Riley reminisces a beautiful memory with her parents, when both of them were laughing heartily on their moving journey from Minnesota to San Francisco. Sadness, one of the emotions who resides in Riley’s mind, touches the memory orb, and the memory changes from yellow colour (which represents Joy) to blue (which represents Sadness). Joy is shocked and she still cannot figure out what role Sadness has to play and what purpose Sadness is in Riley’s mental health. Joy picks up a core memory involving Riley’s teammates and parents dancing after a big hockey game. Joy had always thought this core memory was a happy one, but after rewinding the memory, Joy realizes that initially Riley was sad. Her sadness caused her parents to reach out to console her and with the help of Riley’s teammates, they were able to make a sad scene a happy one.
Yes, that is one of the important scenes in the Academy Award winning film, “Inside Out”.
“Positive vibes only.”
How often do we hear of this phrase? It may be well-intentioned, however the societal demand to be happy-go-lucky all the time and not showing their real feelings can lead people to become neglectful towards real emotions and cause them to bottle them up.
Let us all visualize a situation, whereby you hold a heavy stack of books for a long distance. How would you feel? Surely you would feel exhausted and blinded with what’s directly in front of you, right?
A Harvard Medical School psychologist, Susan David, Ph.D. (2020) has once stated that bottling happens when people tend to sweep their emotions under the rug and force toxic positivity rather than accepting genuine emotions with compassion. This can eventually lead to an amplification effect.
So, what are the 5 reasons we bottle up our emotions and what are the appropriate steps that can be taken to counter this?
1. We are afraid that our emotions would be invalidated by others
