Energy Audit #4: Keeping It All Inside Will Eat You Alive

It doesn’t have to be a lie or a scandal, just not saying anything about how drained you are feeling, about the resentment that has been building up inside of you, the parts of your life that you feel are forced, or coming apart at the seams might be one of the most exhausting thing you are doing right now.

I know that keeping everything inside has been made to look mature or even strategic, and so you tell yourself that after all, it is no one’s business but your own, and you will figure it out. The thing is, it takes a toll because that silence demands a constant emotional policing that requires you to always moderating not just your words and tone, but your expressions as well.

Fact: Psychologist Daniel Wegner’s Ironic Process Theory shows that trying to suppress emotions doesn’t calm them but actually keeps them alive under the surface, demanding constant mental effort and attention. Over time, this suppression takes a toll on you, leaving you mentally and emotionally drained. (Source)

What is more, pretending to be fine is a full-time job. A job which is all the more wearisome by the fact that somewhere, deep down, you know you are just faking it. Not necessarily in the malicious sense, you are just “surviving.” It will work for a time until it doesn’t.

“Every social interaction then becomes like a performance to an audience that may not even know that it is all a show.”

You should know, however, that no one can support you if you make yourself invisible. If you have built a wall that is so convincing, even the people who love you will have little clue you are struggling, and so they won’t know to ask. So, as the saying goes, you will keep pouring from an empty cup, while your own needs go unmet, and sometimes unseen even by you.

Fact: Researchers have found that people who habitually suppress their emotions experience less social support and intimacy. Why? Emotional suppression interferes with genuine connection; people can sense the dissonance even if they don’t know why. (Source)

Suppressing something doesn’t make it vanish. On the contrary, it can make it grow deeper roots. Anxiety, insomnia, snapping at people, and chronic fatigue, as research shows, can also be side effects of emotional suppression and secrecy. Meaning, even though you keep things buried, your body still reacts as if the problem is front and center.

“Pretending to be fine is a full-time job.”

Of course, you don’t need to put all your personal struggles on blast all over social media, sharing it with the wrong people and begging to be heard. What you do need is to stop always acting like silence is always strength.

Sometimes, silence is just a form of slow erasure: say it out loud, in prayer, state it on paper, or just to that person who you know cares. Secrecy doesn’t always protect you because it can also isolate you and slowly drain you more than you know.

Fact: Psychologist Susan David calls this cultural obsession with staying positive a dangerous form of emotional suppression. What we often label as resilience can actually be toxic positivity, denying hard emotions rather than processing them, which only leads to more inner conflict and stress. (Source)