The REAL Truth About Emotional Suppression (And How You Might Not Even Realize That You Are Doing It)

Emotional suppression does not serve anyone. I think that most of the world is clear on that by now (although some still might hang on to it being a good idea.) Emotional suppression leads to SOOOO many issues in life in our physical and mental health. But, there is a SNEAKY way that emotional suppression is showing up, even in personal development. The reason this is happening, is because I think we are not clear on what emotional suppression actually is. So, in this episode, I am going to clear this all up, and give you a heads up on where emotional suppression might be rearing its ugly head in your own personal development (right under your nose). 

Listen up... You DO NOT want to miss this... Enjoy!!!

Transcript

Unknown: 0:09

Welcome to the authentic life connection podcast. I'm your host, Seth Lusk. I'm a master certified life coach, author, personal trainer and nutrition specialist. For over a decade, I've been helping people with their dreams and goals for their life and health. I spent many years watching people get frustrated with their journey in life and giving up on taking actions towards their goals. So I dug in deep to find answers to why so many of us face this same frustration and struggle in life. So in this podcast, we're gonna dive in deep on topics surrounding what it means to consistently live a fulfilling and authentic life, where you are unstoppable and taking action towards your dreams and goals. So the only question is, are you ready to start living your most authentic and fulfilling life once and for all? Then let's get started. Shall we? Hey, everyone, welcome back to the podcast. For those of you listening in for the first time, welcome, welcome, you picked a great episode to join in on, we're going to be talking about a very important topic today. I've talked about it many times. And I would recommend going back and listening to all of my previous episodes, because I bring this topic up so many times. But today, I want to talk about this from a very specific way in which I see it showing up that's kind of flying under the radar, and even under the guise of it being personal development. And so I want to clear this up for you all, because the whole point of me doing what I do is that I want to empower more people to live lives that are authentic, and allow them to create the life that they're designed to thrive in, and you guys aren't doing that if you're not showing up authentically. And part of showing up authentically is being able to experience your authentic emotional experience, and not being reactive to it in order to alleviate or dissipate or suppress emotions. And this is a huge part of the work that I do in emotional responsibility. And it's something that so so so I would say about 80 to 90% of adults on this planet struggle with it and don't even realize they're struggling with it. Because we haven't been taught even what emotional responsibility is. So most people don't even realize that they're being emotionally reactive, or emotionally irresponsible, or basically an emotional child. Because it's just the way we've been taught to show up in life and how we see everyone around us showing up in life. So we think that this is just oh, well, that's just how humans have to be. And this is how life has to be because this is just how humans are. And it's not the truth. And the truth is a lot of the people that we see out here doing these amazing things, and we're like, how are you doing that, or they just must be a special kind of person. And really, they're not, they're just choosing emotional responsibility, which is being able to experience our full range of emotions, our authentic emotions, our authentic emotional experience, without suppressing or trying to hide from certain emotions, while also not becoming so reactive to the emotions, that we miss out on the message that they're there to show us. And so that we don't end up showing up in a way that is inauthentic for us because we're just reacting to a story that creates an emotion in us that we feel like is uncomfortable to experience, and we want to get away from it. So emotional responsibility is that ability to experience all of our emotions without becoming reactive to them. And I see so much confusion surrounding this. And in the personal development space with all of these people out there calling themselves coaches that really have no idea what they're doing when it comes to coaching, the at best. They're an advisor. And they're teaching people, these tactics to deal with their emotions that are all about emotional suppression, or emotional dismissal. And I really want to show you guys today or start to clear up for you all today. Now granted, this is just a podcast. So how it showing up in your life specifically and how you're going to deal with it is going to be very different, which is why I say work with a coach. If you recognize these patterns in your life, don't just think you're gonna read a book, listen to a podcast or listen to someone tell you oh, this is how I bla bla bla bla bla and it's just gonna work for you. It's not going to work for you. So when this is this is a huge thing that I see going on in the personal development space is people teaching people these tactics that are actually emotional resistance or emotional suppression, and calling them emotional healing, or, you know, calling them personal development and calling them I don't even know what like self love or whatever. And it's really causing a lot of people to show up in a very disempowered way, causing a lot of people to spin around