Society Doesn’t Pause for Trauma
We never seem to be given much time by society to process traumatic events. A person gets assaulted, well too bad because you’ve got a test to take on Monday morning. A parent dies, you get a few days off, then back to work.
Brianna Wiest talks about this in The Mountain Is You. Do we ever get to work through these emotions or do we just mask them with busyness? How does this suppression show up later in our lives?
The Hidden Cost of Suppressed Emotions
These emotions either tend to explode in surprising ways later down the line toward people who do not deserve it, or it is like a slow leak of toxicity that we can’t explain. Problems keep occurring and it prevents us from forming close relationships or achieving our dreams. We always keep people at a safe distance because we do not know how to share our emotions in a safe way.
3 Ways Emotional Repression Hurts Us
Three potential downsides of repressed emotions are as follows:
1. Often nefarious people will play on a victim’s unaddressed emotions
- Stirring up people’s emotions is one of the best ways to create a cult or nefarious political movement. It stops people from thinking for themselves.
- Scams, unhealthy romantic partners, toxic family members, etc. can all prey on your unaddressed emotions.
- Loneliness, guilt, desire for belonging, are all great ways to get money, time, or emotional support out of someone.
2. You do not reach your full potential
- You have not fully explored who you are or what you want out of life. This leads to a lot of dreams going unactualized.
3. You struggle to connect with others
- Your relationships are surface-level. Even if you spend years around someone, you never feel as though you got to know them or they got to know you. This leaves you feeling isolated and emotionally unfulfilled.
The Necessity of Emotional Intelligence in Modern Times
The stoicism that many people were taught will work against them in modern times. It will make them vulnerable and detached from others.
When I was young, anything that involved emotions was very much seen as being feminine. Drama, art, therapy, etc. were all for people who felt emotions strongly. If a man participated in any of these, his sexuality was endlessly questioned.
But now, I think those topics need to be emphasized on a wider scale. They are essential to navigating the modern world, which requires a high degree of emotional intelligence.
It will also help prevent a person from getting siloed in their field. It is easy to stick to your specialization, but I don’t think there is a single profession that would decrease in value because of greater emotional intelligence- even very analytical fields- in fact especially highly analytical fields.
One of the greatest benefits of emotional intelligence is that people will be more comfortable with a wide range of emotions, such as confusion, hurt, and loneliness. When they are able to name and accept these then they will be more likely to ask for help sooner. There will be less pride and more connection. That person will then be more open to seeing and tolerating these emotions in others.
This is why I enjoy art so much. It is not about a person being Picasso. It is about learning to express yourself in front of others; to grow comfortable with it and to be comfortable with others expressing their emotions.
The Consequences of Gendered Emotional Lessons
Close relationships can have excellent therapeutic value but not if we don’t know how to open up to others for our sake and for theirs.
When a person is told “boys don’t cry” for example, that will create a man that doesn’t know how to express any emotion outside of what he was taught is socially acceptable; emotions such as anger or only showing love physically. He will struggle to communicate his needs and meet his partner’s emotional needs. This responsibility will then get outsourced to his loved ones who will not enjoy it.
Or when a woman is taught to obey or mirror her husband’s emotions she will have trouble identifying or expressing her own. She is not even sure if she should be allowed to have them, let alone explore them. This will make her unable to take charge and make decisions. She will struggle to genuinely connect with others because she doesn’t even know who she is.
Building Resilience Through Emotional Awareness
Another reason why a healthy emotional state is important in the modern world is the amount of rejections a person faces on a daily basis. There are more opportunities than ever before, but that also means more rejections. Being able to weather these in a healthy way will go a long way to having a happy and successful life.
Messy Bun Book Lover
(Originally posted on June 9, 2025)
Read The Mountain is You by Brianna Wiest → https://amzn.to/4ojKGg2
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