Children are incredibly sensitive to how their parents deal with emotions. There might not have been any direct communication that you should not feel certain feelings, but you might have picked up on the fact that some were more acceptable than others.
You might have learned to repress your feelings because:
- Your parents did not show feelings or talk about emotions much.
- Your parents were always encouraging you to be happy and think positively.
- Your mom was very anxious and easily upset; you felt she was too fragile to upset her further.
- Your father was very sensitive to criticism, so he interpreted your tantrums as personal attacks that made him give you silent treatment.
- You had a loud and dominating younger sibling and your parents did not have space for two problem children, so you learned that being smiley and quiet got you more love and attention.
- Bad things happened but were never talked about; everything was pushed under the carpet.
- You have to look after your younger siblings, even though you were still a child yourself.
- You were bullied in school, taught to “man up” and be strong, otherwise you'd be seen as weak.
In these situations, over time we learned that our natural feelings of sadness, anger, envy, and hatred will stop us from receiving love. While it’s very normal to feel annoyed or upset with our parents. It might not feel safe to show these feelings because we need their love and attention to survive.
This is where things start to go wrong for our mental health. The beliefs stored in our unconscious mind were created when we were children and first learning about the world. We developed them based on the things that kept us safe when we were young. We might have learned that when we cry, adults get angry and tell us to stop, so crying becomes risky. Maybe our parents were not very good at talking about feelings, so they shut down when we tried to say how we felt, which was scary. You might not be aware of any of this; you might find you just feel very uncomfortable when you have to give a talk at work or when someone forces you to a conversation about feelings.
All these lessons about what's safe and what's not create limiting beliefs that are stored in our unconscious and provide a compass for our adult lives without us realizing it. We might believe we are not good enough, so we will sabotage our new job opportunity. Maybe we don't believe we are worthy of love, so we push away people who treat us well in favor of those who treat us badly. Maybe we believe that it is not safe for people to be angry at us, so we leave our lives doing everything we can, not upsetting people.
