Repressing Your Feelings Increases Your Anxiety

If you don't want to express your feelings in public, then wait until you get home to scream, cry, or do whatever helps you get your emotions out, because repressing your feelings can be harmful to your mental health.
Repressing Your Feelings Increases Your Anxiety

Last update: 27 May, 2022

Repressing your feelings can turn into torture. After all, emotions are there to be expressed, to see the light. They’re not there to be kept in.

When you have anxiety problems, you may have a problem with your emotions. You don’t know how to manage them well, and you have problems expressing them.

Do you feel silly crying, even when you’re alone? Do you dare not scream, even muffled into a pillow? If this is you, you may have a issue with repressed emotions.

What beliefs are influencing you?

Show all your faces

When you have an emotional problem, finding out what beliefs might be influencing you to repress them is important.

What might these beliefs be?

  • Crying is for weak people.
  • Showing my feelings is childish.
  • I have to be in control, I’m an adult.
  • I’m strong, I have to keep it in.

There are many thoughts that you may think are true, but all they’re doing is leading to actions that are hurting you.

When you’re little, you express your feelings without any shame. However, little by little your parents try to restrain you.

They say things like, “behave”, “don’t do that”, and “stop crying,” unknowingly starting a repression that will just grow.

So when you enter into adulthood, you feel imprisoned in your own self. You’re not able to cry even when you’re alone, that’s how far the repression has gone for many.

However, while everything may seem to be going fine, the arrival of anxiety is a clear warning sign that you have to start letting your feelings out.

“Take a look at this: Do You Dare to Be Honest and Express What Is Good For You?”

Anxiety as a consequence of repressing your emotions

Repressing your feelings may be harmful

Anxiety may begin very slowly. However,it needs attention, and if you don’t give it the attention it requires, it will end up growing and growing.

When anxiety shows up, you should learn about yourself and start to manage your feelings better. That doesn’t mean more repressing and controlling them. It means you must let them be expressed.

If you’re mad, why not express it? You don’t need to yell or turn into someone who throws their rage at people.

You have to learn to listen to yourself and be assertiveWith the right words, you can make your anger known and not keep it in.

  • If you like, you don’t have to express them in public. When you get home, take it out on your pillow or yell at the empty room.
  • What’s important is that you express it, let it out, and don’t keep it in.

It doesn’t matter if it makes you feel embarrassed at first. Nobody’s looking at you! It’s a process and can be very liberating.

If you don’t let out what you’re feeling, anxiety will start to take over your life.

“Read this, too: Five Personal Strategies to Channel and Relieve Anxiety in 15 Days”

Look at the origin of the problem

Enjoy life

Sometimes, if you want to stop repressing your feelings and start understanding what beliefs are influencing you, you have to look inside to see what’s going on.

Why is this so hard?

Because it hurts. Most of the time you have a wound there that hasn’t healed and is still festering.

However, dealing with the pain and making an effort to find out where your anxiety is coming from will lead you down the path of success.

Doing this will help you to actually face the problem and fix it. After all, if you’re aware of what is happening, it’ll be much easier to fix.

“Before you go, don’t miss: Once You Discover Your Inner Strength, Nothing and Nobody Can Stop You”

Are you having anxiety problems? Do you often repress your emotions? Putting an end to all of this is a long, tedious, and tiring process, but it will be well worth it. Letting it all out and no longer keeping it all in will help prevent those explosions that sometimes happen when things are bottled up.

Don’t let yourself repress your feelings, or you may end up with unbearable anxiety.


All cited sources were thoroughly reviewed by our team to ensure their quality, reliability, currency, and validity. The bibliography of this article was considered reliable and of academic or scientific accuracy.


  • Cano-Vindel, A., & Fernández-Castro, J. (1999). Procesos Cognitivos y Emoción. (Monografía de ‘Ansiedad y Estrés’). Murcia: Compobell.
  • Friedman, S. (1997). Cultural issues in the treatment of anxiety. New York: Guilford Press.
  • Kasper, S., Boer, J. A. d., & Sitsen, J. M. A. (2003). Handbook of depression and anxiety (2nd ed.). New York: M. Dekker.
  • Cameron, L. D. (2003). Anxiety, cognition, and responses to health threats. The self-regulation of health and illness behaviour, 1, 157-183.

This text is provided for informational purposes only and does not replace consultation with a professional. If in doubt, consult your specialist.