emotional repression
Bottling feelings up
Emotional repression is the unconscious suppression of feelings, pushing them out of awareness rather than experiencing or expressing them.
Unlike deliberate suppression, repression happens automatically—the person may not realize they're doing it.
Years of emotional repression left him unable to identify what he was feeling.
Psychoanalytic theory holds that repressed emotions don't disappear but emerge in other ways: anxiety, physical symptoms, or displaced reactions.
- stifledForcibly held in
- denialRefusal to accept reality
- numbnessLoss of sensation
- dead insideEmotionally hollow, unfeeling
- stoicUncomplaining endurer of hardship
keeping it in · stiff upper lip · guarded · withdrawn · mask · facade · poker face · shutdown · swallowing · burying · choking · dissociation · avoidance · detachment · coldness · walls · armored · frozen
- Codependencycodependency, enabling, enmeshment, people-pleasing, caretaking
- masculinitymanhood, machismo, masculinity, manliness, alpha male
emotional repressionemotional expression
Conveying feelings outwardly
emotional release · self-expression · catharsis · venting · emoting
emotional repressionemotional processing
Handling feelings internally
emotional regulation · emotional awareness · emotional intelligence · self-awareness · mindfulness
emotional repressionlosing control
Authority or composure failing
emotional volatility · hysteria · meltdown · breaking down · emotional dysregulation
emotional, emotion, emotions, emotionally, emotive, emotionless, repression, repress, represses