Emotional Conditioning
As recovering addicts and people struggling with mental health issues, one of the emotional patterns we’ve adopted over the years is that of emotional suppression. We’ve been taught that expressing how we feel is a sign of weakness, and that we’re stronger and more well-adapted if we keep difficult things to ourselves. We’re conditioned by our families and larger cultures to keep our painful emotions a secret and to put on a brave face in the midst of our pain. We feel bad about ourselves if we feel any emotion or think thoughts that we don’t consider to be positive. We avoid feeling our emotions, and we hide them from other people. Why is it detrimental to suppress how we feel?
Mental Health and Addiction
Suppressing our emotions causes them to worsen over time because we’re not giving them, or ourselves, our loving conscious awareness. We’re not working towards healing, forgiveness, reconciliation or redemption, we’re simply burying our emotions deep within us, hoping they’ll go away on their own. As we know, our difficult emotions contribute to our mental health issues and our addictions. Our unhealed sadness and grief can morph into depression. Our worry and stress fuel our anxiety. We use our drugs of choice to escape the pain of our mental health issues. The more we avoid these critical health problems, the worse they become. We can’t heal what we don’t address.
Physical Health
Our physical health can also become impaired by our patterns of suppression. Our bodies and our energy systems are impacted by our thoughts and feelings. We’re affected by them physically as much as we are mentally and emotionally. We hold onto our emotions physically and energetically, and the more we suppress them, the more our bodies and energy systems can become negatively affected by them. Our unresolved mental health problems, such as depression and anxiety, can lead to problems with our physical health, such as insomnia, eating disorders and high blood pressure. Our addictions can lead to organ failure. We can develop physical pain and discomfort, such as chronic pain issues, trauma-related conditions such as fibromyalgia, and poor posture and alignment which can lead to all kinds of skeletal, muscular and even digestive problems. Our overall health can deteriorate to the point of total breakdown.
Our recovery entails examining all of the effects of our suppressed emotions, as well as learning healthy, constructive ways to let ourselves feel and express them.
At The Guest House Ocala, our experience with addiction and recovery makes us uniquely equipped to be able to understand the struggles you’re experiencing.
We’re here to help.
Call 855-483-7800 today for more information on our treatment programs.
theguesthouseocala.com
3230 Northeast 55th Avenue Silver Springs, FL 34488