Keep It All In

“Every human being on the face of the earth has a steel plate in his head, but if you lie down now and then and get still as you can, it will slide open like elevator doors, letting in all the secret thoughts that have been standing around so patiently, pushing the button for a ride to the top. The real troubles in life happen when those hidden doors stay closed for too long.” - Sue Monk Kidd

I'm a bottler. Bottling up my thoughts, emotions and feelings has been a way of life for as long as I can remember. Particularly when emotions are running high, and dealing with them is painful, my instinct is to stick a cork in the bottle of my consciousness in some vain hope that it will all go away. Troubling thoughts get pushed aside and swept under the proverbial carpet. Difficult feelings, of the kind that can result in an overwhelming sense of powerlessness, are shoved down the back of the sofa.

The thing is, I've been aware for many years that bottling it all up is unhealthy. There are certain inalienable truths to this, and certain factors which lie at the root of why, despite knowing how unhealthy a strategy bottling things up is, I have persisted with it for so long. It makes sense that my default coping strategy is to bottle it all up. It is only now that I have reached a point where I feel capable of rewriting the rules in my head which govern all this. In knowing the root causes that implanted this way of coping into one's thinking, and in understanding the ongoing factors that permeate and prolong this obviously ineffective, ultimately destructive process, one can begin the work of change and learn to stop bottling everything up.

People bottle things up for many reasons, but often at the root of much of this behaviour is either one huge incident, or many small but significant incidents, where they began venting their emotions and were shot down in flames by whoever they entrusted with their vexation. If we place our trust in someone, nominate them as confidant and choose to pour out our feelings to them, we are not only trusting them with our secrets but putting ourselves in a very vulnerable state - perhaps the most vulnerable one can be, if the troubling emotions run very deep. If we then find that person either reacts negatively, dismisses our feelings out of hand or, worst of all, pretends to be caring and sympathetic but betrays our trust and tells others in a mocking way, it is natural for us to decide we never want to open up again.

In cases where there has been a series of these sort of incidents, which often begin in childhood within the child-parent dynamic, especially if the pattern is systematic and seemingly deliberate, an individual develops faulty coping mechanisms to deal with the difficult emotions and feelings in their life. These usually serve them reasonably well for some years but adulthood, with all its incumbent challenges, and the changing nature of our world and its daily stressors, will inevitably cause these coping mechanisms to become ineffective, useless and eventually destructive. Cure eventually does become cause.

The perils of bottling up our emotions are manifold, as this helpful article demonstrates. Here's a short list of the worst things that can happen:

• You are more likely to engage in escapist behaviour such as turning to alcohol or drugs, which often leads to addiction.
• You stop reacting 'normally' to good and bad events in life, resulting in loss of empathy and compassion, and you fail to experience the joy of life, or the necessary pain of grief or loss, resulting in the development of neuroses and often a complex.
• You are likely to isolate yourself from others, or fail to be able to engage in deep relationships with others, or end up feeling unable to be your 'true self'. You can become fake, diverging from living a life of dedication to reality and truth.
• You are highly likely to experience stress, anxiety and related disorders. Further down the road this almost inevitably leads to mental illness.
• You will tend to avoid triggers in life, meaning you miss out on the fruits of life's challenges and do not progress to your full potential.
• You are likely to become jealous of those around you who freely express and deal with their feelings, deriding their way of life and seeing it all as weakness, when in reality it is true strength. This makes for a lonely life.
• You are more at risk of stress-related physical illnesses - even heart disease and cancer - and more likely to suffer from debilitating chronic pain conditions, according to recent research.

So I'm on a mission to stop bottling it all up, and to deal with all the damage done by my years of using this failed coping mechanism. It is a long road ahead, but in acknowledging and accepting all this I'm really feeling good about my chances. I'm hoping anyone who reads this and finds food for thought, or even relates to some of it, will join me in throwing out the destructive thinking process. There are many better ways to deal with our difficult emotions, thoughts and feelings and I will share any and all I find useful in this blog as they come up. I shall end with a light-hearted reflection on the subject, courtesy of a classic song..

You know your problem 

You keep it all in 

You know your problem 

You keep it all in

That's right 

The conversation we had last night 

When all I wanted to do was 

Knife you in the heart 

I kept it all in

You know your problem 

You keep it all in 

You know your problem 

You keep it all in

Midnight, a husband getting ready to fight 

A daughter sleeps alone with the light 

Turned on, she bears but 

Keeps it all in

Just like that murder in '73 

Just like that robbery in '62 

With all there things that have happened to me 

I kept it all in

Why do you keep on telling me now

You know your problem 

You keep it all in 

You know your problem 

You keep it all in

That's sweet 

That conversation we had last week 

When you gagged and bound me up to my seat 

You're right, I do 

I keep it all in

- 'You Keep It All In' by The Beautiful South. © Universal Music Publishing Group

Copyright ©2018 Richard C. Greenlow. All rights reserved.