"Unacceptable" Emotions
Are there certain emotions that you believe are "off limits?" Emotions that are wholly unacceptable to feel, express or acknowledge? Where did you learn they were "off limits" to begin with?
When we experience a strong emotion, we may experience urges to act in certain ways. For example, when we're angry, we might communicate in an aggressive tone or yell. We might even feel the urge to throw or hit something or someone. These action urges are a natural part of feeling an emotion (as are all the other sensations that an emotion might entail). In the "caveman days" many of these action urges were helpful in ensuring our survival or improving our situation in some way. Continuing with the example of anger, those action urges may have protected the person from a threat, or set a boundary, or communicated strength and authority to others. These days, societal norms and values are drastically different and there is a greater need to consider whether acting on these urges serves us. Learning how to do this often starts in childhood, as this is where we start learning about emotions and how to respond to them.
When we're young, our ability to manage our action urges is less established, leading to a higher likelihood that at some point in our early childhoods most of us will indeed yell or throw something when angry. Unfortunately when a child is then punished for the behaviour without explanation, rarely are they taught alternative methods to cope with that emotion. They might learn to associate anger as the problem that gets them into trouble and in response, develop the ability to suppress that emotion over time. Unfortunately when this occurs, those children grow up without learning how to navigate feeling that emotion or knowing what to do when that feeling does arise. They also miss out on the valuable information that emotion can give about the person's experience or how to navigate a situation. Over time as the emotion is increasingly suppressed, the emotion may become overwhelming to experience even in small amounts, the emotion may build up under the surface and then spill over into inappropriate reactions to stressors, and there's a greater likelihood of increased emotional pain due to secondary emotions to navigate as well.
The above example describes anger, but this same scenario could occur for more tender emotions such as sadness or even love.
If you have "off limits" emotions and this resonates with your experience, it may be time to consider trying an alternative approach. Rather than suppressing those emotions or considering them unacceptable, it may be time to begin learning how to allow those emotions to naturally arise. There are many skills available from various therapeutic approaches to help you access those feelings and build skills to cope with them. As you learn to cope with emotions as they arise, you'll also learn that feeling a feeling does not equate to having to ACT on that feeling. After all, nobody has been arrested for feeling angry, but people have certainly been arrested for acting on their anger in inappropriate ways. This distinction can be incredibly empowering, as it gives us permission to feel whatever we feel. We no longer need to engage in the neverending fight of suppressing the feeling, we just need to learn how to respond to the feeling in a more effective way.
If this discussion resonates with you and you would like to learn more, I would encourage you to speak with a therapist. This change can take time and practice, but with the support of a therapist you can learn how to feel and cope with all of your emotions.