and emotional reactivity and not even realizing that that's what's going on. My friends emotional suppression And, or emotional reactivity, even emotional reactivity is emotional suppression in a way I need you all to see that. And the way that it's emotional suppression is because when we react to an emotion, it's not the we're experiencing the emotion. And that's what we've been taught is, we've been taught so much that experiencing an emotion like we'll give anger as an example, because this is one that we're we've so many people have been programmed to believe that experiencing anger is when we do things like we scream, and we, we hit and we punch, and we yell, and we say nasty things to people. And that's the experience of the emotion of anger. But my friends, that's reaction to anger, that is not anger itself. The emotion Anger itself is a vibration in your body. That's the experience. And reacting to the emotion by punching by screaming by yelling by calling names by pointing fingers and acting in this rageful fitful manner that were like a lie and so bad, and you're, I'm just gonna give you a piece of mine, that is reactivity. And this is actually emotional suppression, my friends, and I know you're gonna be like, who, how was that emotional suppression and feeling the emotion. But really what you're trying to do by screaming by punching, by doing that thing, and that fit of rage, is that you are, you're terrified of the emotion of anger, you don't know what to do with it, and you're wanting to find a place to blame it on something outside of you, and react to that story of blaming something outside of you to hurry up and get out of the experience of feeling anger. That's what actually we're trying to do. And so many of us today are taught like, this is how you experience anger is you just let it out. And a lot of times, no, this is not experiencing the emotion. Now there are things we can do in a safe space. You know, if we have the energy of anger in our body, and we've already processed the anger, we know what the story is behind it, there is a way to move the energy out of the body in a safe way that isn't about reacting to the emotion, once the emotion has processed, we want to move the energy out of the body. And that may involve punching or kicking something, an inanimate object that is safe, that hasn't done anything to you, that isn't going to feel something that isn't going to be harmed by you punching it or screaming or kicking, and just releasing that energy from the body. But we only do this after we've processed and felt the emotion. And this is where so many people are getting so confused, is that what a lot of people call experiencing an emotion is reacting to an emotion. And reacting to an emotion is not feeling the emotion it is suppressing it. It's suppressing it because the objective is to speed up the process of getting out of, out of and away from that emotion, or distracting from the story behind the emotion that is actually creating the emotion. Because a lot of times we'll use anger again, as the example we will yell at whatever is in front of us. That we that we say that's where the anger is coming from, we blame it on the person, the thing in front of us the circumstance in front of us, and we scream at it, we yell at it, we rage at that experience. And we think that that's what's to blame. And if we hurry, it would get all the anger out. And we'd scream at the circumstance of the person. We call them enough names and rah rah rah, that eventually, that if we do it enough, the emotion is going to disappear. And then we won't be experiencing that that rage, that anger anymore. And we think that that is processing the emotion. But really what we're trying to do is hurry up and escape the emotion. Because if we were really experiencing the emotion, then what we would understand is that behind the circumstance in front of us behind the person in front of us behind the thing in front of us that we are trying to place the blame of the anger on there is a story that we are telling ourselves. There is a story that we are telling ourselves about that thing about that person about that circumstance. And that, my friends, that is where the anger comes from. And when we react to the emotion, we never get to the story. And when we never get to the story, we never learn how we are creating our own anger, our own rage, our own suffering, by recreating that anger and rage over and over and over and over and over and over and over again and telling ourselves that there's nothing we can do about it. It's just happening to us and we are helpless to our emotions and that the best we can do is just react to it and get it out and blame it on something around us and make those things go away so that we no longer experience anger instead of realizing the power of our own anger has been within us the entire time. Because it's about a story we are telling ourselves about something around us someone around illness. A lot of times anger has to do with stories that we're telling ourselves about how something shouldn't happen. That is out of our control. And it should happen, because it did. It did. Why it happened, we can tell ourselves so many different stories about why it possibly happened. The question is, why are we picking one that makes us angry. And some things we may want to be angry about. But then we can empower ourselves with knowing I want to be angry about this. That's why I am angry about it, not because of what the person in front of me is doing. But because I want to believe this, about this certain circumstances. And then we can respond to the emotion in a responsible way, once we understand