of wisdom over the din of self-talk and the silence of suppression. You feel the power of overseeing your brain instead of letting it overrun you. Life lightens up. The road is clear. It is easier to figure out where you need to go and what you need to do.
THE ART OF SUPPRESSION
So why do we suppress our feelings when they are so critical to our success in life? The thinking brain gave us the ability to suppress and rationalize as a means of protection because it’s not always wise to fight, flee, eat or lust. Feelings, our cognitive labels for the emotional reactions in our body, are often stuffed away in a blink of an eye. In fact, we become so adept at suppression, we condition our brains to disconnect from our emotional responses, which affects not only our ability to express our feelings but also our capacity to be aware of, understand and appreciate the feelings of others.
The more adept we are at suppressing our feelings, the narrower are the neural pathways from the cognitive to the emotional centers of the brain. In other words, the more we teach our brains to suppress our feelings in our younger years, the less we are able to socially interact with ease as we grow older and to emotionally connect with our loved ones. At the source of many failed marriages is one or both partners’ inability to feel. Golda Meir said, “Those who don’t know how to weep with their whole hearts don’t know how to laugh either.” We biologically become joyless, heartless and insensitive. We literally “numb-out.”
Therefore, the more we teach self-control and the suppression of emotions, the more we impede the positive emotions, including happiness and passion, restricting instead of increasing our mental abilities.
However, we don’t become robots either. We still have emotional reactions in our bodies. We just do not choose to acknowl
Download Article 1K Club
