What Happens to the Feelings You Don’t Feel

I am a positive person. I genuinely believe things work out for me. I look for the silver lining, and I’m good at finding something to be grateful for even when life isn’t going according to plan. For a long time, I thought this was one of my greatest strengths—and it is. But I eventually realized there were times when my positivity wasn’t helping me process what I was feeling. It was helping me avoid what I was feeling.

Something would happen that hurt me, disappointed me, angered me, or made me sad, and I would immediately start working my way out of the feeling. It’s fine. Everything happens for a reason. I have so much to be grateful for. I’m not going to let this ruin my day. And just like that, I had “let it go.” Except…I hadn’t.

You can’t let go of something you never let yourself feel.

There were periods of my life when I became incredibly good at putting on a happy face. When I was going through my divorce, there were so many feelings I didn’t understand and didn’t know how to express. I didn’t want people to know I was struggling. I didn’t want to appear weak, vulnerable, needy, or anything less than my normal positive self. So I held it together—until I couldn’t.

There were times I would leave a workout, get into my car, and have to pull over on the way home just to scream. Then I’d compose myself, pull into the driveway, walk into a house full of people and be completely pleasant. Hi! How’s it going? Everything’s great! At the time, I didn’t understand the connection. I thought I was letting things go because I wasn’t walking around consciously thinking about them anymore. What I was actually doing was stuffing them down, and there is a big difference.

Your brain can say “I’m fine” before your body is fine.

An emotion doesn’t only happen in your head. Your whole body gets involved. Think about getting angry. Something happens that feels unfair, frustrating, threatening, or upsetting, and your body starts reacting before you’ve even fully thought about it. Your face gets hot, your jaw tightens, your shoulders tense, your heart beats faster, and your breathing changes. Your nervous system is essentially saying, Something is happening. Get ready.

Then your thinking brain jumps in and says, Nope. I’m fine. It’s not that big of a deal. I’m going to be the bigger person. So you smile, go back to work, change the subject, or tell everyone you’re totally fine. But saying you’re fine doesn’t automatically make your body fine. Your mind may have decided the experience is over while your body is still responding to it.

Do that occasionally and it’s part of being human. Do it over and over, though, and you may start spending a lot of time tense, guarded, stressed, or on alert without even realizing it. Maybe your jaw is constantly clenched. Your shoulders are always tight. You have trouble fully relaxing. You’re exhausted at night but somehow still feel wired. Little things irritate you way more than they should. Then you lose it because you can’t find your keys and wonder why you just went from zero to 100. Maybe you didn’t. Maybe you were already at 75.

So why does any of this actually matter?

Our bodies aren’t meant to stay in stress mode all the time. They’re designed to respond to something stressful and then eventually settle back down. But if we’re constantly interrupting that process—pushing down the anger, ignoring the hurt, swallowing the tears, pretending we’re okay—our bodies can spend more time carrying stress.

Over time, chronic stress can affect things like sleep, digestion, energy, immune function, and our overall physical health. That doesn’t mean one unprocessed argument is going to give you a disease. Our health is far more complicated than that. It simply means our emotional experiences and physical bodies aren’t two completely separate things. What happens to us doesn’t only exist as a story in our heads. Our bodies participate in the experience too.

Suppression, repression, and expression

There are three words I think are really helpful here because they aren’t the same thing: suppression, repression, and expression.

Suppression is conscious. You know you’re angry, but you’re in a meeting and this isn’t the time to deal with it. You feel yourself about to cry, but you’re in public and decide you’re going to hold it together until you get home. Suppression isn’t automatically unhealthy. Sometimes putting a feeling aside temporarily is exactly what the situation calls for. The important question is: Do you ever come back to it? There’s a huge difference between I can’t process this right now and I’m never going to process this.

Repression is different because you may not even realize you’re doing it. Maybe anger wasn’t acceptable in your family. Maybe sadness made the adults around you uncomfortable. Maybe you were praised for being easygoing, independent, happy, or low maintenance. Eventually, you can become so good at disconnecting from certain feelings that you genuinely don’t recognize them.

Someone asks, “Are you angry?” and you genuinely think, No! I’m totally fine. Meanwhile, your jaw is clenched, your shoulders are practically earrings, and you’re aggressively unloading the dishwasher. Your body may be giving you information that your conscious mind hasn’t caught up with yet.

And finally, there’s expression. Expression doesn’t mean acting on every feeling you have. Anger doesn’t mean screaming at someone. Hurt doesn’t mean sending the two-page text. Anxiety doesn’t mean canceling your plans. An emotion is information. It isn’t necessarily an instruction.

Healthy expression means acknowledging the feeling and giving it an appropriate outlet. Maybe you cry, talk, journal, walk, breathe, shake, move your body, or simply say out loud, That hurt me. The goal isn’t to perform the emotion. It’s to stop fighting the fact that it exists.

Feeling something isn’t the same as feeding it.

This was a really important distinction for me because I used to think I had two choices: wallow in the feeling or get myself out of it as quickly as possible. There’s a third option. You can simply feel it.

Feeling anger might mean noticing that your chest feels hot, your jaw is tight, and your fists are clenched. You acknowledge that you’re angry and give yourself space to experience it. Feeding anger is replaying the conversation 47 times, thinking about everything you should have said, calling three friends to tell them the story, remembering something the person did six years ago, and building an entire courtroom case in your head proving why you’re allowed to be angry.

At that point, your thoughts may actually be creating more of the emotion. The goal isn’t to feel more. It’s to resist what you’re already feeling less.

The next time you say “I’m fine,” get curious.

You don’t have to become an expert at processing emotions overnight. Start ridiculously small. The next time something happens and you immediately hear yourself say, I’m fine, pause before you believe yourself and ask: What am I actually feeling right now?

If you don’t know, forget the emotion for a second and start with your body. Is your chest tight? Is there a pit in your stomach? Are your hands sweaty? Is your throat constricted? Is your face hot? Is your breathing shallow? Don’t explain it yet. Don’t build a story around it. Don’t try to justify why you’re allowed to feel that way. Just notice.

Then, instead of immediately asking, How do I make this go away? try asking, Can I let this be here for a minute? Because processing our emotions doesn’t mean we have to turn every difficult Tuesday into a 45-minute healing ceremony. Sometimes it simply means giving ourselves permission to admit, I’m disappointed. I’m angry. I’m hurt. I’m sad, and letting that be true without immediately trying to become something else.

Looking back, I don’t wish I had been less positive. I love my optimism. I love that I expect good things, and I love that I can usually find the silver lining. I just wish I had understood sooner that I didn’t have to use positivity to escape everything else.

I can be grateful and disappointed. I can be hopeful and grieving. I can believe everything will eventually work out and be angry about what is happening right now. Being a positive person doesn’t mean only experiencing positive emotions.

Negative emotions aren’t evidence that something has gone wrong with your personal development. They’re not a character flaw. They’re part of being human. The goal isn’t to become so healed, regulated, evolved, or positive that nothing ever gets to you again. It’s learning to recognize what’s happening inside of you, allowing yourself to experience it, and eventually letting it move through.

Maybe you don’t have to get so good at letting things go. Maybe you can start by letting yourself feel them.

Want to go deeper?

This is only part of the conversation. Get the whole story on this episode of Create Your Fate.

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Before you go, consider this:

What emotion is hardest for you to let yourself feel—anger, sadness, disappointment, fear? What have you learned to do instead of feeling it?