Do you ever wonder why you tend to feel numb much or most of the time? Do you ever think that you somehow “should“ be feeling things more than you do? Do you find yourself unable to experience the joy or happiness that others seem to feel so readily? If you answered, yes to one or more of these questions, then this blog post may very well be for you!
Emotional Repression and Trauma are Major Problems in Our World
We live in an age where there is so much trauma going on all around us: from war, to catastrophic weather events, political violence, and economic inequality. The list is seemingly endless, with so many different sources of trauma in our world. There are going to be many symptoms of this, and one of these happens to be emotional repression or emotional numbness, and coping with it can be a very important focus.
What is Emotional Repression and How It Starts
When people are traumatized, one of the primary reactions can be the experience of shock. Sometimes people also react with feeling frozen, or disgust, or horror. One of the main primary reactions is shock, however. What this does is it causes a person to feel emotionally numb, and to repress or suppress other emotions because of that. In the beginning, numbness serves an important purpose in keeping people from feeling other more distressing emotions, such as fear/terror, horror, shame, guilt, and/or disgust. The only problem is that the shock tends to numb out other emotions such as joy and happiness as well.
Therapy is a Way Out of Emotional Repression From Trauma
One of the things that effective therapy can do to help remedy emotional repression is to help become aware of the numbness and how it relates to an experience of shock that accompanies trauma. Once you become aware of the shock that has happened, the possibility of identifying deeper feelings becomes possible. Certain forms of therapy are good at processing a feeling of shock, such as Image Transformation Therapy, or ImTT. I have used ImTT with many of my clients, and shock is one of the simplest feelings to process with this method. Once this is done, other feelings related to trauma can surface.
Is Emotional Repression Better than Feeling Emotions?
It may seem at first glance like keeping unpleasant emotions under the surface may be a desirable thing. That may be true for the short term after someone is traumatized, but feelings and emotions, however unpleasant they may be, give us information that we can use to help us to guide our actions. And just because a feeling is unpleasant, doesn’t mean that it’s better left on addressed. Other traumatic emotions can be processed in therapy, like I outlined above. There are also other ways to process emotions that may be more effective for you. You can’t just assume that having a negative emotion is a bad sign, because in this case it’s actually a good thing that you have access to more feelings than you did before you addressed the shock and the numbness. One other way to look at it is that shock and other trauma reactions are always adaptive growing up, but they become maladaptive in adulthood.
What To Do If You Need Help With Emotional Repression
As mentioned above, therapy is an excellent vehicle for overcoming emotional repression related to trauma. I’ve been helping my clients my entire social work career to deal with and overcome all of their unpleasant feelings related to trauma, including the numbness that goes with shock. While the journey is not easy or simple, it does offer very tangible benefits for persons and their capacity to grow and heal. You can become more functional and available in your relationships when you start to open up and identify the emotions that you’ve been keeping under wraps for so long. You can gain a new feeling of aliveness and vitality by addressing these feelings so that they don’t continue to dominate you from below. Feel free to call the number at the top of this page or fill out an inquiry form below if you live in Maryland or Texas, and I can get back to you to schedule a free 15 minute phone consult so you can get a better idea of whether I can help you with your situation. I utilize several very helpful techniques for treating trauma, including EMDR and ImTT. I encourage you to get the help that you need so you can live your best life and others can benefit from sharing your journey with you.
Visit our page on trauma therapy to find out how Scott can help you with emotional repression.
About the author: Scott Kampschaefer, LCSW is a private practice therapist in Frederick, Maryland. He has an extensive background in working with depression, anxiety, and bipolar disorder at a clinic for older adults with these disorders in Austin, Texas. He now works with adults and adolescents 14 and up in private practice. His most recent book is titled The 5 Pillars of Addiction Recovery and is available for purchase on Amazon and in paperback on this website.