I’ve had depression for years. You get good at pretending to be happy/ok and you mostly just become numb and very good at hiding things on the outside.
this post was submitted on 15 Mar 2024
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I am highly expressive and have little filter. I think my upbringing allowed this or even encouraged it. The meta message in every movie I ever watched as a kid was “if you just look deep inside yourself and bring out the essence of what’s there, you can do / win / be anything!” I’m also male, and my family laughed a lot and yelled a lot and angered easily and forgave easily. As a result, I’m quite outspoken and some find me bombastic or overbearing.
It’s quite hard to put this genie back in the bottle once you’re an adult. If you’re like this and wondering how other people contain it, the likelihood is that they have been conditioned to contain it their entire lives. In some cases longer than that: In Chinese culture, for example, no one has is permitted to be emotionally demonstrative and this has been the norm for thousands of years. It might even have been selected for genetically over time: outspoken peasants executed, expressive daughters disowned…
I will say this though. As you grow older your vision and hearing get worse and your feelings become less sensitive. I can hold a hot object that my kids can’t even touch with one finger. Emotionally, it’s a bit the same. Reactions come slower, and are not as strong. And the muscles in the face don’t react as much, and the heart is less inclined to engage in a full flameout over something trivial. So it gets easier.
Stoicism.
Many people think Stoicism (the philosophy) means to be unemotional - it doesn't.
It means to accept that we have emotions, some that seem to "just occur" unbidden, some that are a result of our thinking, and that we can choose how we respond to those emotions.
If we allow ourselves to just be amoeba, we're then at the whim of every stimulus.
In "Your Erroneous Zones", Wayne Dyer explains how to use CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) methods to change how we respond to our emotions.
It's not a new idea - it started with (or even predates) the Stoics over 2000 years ago, with CBT being a structured method today for applying these ideas.
Another way to look at it - your inner life is for you, what you choose of that to share with others is up to you.
I personally learned to play poker as a child. Controlling your reactions, good or bad, and making them unreadable was a core part of getting good at the game.
Maybe search how to do a poker face and practice those techniques?
Now I'm picturing you and your baby pals during a play date years ago, sitting around a card table, holding cards, and smoking stogies...
I'm picturing Baby Herman now.
Honestly the title just sounds like what it's like to be English
Haha now that I live in English speaking country, yep. Repressed bastards.
It's in our culture; to show great emotion is unseemly and embarrassing. To quote BBC Radio Four's version of "The Secret Pilgrim" George Smiley, a spy, tells a group of trainees that the English make great spies because "You could be standing next to a man at the bus stop have a force four mental breakdown and you'd be none the wiser." We must keep a "stiff upper lip". Outbursts are for children. Has the unfortunate side effect that people don't seek help when they really need it.