Six Keys to Expressing Your Emotions

If emotions are so genuine, then why do we spend so much energy repressing, hiding, and keeping them to ourselves?

Putting emotions into words is a way to express your emotions and, therefore, a rather healing exercise. Because sometimes there’s no specific technique that could directly facilitate a change in our mood. However, the mere act of expressing what’s inside of us is healthy and liberating.

Perhaps it sounds easy. But through your personal experience, you’ll discover that expressing your emotions will be easier once you get into the habit of it. To a large extent, social and cultural conditions keep you from opening up. Other things that can influence you are fear, shame, trying to guess what others are thinking, etc. Thus, for one reason or another, you’ve been repressing what you’d like to say out loud for the entire world to hear.

Is Expressing Your Emotions Inappropriate?

Expressing your emotions is never inappropriate, even though tradition and popular judgment have told you otherwise. In this regard, a weakened tradition only means that it’ll be easier for the newer generations to express their emotions and that you’ll have to unlearn part of what you’ve already learned from society.

We began to experience feelings as soon as we were born. As babies, we cried and laughed to express ourselves. Then, little by little, a whole range of emotions developed: anger, fear, guilt, joy, sadness, love… You may ask yourself: if emotions are so genuine, then why do we spend so much energy repressing, hiding, and keeping them to ourselves?

Earlier we mentioned how there are many social constraints that limit us. For example, phrases such as “Men don’t cry” or “Girls are very unattractive when they yell or fight” are limiting.

If children don’t grow up in an environment that enhances their emotional development during childhood (it can be directly, but it’s also effective to have good role models), then the normal thing is for them to grow up and banish their emotional world. This, in the absence of a successful emotional education, is, in principle, an intelligent solution. The child or teenager says: “I’m not going to delve into a field I can’t manage“.

However, what started as an ideal solution to avoid major problems is counterproductive in the long run. Our biological makeup seems to be designed for feeling before thinking. So it isn’t a good idea to banish what’s written in our nature. Whether we like it or not, that will continue to influence us.

Ways to Make it Easier to Express Your Emotions

Knowing how to express your emotions appropriately will result in positive changes in different areas. Here we leave you some keys to help you manage your emotions better and, therefore, improve your emotional intelligence:

Catharsis

The controlled release of energy is achieved by expressing your emotions. The word catharsis means purification. And in this case, as stated by Aristotle in his book Poetics, it’s an emotional, corporal, mental, and spiritual purification.

Accumulating negative emotions is a burden that’ll eventually make you feel angry, bitter, and even vengeful. Sooner or later, it’ll affect your mental and physical health.

Inner Peace

Freeing yourself from negative vibes will give you the opportunity to release any damage and find inner peace. It’ll make it easier to reach a state of mental and spiritual peace, where you know and understand what you’ve been through without regrets. This way, you’ll boost your resilience (ability to emerge strengthened from adversity).

In addition, inner peace grounds you so you’ll feel happier and fulfilled. This is possible because you’re being sincere with yourself and express your emotions properly.

Emotional Well-Being

Achieving inner peace will put you one step closer to the feeling of emotional well-being we all crave, a perspective from which you can identify the things that please you.

Self-Respect

By expressing your emotions assertively, you liberate yourself from depending on other people’s opinions. Recognizing what you feel, managing your emotions properly, and expressing yourself will help you reclaim your innate rights and to set limits. That is, to respect yourself and to be safe from other people’s abuse, mistreatment, and toxicity.

Empowerment

When you’ve achieved purification and self-respect by expressing your emotions, you can say that you have control over your emotional life.

When you’re in balance with yourself and your personal desires and emotions, you’re congruent. Achieving this will give you power over your life and its constant changes and allow you to move forward and grow.

Reliability

In addition to saving your physical and emotional health, expressing your emotions in a healthy way will improve your relationship with others. It’ll allow you to form healthier bonds based on honesty, trust, and respect.

When you present yourself as you are, without fear of your emotions, then you’ll obviously project a more authentic personality. This will make you inspire confidence in others.

As you can see, expressing your emotions opens up a whole world of possibilities. It’ll help you manage your emotional energy and build relationships based on trust in which intimacy and complicity are possible. Are you ready to express your emotions?