the story behind it, and why we want to believe that story. But the truth is, most of us are reacting to stories that we don't even want to believe we've never even taken the time to know what the story is. And most of those stories have been taught to us by other people. And we don't even know why we believe them much less if we want to or not. So the truth is, my friends, most of what you all are calling experiencing an emotion is emotional reactivity, which is emotional suppression. And when we recognize that the point of experiencing the emotion is to get to the story behind the emotion, the emotional suppression doesn't end there. Because there's another really sneaky way that I'm seeing this emotional suppression, slipping right back in because it's what the brain wants to do. It's the brains wiring. It's this old, outdated wiring, that when we're experiencing an emotion, that feels uncomfortable to us, the objective is to hurry up and get away from it as fast as possible. And so here's what I see so many of you all doing out there in the personal development space, is that when you recognize, oh, I have power, I have power in the story that I'm telling myself about this experience. So if I don't want to experience this emotion, I just have to change the story. And right there as the trick, right there as the trap again, if I don't want to experience this emotion, I change the story. And so what a lot of a lot of people in the personal development space are starting to do is use their own story, to suppress their emotions. Instead of getting to the story behind the emotion, and recognizing Yes, I have all the power here. And yes, I can change the story. And yes, I can make the story, anything I want it to be, we skip to what's the story that I can make it that gets rid of this emotion. And this is that sneaky way that I'm seeing this creeping back in. And this is why I always tell people when you jump into this, work with a coach because your your brain is going to play all sorts of tricks on you to convince you that you're healing to convince you that you're empowering yourself. But really what you're doing is you're just suppressing and reacting to emotions again. And you might be saying, well, if I listened to the story, I experienced the emotion. And then I changed the story. So I'm empowered. And here's where I want you to recognize where this is really sneaking in here. And it's really it's not serving us it's harming a lot of people is that it's still emotional suppression. If the reason why you're changing the story about what is creating the emotion, if you're changing the story, and the objective is to end the emotional experience as fast as possible to shift the emotional experience as fast as possible, to suppress that emotional experience, because it's uncomfortable, and you don't think you should have to feel it and you don't like the way that you react to it. When you feel it. Then my friends, all you've done is used your story, to suppress the emotion to distract from the emotion. Emotional non reactivity is very different than emotional suppression. Emotional non reactivity allows for an emotion to be there. We can change our story about what we want to create in life and what we want out of life. And what we are responding to a knife. Yes. But if that story's objective, is to hurry up and get away from an emotional experience that we don't like, then we're using our story to emotionally suppress that is not emotional non reactivity, which is the space that we want to get to, we want to get to that space of emotional non reactivity. Because when we can be get to that space of emotional non reactivity, then that emotion can be there as long as it needs to, to tell us its full story. So we can get a clearer picture of why we are experiencing that emotion and why it has nothing to do with anything around us. It has everything to do with our story about life and we have that space As to that emotion can be there. And we can understand what is the story I want about life? What is what I'm what is that I'm really wanting in this life? And why is it that I'm afraid to experience this emotion? Why is it that I believe that this emotion is bad or wrong? And how am I disempowering myself by believing that? How am I able to experience this emotion and still show up in a way that allows me to respond and create the results that I want in life, that is emotional non reactivity, and it is very different than emotional suppression. Emotional suppression is all about hurrying up to get away from the emotion, it is all about dismissing the emotion, negating the emotion. And you can use the story changing to do that, too. And this is what I want to caution you all about, is that so many of you all out there out there doing the personal development, quote, unquote, work. And really, what you're doing is you're hurrying up and changing your story about life to avoid experiencing emotions, that you're telling yourself or too uncomfortable to experience. And in doing so, you've disempowered yourself, because you're not allowing yourself to see your full story about life and make an empowered decision about what you want that story to be not because you can't experience the emotion. But because that story isn't what you truly want to believe about life and isn't creating the actions, the actions in your life that will create the results that you want, that allow you to show up as the person that you truly are not the person you feel like you have to show up as because of those emotions. And because of the fact that you're afraid to experience them. And because of the fact that you are avoiding the discomfort of