Emotional Suppression Quotes

Emotional self-control is NOT the same as overcontrol, the stifling of all feeling and spontaneity ... when such emotional suppression is chronic, it can impair thinking, hamper intellectual performance and interfere with smooth social interaction. By contrast, emotional competence implies we have a choice as to how we express our feelings. ~ Daniel Goleman

I believe emotional suppression fueled by a shamed imagination lies at the root of society's ailments. It is the believing leaders of religion that keep the "denial circus" going decade after decade. We have, for too long, supported this tyranny of delusion. We have given the guru and the preacher the stage one too many times. It is time to wake up and replace the preacher with the human teacher - a human who is the intelligence of their whole organism. ~ Christopher Zzenn Loren

History reveals that groups of human beings are capable of systematically killing members of other human groups. Humans have killed other humans: six million Jews, hundreds of thousands of Native Americans, and over 110,000 Japanese, the latter within a matter of seconds at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. John Hodge (1975) estimates that 150 million lives were lost in the slave trade of blacks from Africa. More than 5,000 blacks were lynched in the United States between 1882 and 1939. Just as a child who witnesses her mother being battered by her father feels physically threatened, women who witness male-male violence also feel physically threatened. The observation of violence among others creates fear of physical violence and thus constitutes emotional violence. ~ Dee L.R. Graham

Movement is a medicine for creating change in a person's physical, emotional and mental states. ~ Carol Welch

In a democracy sovereignity is vested in a majority; and a majority is not only, at best, an ignorant, foolish and emotional mob, but shifts continually and alters from year to year. ~ Jean Bodin

I believe a man's finest hour often comes when he is at his weakest. When he is broken, affronted and at a place of great emotional transparency. It's there he has the rare insight of an inescapable truth…he's merely a man. As his bravado washes away into a puddle of reflective tears, it reveals that he is merely flesh, blood and bones and amounts to very little without the love and guidance of our creator. It's only then, that I believe, a man begins to truly find his way. ~ Jason Versey

There's mainstream pornography--soft-core airbrushed fluff such as Penthouse and Playboy. The folks makin' this stuff do men and their range of desires a disservice; their implication is that anything outside the "big hair, fake tits, tiny waste, no pores, limited body hair" aesthetic is deviant, weird, not normal--and not something that a red-blooded American man would be interested in. The common boys-will-be-boys explanation for porn--that men get turned on visually (in contrast to "feminine" mode of arousal, which is mental and emotional)--is nothing more than an insult, making men out to be Pavlovian dogs who salivate uncontrollably and strain at their trousers upon contact with nudie pictures.
Antiporn arguments, however well-meaning, are no better. Folks like Catherine MacKinnon also believe that men are inherently drawn to porn. And to them, porn is by definition violent, suggesting that it's somehow in men's nature to be aroused by hurting others. Furthermore, antipornography activists think that porn leads men to commit violence--as if men have no self-control or capacity to separate fantasy from reality, as if an erection is a driving force that can't be stopped once it's started... The only difference is one of perspective: Antiporn folk believe that male sexuality is always threatening, while men's-magazine editors think it's always fabulous. ~ Lisa Jervis

I'm almost never hungry in the physical sense. But I'm always craving an emotional high, the kind that comes from making love, or being in the crowd for great live music, or watching the sun come up over the ocean. And I'm always wanting something to counter the low, when I'm anxious about work or arguing with family or depressed for reasons I can't understand. ~ Tommy Tomlinson

A lot of people who are overweight - not everyone, but a lot of people - are dealing with issues such as emotional issues, stress issues. They become stress eaters and emotional eaters. ~ Ian K. Smith

While it's certainly true that raising children is a big job and certainly has emotional resonance, it's really hard to intellectually justify the belief that you're adding something important to the world by adding more people to pollute the planet and compete for opportunities that become more precious as the number of people vying for a chance grows. ~ Amanda Marcotte

These days Gaby was hearing that voice again, the one that told her to get out, to smash up all the emotional chairs and tables so there would be no going back, so she could tear down this version of herself and start again. ~ Hari Kunzru

Here's another thing: There are certain wounds that never heal, certain hurts that never leave you alone, like a broken bone that heals wrong and always twinges when it's about to rain. ~ Robert Goolrick

They are very personal, emotional songs - people react to them very strongly. ~ Sarah McLachlan

Survivors who don't stand up for themselves often develop physical and emotional illnesses. Many become depressed because they feel so hopeless and helpless about being able to change their lives. They turn their anger inward and become prone to headaches, muscle tension, nervous conditions and insomnia. ~ Beverly Engel

