Modern social expectations will tell you that you should talk about your feelings. This hasn’t always been the message, especially for men. Men and their families have always felt the impacts of keeping all the emotions to themselves, it’s just now that those relationships are increasingly voicing the need for men to do so. There’s good reasons for this though. Never talking about your feelings can have negative consequences for your mental health and relationships.

Benefits of talking about feelings:

Process emotions

Saying how you feel out loud brings relief and can be validating, which in itself is a way of processing emotions. To go further though, processing is also letting yourself feel the feeling without holding onto it too tightly or ignoring it (just allowing it to be). AND processing can be making sense of that emotion. Emotions are signals. Your body is responding to something and knowing why you have the response is going to help you improve your mental health and relationships. You can’t make sound decisions in your best interest if you aren’t aware of why and what of those emotional responses. It’s basically getting to know yourself.

Better health

Did you know that there is evidence that keeping all your emotions in and not processing them affects your health? Sometimes you might not only not share your feelings, but be disconnected from them, like it’s hard to know how you feel and understand them. How we feel is felt in our bodies, so your emotions are tied to all the various systems of our body ie. nervous, immune, digestive. Not feeling and processing our emotions can be really stressful on our bodies and cause health issues in the long-term.

Also, ignoring feelings can lead to mental health issues because ignoring them doesn’t make them go away. It can show up as anxiety, depression, chronic stress, or irritability.

To learn more, check out the blog post: 8 Downsides of keeping things in.

What you might be doing instead of talking about feelings

To provide you more clarity, here are some signs you aren’t talking about feelings and ways you might be coping instead:

Ignore your emotions

You try to make the feelings go away. You don't pay attention to your feelings, but instead you avoid, pretend they’re not there, and even talk yourself out of the feeling. 

Doing this regularly allows painful feelings to manifest in other ways.

Escape or numb

This can be another way to ignore your emotions. This can look like using substances, video games, scrolling social media, tv, or self-harm. It might even look like using heavy distraction like immersing yourself in other people’s crisis or problems, OR switching environments. Ie. party or workplace.

Talk to yourself

You have a very active inner dialogue. You go around and around in your head about the ins and outs of the situation, feelings, assumptions, rather than saying it out loud.

You try to make sense of things, even play out “what I should have said”, “what they should have done”.

Disclaimer: This is general advice. Like all self-help information, it is not personal and tailored to fit for all people and situations. This content should not be taken as a substitute for individual mental health or relationship support.