What Emotional Suppression Is Really Costing Us

(And why it's time we talk about it)

Photo by pawel szvmanski on Unsplash

Hello friends, and happy Sunday!

I’ve been quiet these past few months, but definitely not idle. I’ve missed this space, and I’m thrilled to be back with work that feels this powerful and needed. Behind the scenes, something’s been incubating, something potent, relevant, and deeply personal to my mission. I dug deep… and we have our plates full for the next several articles to come.

Over the past few months, I’ve been immersed in a deeply personal research project exploring the impact of emotional suppression in women’s lives. Through intimate interviews with real women, I looked at how suppressed emotions weave through the body, mind, and soul over time, and how moments of personal crisis often become turning points for reclaiming what’s been silenced.

What I uncovered was both validating and eye-opening. And for my guys who are reading this, there’s something powerful here for you as well, so don’t leave just yet.

This journey took me beyond the psychological surface and into the body, the nervous system, and the soul. It revealed how emotional suppression quietly shapes our health, our relationships, and even our sense of purpose. It also illuminated something else: how emotional crisis often serves as the very doorway to spiritual awakening.

A few days ago, I was talking to a coworker, and it felt like we had just stumbled into an intense conversation about guilt and shame surrounding our perceived failures in the motherhood experience. Her story was one of those stories that leaves chills down your spine. While I can’t share her personal business, I can tell you she came back strong from something deep, dark, and malevolent. When I left our conversation, it left a powerful mark on me for days. The one thing that kept coming back to me is that if we didn’t start the conversation out by speaking our truths, I wouldn’t have received that powerful imprint of inspiration and connection (read more about the psycho-spiritual benefits of these kinds of interactions here).

I’ve been thinking about that moment in the context of my recent research. Because what happens when we don’t speak our truth, when we keep it all inside to stay likable, productive, impressive, is something I see over and over again: disconnection, illness, burnout, and a slow loss of self (which makes us lose our vitality, our life force).

Over the next several weeks, I’ll be sharing what I’ve uncovered in my recent study on emotional suppression in women’s lives, and the deep, often overlooked ways it affects our bodies, identities, relationships, and sense of spiritual connection.

However, today, I want to begin by giving you a broad overview. The lay of the land.

Because emotional suppression isn’t just a personal habit.

It’s a collective pattern.

A cultural inheritance.

And a spiritual wound.

What Is Emotional Suppression—Really?

At its core, emotional suppression is the learned behavior of silencing or minimizing your feelings to maintain connection, safety, or approval. It’s the subtle self-abandonment we do when we’re told, through words, modeling, or reward systems, that our emotions are too much, too messy, too inconvenient.

But it’s more than just avoiding vulnerability or pushing down tears.

Emotional suppression shapes how we move through the world:

• How we show up in relationships

• How we interpret our worth

• How we relate to our bodies

• How we access (or lose touch with) our intuition

• How we carry stress, illness, and burnout

• How we confuse masked performances for power, and silence for strength

It’s something I’ve witnessed in clients for years, and through this research, I got to explore it through the eyes and experiences of real women, each of whom had their own story, yet shared a common narrative underneath.

I want to take a moment to thank these brave women for showing up in raw vulnerability and sharing their stories. The power behind this research is meant to help shift the consciousness of women, and I genuinely appreciate the power behind this generosity.

Where This Pattern Begins

Emotional suppression is woven into the social conditioning of our patriarchal society, passed down generationally, reinforced in systems, and rewarded in culture.

Yes, I am going there.

Many of us learned early on that emotions, especially the big, honest, disruptive ones, were unwelcome. Many women watched their mothers swallow theirs. We were praised for being good, quiet, helpful, and easy to handle.

We learned to perform strength instead of embody it.
To make ourselves small to keep the peace.
To override our needs in favor of what was expected.

And while much of this was subconscious, it left an imprint. Over time, that imprint became an internal disconnect from the Self, leaving a spiritual void in many women.

How This Disconnection Shows Up

The women in my study weren’t fragile or unmotivated. They were high-functioning, hard-working, caregiving, caretaking, doing-it-all women. But underneath their competence was something else: disconnection.

Disconnection from their bodies. From their creativity. From their own desires. From their intuition. From their emotional truth. From their sense of sacredness.

That disconnection often showed up as:

• Chronic tension or illness

• Feeling emotionally “flat” or numb

• Anger and frustration as their default feelings

• Burnout that seemed unfixable

• A sense of identity that revolved around roles, not selfhood

• Confusion in relationships, especially around emotional expression and boundaries

• A quiet questioning of their sanity and rightful place in this life

• An explosion of guilt and shame that clouded any real positivity or self-love

This is the spiritual cost of suppression. And it doesn’t get solved with better habits. It requires something deeper: a return to the feminine and to the Self.

The Role of Patriarchal Conditioning

One pattern that emerged over and over was the impact of patriarchal systems, not just in obvious, external ways, but in how women had internalized emotional suppression as a form of survival.

Patriarchy doesn't just limit women's roles; it subtly devalues emotion, intuition, and relational intelligence, all expressions of the feminine. And over time, many women begin to distrust those parts of themselves, seeing them as weaknesses instead of wisdom.

This isn’t just a social or cultural issue. It’s a soul wound.

It separates us from the very qualities that make us feel alive, intuitive, connected, and whole.

What About the Men?

Another theme I want to mention briefly, because we will explore this in depth a future article, is the way many women described looking to men for leadership, emotional grounding, or direction. (The women I interviewed all happened to be heterosexual, but this concept can apply to any kind of intimate relationship).

This was not rooted in harm. In fact, for many, it came from a genuine reverence for masculine stability. But it often came at a cost: a quiet silencing of their own voice, needs, or inner knowing, due to fear of the very men they were trusting to lead them.

There is so much nuance here. We’ll talk more soon about how to honor the sacred masculine without deferring your own spiritual authority, and the ways in which men can relate to and use their sacred masculine in relationships. I’m particularly excited about this because it represents a definite reframing of our approach and purpose in intimate relationships. I can’t wait to dive into this with you.

When the Body Breaks Down, the Spirit Often Wakes Up

Almost every woman I spoke with described some kind of turning point: a collapse, a burnout, an illness, a loss, that forced them to stop performing and start listening. In the ashes of that rupture, they began to reclaim something deeper: emotional truth, intuition, embodiment, and soul.

While these crises were painful, they were also portals.

Which brings me to another thread we’ll be exploring soon: how crisis often initiates spiritual awakening… and how we might start learning to awaken without needing to fall apart first.

For my readers who aren’t familiar with the term “spiritual awakening”, it is the process of becoming more consciously connected to your true self, inner truth, and a greater sense of meaning beyond the ego or external roles. While some of us don’t think we are very “spiritual,” you are more spiritual than you know.

What Comes Next

This article is the starting point for a multi-part series unpacking what I found in this study. Each upcoming post will dive deeper into specific themes, including:

• The physical and emotional toll of suppression on women’s bodies

• How emotional repression fractures identity and self-worth

• The subtle ways patriarchy trains us to suppress the feminine

• The role of men, sacred partnership, and internalized authority

• Crisis as a spiritual initiation, and how to awaken without collapse

• What it means to return to emotional integrity and spiritual wholeness

Whether you’re new to these ideas or deep in your own healing, my hope is that this series helps you feel seen and gently called back to yourself.

Because what we silence doesn’t go away.

It waits.

And when we’re ready, it teaches.

See you back here soon, friends.