There is an extra bit of sting when you remember how people you love and who love you can hurt you in ways neither of you can recognize until after the fact. ~ Keah Brown

It may well be, of course, that America's pop culture is on balance better than our high art. I don't think so, but you can certainly make a case that the best of it aspires to a degree of aesthetic and emotional seriousness that is directly comparable to all but the very greatest works of high art. ~ Terry Teachout

The word criminal is more an emotional than legal term. Go to any U.S. post office and view the faces on the wanted posters. Like Dick Tracy caricatures, they stare out of the black-and-white photographs often taken in late-night booking rooms - unshaved, pig snouted, rodent eyed, hare lipped, reassuring us that human evil is always recognizable and that consequently we will never be its victim. But ~ James Lee Burke

No matter what Jody did, she said nothing. She had learned how to talk some and leave some. She was a rut in the road. Plenty of life beneath the surface but it was kept beaten down by the wheels. Sometimes she stuck out into the future, imagining her life different from what it was. But mostly she lived between her hat and her heels, with her emotional disturbances like shade patterns in the woods - come and gone with the sun. ~ Zadie Smith

The Enforcers came for you in the middle of the night I heard. To avoid complicated emotional complexities with distraught families. They took you and you never came back. I hated them. I hated this. I hated their system. I hated the world they had created. ~ Jill Thrussell

The dispassionate intellect, the open mind, the unprejudiced observer, exist in an exact sense only in a sort of intellectualist folk-lore; states even approaching them cannot be reached without a moral and emotional effort most of us cannot or will not make. ~ Wilfred Trotter

Zeb was kindergarten teacher
a good one. I always thought it was because he was the same emotional age as his students. ~ Molly Harper

He drew in a breath and struck the opening note. He was usually relaxed when he played. He liked to let himself be swept away from the here and now, but with Zach beside him, brushing his arm when Lucas played the high notes, he was acutely aware of where he was and what he was doing. It was an emotional piece to begin with, now intensified by his feelings for the boy sitting next to him, the physical manifestation of his own dreams of love. His heart felt as if it would burst. When he came to the end of the piece, he was breathing heavily and was on the verge of tears. ~ Madison Parker

Early in life I have noticed that no event is ever correctly reported in a newspaper, but in Spain, for the first time, I saw newspaper reports which did not bear any relation to the facts, not even the relationship which is implied in an ordinary lie. I saw great battles reported where there had been no fighting, and complete silence where hundreds of men had been killed. I saw troops who had fought bravely denounced as cowards and traitors, and others who had never seen a shot fired hailed as heroes of imaginary victories; and I saw newspapers in London retailing these lies and eager intellectuals building emotional superstructures over events that never happened. I saw, in fact, history being written not in terms of what happened but of what ought to have happened according to various "party lines. ~ George Orwell

You and I must realize that the English language is filled with words that, in addition to their literal meanings, convey distinct emotional intensity. For example, if you develop a habit of saying you 'hate' things - you 'hate' your hair; you 'hate' your job; you 'hate' having to do something - do you think this raises the intensity of your negative emotional states more than if you use a phrase like 'I prefer something else'? ~ Tony Robbins

I always felt like I could be funny, but there was a part of me that always judged actors so harshly ... I thought all actors were dumb-that they must have serious emotional problems. Even if they don't, that's the perception I had of them. I didn't want anyone to see me that way. ~ Lisa Kudrow

Strong emotional feelings don't just go away overnight. In fact, they may never go away. The fears of feeling disliked, or that I wasn't going to fit in, all quickly bubbled up to the surface. but it was the choices I made when I was faced with challenges that really mattered. I had to continually tell myself that I was always in control. If someone was pressuring me to do something that I knew was not good for me, I had the power to simply say no. No one can ever take that power away from me. If someone was upset or didn't like me for saying no, that was someone that I really didn't need in my life. ~ Stephen Cremen

Bullying is beneath alphas. Bullies are just pussies that are big enough to get away with exorcising their emotional problems. ~ A.D. Aliwat

Let those feelings out. Talk about it. Even if you're talking to your journal by yourself in an empty room. That still counts. That still matters.