experiencing them. This is the space of emotional non reactivity, my friends, and I wanted to bring this into your radar, I wanted to begin to put this on the map for you all to recognize. those of y'all out there doing this this story work, this emotional responsibility work where you're recognizing that my emotions are not coming from anything around me. They're coming from the story that I'm telling myself about those things. Okay, so you recognize that that's step one. That's not the end. It's not Oh, well, now that I see that I have, that I that my stories are what's creating my emotions, that all I have to do is change my story. And I never have to experience this emotion again, no, that's emotional reactivity. And that is emotional suppression. If your objective is to avoid experiencing an emotion, then changing your story is just has just become your new form of emotional suppression. One of these days we're going to learn, we are humans, and we are designed to experience the full range of emotions. That's how we experience life. If we want to experience happiness, we can't experience it without the opposite. Without the contrast, we experience life through contrast, and when we make the objective to avoid certain emotions, my friends, we create a huge debt, a huge emotional debt and that debt, that price has to be paid somewhere. And it's paid in the fact that we will, it becomes that much harder to experience the emotion that we're thinking, oh, I want to experience this. But in order to experience this, I have to avoid experiencing that right there. So then the emotional bounce back becomes bigger and bigger and bigger each time. When you try and avoid sadness to experience happiness, then what you're doing is resisting sadness. So eventually, the sadness will have to come back in and when it does, it's going to flood back in the longer you resist it. So the point is, not to avoid sadness, to experience happiness, but to experience the sadness, because that is the contrast to happiness. And it is what allows us to experience happiness. And when we're not afraid to experience sadness, not only do we get to experience and hear the stories behind it, but we also get to experience the fuller experience of happiness when happiness is authentically present. But what most of us are doing is we're avoiding one emotion to create inauthentic emotional experiences. So then the emotions that we're avoiding, we build up a dam to them, and eventually they have to come back in my friends. And the longer you build up that dam, and the higher you build it and the longer you hold it back, the bigger than emotional is going to bounce back and slap you right in the effing face. And you're going to be like, Wow, so I guess I just can't, you know, what's the point of all of this? The point of it is to not suppress the emotions to avoid the emotions. The The point is not to do that. The point is to be able to experience the full range of emotions and empower ourselves with them and be in a nonreactive space to them. We empower For ourselves with our emotions, when we recognize I'm in control of the story here, and I don't have to change the story to avoid the emotion. But I can change the story. If the story is creating a life for me, or limiting what's possible for me, and telling me that I'm unable to create what I want to create in my life, then I can change the story to what I want to believe about life. But I don't have to do it to avoid experiencing these emotions over here. Because I'm able to experience all of the emotions. And then the human experience becomes so much richer. And then when we go after the dreams of what we want to create in life, we're not avoiding the sadness, we're not avoiding the anger, we're not avoiding this fear that comes along with the growth of changing our story and moving into a new story about life that is uncertain, that has results in it that are uncertain, that will surely cause us to turn back and just go right back to where we came from. If our objective is to avoid uncomfortable emotions, and to change our story to avoid those emotions, we will always back down and go back to the familiar when that is our objective. When emotional suppression is our objective, my friends, true growth requires for us to be willing to experience all of our emotions, even the uncomfortable ones. And these people out here that you see that are just unstoppable in creating the life that they want. And you think that they just got it easy, or that they just don't experience the same emotions, or that you know, they are just better at suppressing it know, what they're better at, is experiencing their emotions, and coming into them in a non reactive space. And that's what the emotional work is all about my friends. So I want to challenge you to look at your life today. Do you notice yourself avoiding certain emotions? Do you notice yourself having stories about certain experiences that you can't have, and this is why you can't go after the dreams that you want in your life. Because it would be too uncomfortable, it would be too painful, it would be too scary, it would be too this it would be too that for you. And you're just not strong enough than my friends, you are living a life of emotional disempowerment and emotional reactivity and emotional suppression. And I want to challenge you step forward into the real work. Those of you out there who are in the personal development space, and you're, you're in that space where you like, oh, I can just change the story. If I don't like the emotion, I can just change the story. If I don't like the motion, and you find yourself kind of spinning out there. And you're