Anxiety and Emotional Suppression

self-sabotage

31 May

Anxiety is created from trauma, with the body suppressing emotions when faced with an overwhelming emotional shock. The mind enacts situations experienced that grow out of all proportion, leading you to believe you are in danger. But realistically, the imagined outcomes rarely happen.

In 2020, Jake Paul, of Twitter and YouTube fame, was heavily criticised after telling his Twitter followers, "Remember anxiety is created by you", and was strongly condemned by people suffering from anxiety.

Caroline Flack, who died in February 2020, wrote in her Instagram post, "I have been pressing the snooze button on many stresses in my life—my whole life."

Anxiety is the body’s response to trauma

Paul wasn't wrong in his statement, but he failed to clarify what he meant… anxiety is the body's natural reaction to trauma, which has been experienced knowingly or unknowingly as a child and has not been released emotionally. Therefore, the emotions remain within the body, leading to the mind continually overthinking it is under threat, resulting in the body remaining in a constant state of flight or fight.

Caroline admitted that "the stresses in her life were continually ignored." The stresses could have come from a range of events or situations she had faced or was facing.

Unfortunately, over time, her emotions would have become overwhelming, hence why she stated in the same post, "She had been having some kind of emotional breakdown for a long time."

It was hardly surprising that Caroline wrote those words as the body would reach a breaking point if it could not deal with the stored emotions. Regretfully, in Caroline's case, being unable to deal with her suppressed emotions caused her to commit suicide.

There is a need to be inwardly confident

Confidence comes when you face your trauma

As women, we fail to believe we are good enough and be confident. We are unable to believe we can be in control of our lives. But if we acknowledge and resolve the conflict within us due to trauma experienced in childhood, for many reasons, including domestic abuse, bullying, cultural biases, peer pressure or societal expectations.

To change our outcomes, we need to explore our past—especially the element of emotional disconnect.

In Caroline's case, her advisers suppressed her needs, as Caroline's mother, Chris Flack, stated," Carrie… was told not to post (her Instagram post) by her advisers, but she so wanted to have her little voice heard."

Like Caroline, we suppress our needs, thinking we cannot say what matters to us and ignoring that we have a right to be heard and seen.

Beliefs and emotional releasing

While exploring our past, we realise we feel uncertain, overwhelmed, unsafe, angry, and separated from the world, even within our family environment. We fear being rejected, ignored, put down or told we don't know what we are talking about, which is highly damaging to our confidence, adding additional anxiety.

Over time, our beliefs and suppressed emotions cause our body to react as it desperately tries to bring awareness to the misalignment it is experiencing. It does so through anxiety and depression, autoimmune disease, cancer or other serious health issues.

When emotions are released naturally and effectively by connecting to the past and allowing the wounded child, the soul within, to express the feelings it was unable to at the time, the mind can then let go of the constant state of anxiety.

Stop being anxious or depressed

The following will assist in improving the quality of your life and reduce anxiety and depression.

Stop listening to negative feedback from others
Accept you as you are - imperfectly perfect
Explore your past - get to know you under the old beliefs
Forgive yourself and release the past to live in the present.

It is a shame that Caroline's wounded child was unable to feel good enough, loved and safe within, for she would not have been so affected by all the social media criticism, nor would she have been in a situation where she suppressed her own needs even before the legal advisers forced her to do so.