No control over what happens to us

No one in this life is safe from inconveniences, whether in the form of being stuck in traffic, being fired or even the death of a loved one. However, as one of the basis of stoicism points out, Sometimes you have no control over what happens, though one thing you have is control over the way you react to these events. What this means is that when you are experiencing a situation that causes you negative emotion and to feel helpless, focus in what you can control out of It in order to be more proactive regards finding that solution. I think many people misinterpret that statement and use It more as a way to suppress negative emotion and instead try hard to replace It for a positive one, however, this won't make the feeling fade away, though It just will make It stronger and stronger as you try to cover it constantly. That's why in this article I will talk about how trying hard not to feel negative emotions can actually make initial responses even worse in the long run, how It affects you and ways to stop this pattern, . Let's begin by explaining what happens to you when you negate emotional responses that implicate negative feelings:

1.- Damaging your relationships:

When you choose to hide your feelings via just putting a happy façade, you're not being totally honest with yourself, and much less with the people you care about, making much more uncomfortable to talk about to them about your emotions and sorting out problems, at the end provoking conflicts, mistrust and avoidance of this kind of conversations, getting more and more distant from the people you care about and making you lose valuable friendships.

2.- Bottling Up Deep Emotions:

When a sense of injustice or frustration comes upon you and you decide to hide It, you're not getting rid of any of these feelings, just deciding to put a blanket over them hoping that they don't come back. However, this will make the opposite in the long run, as when negated, these emotional responses tend to intensify, and, after keeping It all to yourself, you can't take a hold of them any longer, exploding at an unopportune moment and not even against the person that has caused It to you. One easy way to look at this is through the lens of anger towards someone, which if hidden, will only keep growing passively as resentment till It becomes too big and acts out into something worse.

3.- Stress and Early Death

It's obvious that having too much stress can be detrimental to your health, however, little doses of stress are normal in life and our body is actually quite accustomed to It. What really causes this damage is to keep that stress over sustained periods of time, where It will only make you more and more prone to suffer from affections like sleep issues, diabetes and heart problems in the long run. As you keep masking your direct responses to negative events, which might be stressful just in a short interval of time (Maybe days or weeks), you'll just make the pain worse by pretending you do not know what causes you this uneasiness, which might even amount to months and years of your life and take part in a much more subconscious level, which can bring you to an early death If you're not careful.

Now that we've talked about the many adverse effects that It might cause you to hide negative emotion, we can talk more about how to combat this common practice.

Accept the unavoidable and be honest with yourself

Not negating, though accepting that you're in a pretty difficult moment where you can't do a thing about It will make you feel bad in the moment, though remembering that at the end of the day It will be much better to take It, analyze It and understand yourself better, will leave you with much more space to act upon solutions than If you just try to convince your mind that you don't feel pain whatsoever.

Communicate with people you trust about It

Sometimes you feel very stressed and a pretty therapeutic way, not only to relax though to make you take better decisions upon It is to just talk about It to someone who you trust will listen to you and will understand what you're passing through, guiding you to what really makes you mad about what's happening and even providing you with constructive feedback

Seek Help

Sometimes keeping a long pattern of supressing emotions can become pretty grave and you might require the help of a professional. A therapist can help you sort out the real causes of why you do this, and he/she will provide you with support in a much more controlled and smooth way through the solution of your problem.

I hope that with this this article I could have pointed out effectively why repressing what you really feel when something bad happens can be detrimental to you over the long run and how you can beat this behavior with different strategies, making you more sincere and in control of your emotions. As always, I thank you all for your support and I wish you the best of luck!