If you know someone who's struggling and isolated, help them talk about it. Even if they don't have the right words. Even if you sit in silence as they try to feel safe. Even if they shower you with complaints, excuses, and justifications. Even if you can see they're just playing small, being irrational, blaming circumstances. Just be there. It all counts. It all matters. ~ Vironika Tugaleva

The salient stressors in the lives of most human beings today - at least in the industrialized world - are emotional. Just like laboratory animals unable to escape, people find themselves trapped in lifestyles and emotional patterns inimical to their health. The higher the level of economic development, it seems, the more anaesthetized we have become to our emotional realities. We no longer sense what is happening in our bodies and cannot therefore act in self-preserving ways. The physiology of stress eats away at our bodies not because it has outlived its usefulness but because we may no longer have the competence to recognize its signals. ~ Gabor Mate

She paused and seemed on the verge of getting emotional. "The hard part was that none of my early jobs taught my girls anything about work other than the fact that you have to do it. Now my girls see that if you don't give up on what you really want, work doesn't have to just be drudgery. You really can find something you love, and all of a sudden your life isn't just about finding a way to get to the weekend. You can love the work week just as much. ~ Evan Dawson

People have emotional ties to books, more often than you think ... ~ Jill Hathaway

Understanding did not provide solace or make the pain go away; in many ways, understanding was just more salt in the emotional wound. Ignorance allowed one to fight back with unfettered cruelty. Understanding inspired empathy, which led to guilt, as well as suffering.
She looked at Gavin, supine, unconcerned, contented, and thought that perhaps there was something to being a sociopath. If you didn't have a heart, it couldn't be broken. ~ Nenia Campbell

Where we have strong emotions, we're liable to fool ourselves. ~ Carl Sagan

Staying loyal to your journey means you never abandon yourself by compromising your integrity or discounting your intuition or the signals that come from your body - the knot in the gut, emotional detachment, or loss of energy that signals something is amiss. ~ Charlotte Kasl

The Ego, as noted, is simply the content of your PSM [Phenomenal Self Model] at this moment (your bodily sensations, your emotional state, your perceptions, memories, acts of will, thoughts). But it can become the Ego only because you are constitutionally unable to realize that all this is just the content of a simulation in your brain. It is not reality itself but an image of reality - and a very special one indeed. The Ego is a transparent mental image: You - the physical person as a whole - look right through it. You do not see it. You see with it. The Ego is a tool for controlling and planning your behavior and for understanding the behavior of others ~ Thomas Metzinger

The more a child is abused, the more the child uses his abilities to anticipate, manage, prevent, dismantle, and challenge the abusing ways of his parents. ~ Steven Franssen

To Survive In A Ruined World, She Must Embrace The Darkness ... ~ Julie Kagawa

I have to admit that I get quite emotional listening to the amazing talent that exists in the New York subways. ~ Lisa O'Hare

Older guys have too much emotional baggage. They've already lived their lives. ~ Edmund White

Grief is subversive, undermining the quiet agreement to behave and be in control of our emotions. It is an act of protest that declares our refusal to live numb and small. There is something feral about grief, something essentially outside the ordained and sanctioned behaviors of our culture. Because of that, grief is necessary to the vitality of the soul. Contrary to our fears, grief is suffused with life-force.... It is not a state of deadness or emotional flatness. Grief is alive, wild, untamed and cannot be domesticated. It resists the demands to remain passive and still. We move in jangled, unsettled, and riotous ways when grief takes hold of us. It is truly an emotion that rises from the soul. ~ Francis Weller

In the case of personality, most psychologists agree that there are five traits that are essential in how people look at us: openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and emotional stability. ~ Seth Godin

False belief is more emotional than true belief ~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

Emotional baggage is like the dead skin of a snake. If you don't shed it, how can you grow emotionally? ~ Khang Kijarro Nguyen

As much as writing is an emotional experience, it is a business as well. Coming from a business background, I treat it as such. ~ Chevy Stevens

The effect of emotional venting is to sustain an unsatisfactory status quo. Most people think the opposite, that complaining is part of an effort to change an unsatisfying situation. Nope. Complaining lets off pressure so that we neither explode with frustration nor feel compelled to take the often risky steps of openly opposing a difficult person or situation. Keeping emotional pressure tolerably low doesn't change problematic circumstances but rather perpetuates them. ~ Martha N. Beck

Telling the truth to yourself and someone you can trust are great ways to help elevate your whole emotional quality. ~ Jewel

I think his portraits of Jackie, Liz, Marilyn, Mao, Elvis, Lenin - and objects like the soup cans, the dollar signs, the hammer and sickle, it's all about icons. Its all about what people worship in an irreligious or secular world. In terms of Andy's personality and Andy Warhol as a human being who I was very close to, I still feel kind of sorry for him on a personal level. I mean, he was the ultimate example of great success wrapped around inner turmoil and emotional pain. ~ Bob Colacello