now what?

We teach our children the ABC’s, how to tie their shoes, and one plus one. We teach them the name of colors and to wear a helmet. But what happens when we don’t put in the same effort into teaching our children about feelings. All of them.

Do you know we have hundreds of feelings. Hundreds!

Yet when asked how we feel we say. OK. Not bad. Pretty good. Fine. Good.

Why is it we’re still emotionally handi-capped?

What is it about our feelings that we shy away from?

Do you know when you shut down pain you also shut down joy. You experience life half alive.

Maybe this is why we’ve become such a depressed lot. The energy which goes into stuffing your feelings is exhausting. After awhile it can lead to lethargy and apathy, and  eventually, suicide.

Why do we hide our tears?

Why is it not OK to roar with laughter?

Why should I greive privately?

And if I can’t greive do I remain forever stuck? Cemented in loss? Unable to move on? Breathing, but never living?.

Do you know our tears are made up of two emotions. Stress and joy. And yet we work so hard at turning them off. Our bodies know how to take care of us-if-we let them.

So what really happens when we ‘turn it off?’

Sadly our bodies pay the price. Blood pressure sky rockets, migraines and headaches, ulcers, insomnia, heart disease, stroke, over-eating or under-eating or both. We tend to isolate and withdraw from society. We ‘suffer’ in silence. Life becomes one long endless grind. Perhaps we sleep more, or spend endless hours in front of the TV living vicariously through somebody elses life.

Marriages and relationships fracture. We tend to take our ‘stuffed emotions’ out on other people. Especially those closest to us. Have you ever lain shoulder to shoulder and yet a million miles apart in your marital bed?

We shop more, buy more, eat more, smoke more, drink more, use more, rescue more, work more, gamble more, in an never ending cycle to numb out.

Maybe a good start would be to stop judgeing our enmotions.Maybe they’re not good or bad. Perhaps they simply are.

Try it some time. Rather than hiding your tears let your kids see them. Let them know feelings are a natural and vital part of the human experience. Maybe if we aren’t so afraid of them, they won’t be either.

Intimacy is what we crave in our relationships. Into-me-you-see.

Someone has to start it.

Will you?