you're creating results. But you're kind of like, I don't really know, this is the life I want. What am I doing here? What do I really want and then every time you start getting somewhere close to what looks like what you want, you bump into something and then you find yourself backing off from it because of an emotion that's coming up and you're like, Oh, well, I don't like that. So I'm just gonna change the story here. And then you change the goal. And then if you find yourself spinning in that space, I want to challenge you also step forward into the space of true emotional empowerment, true emotional non reactivity, because in emotional non reactivity, we don't avoid the emotions to not react to them, we experience them, but we don't have to react to them. We can choose a response that is still empowered and allows us to create the life we want unstoppably and that's the power that I want to offer all of you. That's what I'm here for. That's what I'm here to teach you. And I get that there are so many brands out there of coaches, quote unquote, coaches that are telling you, oh, yeah, just do this little trick right here to get rid of the fear. Just do this right here to get rid of the fear. Just do this right here to get rid of the anger, just do this right here to get rid of the sadness. Just do this right here to smile all the time. Just do this right here to be happy when you feel sad, and just do this right here to create this motivation and just do this right here to create this emotion instead of that emotion. It's all a bunch of emotional suppression, and emotional reactivity. And I'm here to offer you the real deal here. The real work of getting in to our true authentic emotional experience, finding the stories that are behind those emotions, learning from them, seeing what is truly valuable for us in life before those stories existed. Because trust me, there's a way to see them. And being able to build a vision of purpose and a life of what you truly want. And use that emotional empowerment, that emotional non reactivity to be able to step into action of building that life, and to do it unstoppably. What else are you going to do with your time here on Earth, my friends, what else are you going to do but build that life for the rest of the time that you're here? If you think that's a waste of time, you know, what's a waste of time sitting around and reacting to life and stead of instead of taking the action to build the life that you want either ways going To be uncomfortable, either way is going to be uncomfortable, my friends, the point of building the life you want is not because you're going to avoid discomfort. The point of spending your life building the life that you want is that you spent your time here in this life doing what you truly want, instead of avoiding what's uncomfortable, because of a story that you're telling yourself, and then getting to the end of your life and realizing I spent my entire life avoiding emotions. And because of that, I never learned what I'm capable of. And never learned what I could truly do. If I was just willing to experience fear. If I was just willing to experience anger, not react to it, just experience it, and move through it and take action, even when the emotion is there. Not once we get rid of it. But while it's there, taking the action that we want to take, not what feels good in the moment. But the action that we know and decided ahead of time that we want to take, even when the uncomfortable emotions come up, my friends, you're not going to avoid the uncomfortable emotions anyway, stop telling yourself that lie. It's time to step forward into emotional responsibility into emotional empowerment into emotional non reactivity, and being unstoppable and creating the life you want. What else are you going to do with your time hear my friends? It's your life. What are you doing with it? And don't tell me, Oh, I'm just enjoying it. And by just enjoying it, what you mean is basically avoiding anything that feels uncomfortable. Because that's not enjoying your life, my friends, that's avoiding about 50% of it. So I want to call you forward, it's time to see your true power and build the life you're designed to thrive in and absolutely love being fully in with the uncomfortable and the comfortable emotions. But this time, the uncomfortable emotions are building the life you want. Instead of keeping you stuck in a life, you feel like you have to survive. That's what I've got for you today, my friends. That's what I'm offering. Just reach out when you're ready to take that step into true emotional responsibility, true emotional empowerment, and being unstoppable and creating the life you want. I love you all. And until we meet again here next week. Ciao. Thank you for joining us today. I hope you enjoyed the content of this podcast. If you did, please subscribe so that you're one of the first people to know when I release a new episode each week. If you have any questions or if you have interest in learning more about the coaching that I do with my clients one on one, then just head over to my website at WWW dot life coach seth.com that's www dot life coach seth.com there you're gonna have the ability to reach out to me for questions that you might have or to book your free discovery call with me to discuss what one on one coaching with me might be like for you. You can also check out and order your copy of my book to get a taste of what I'm all about as a person and as a coach. I'm so happy that you joined us today and I hope to have you here again next week. So until then, let authenticity be the guide to your most unstoppable and fulfilling journey of life.