Why do we shut down our emotions

When we’re born, we don’t judge our needs. We embody them.

Every one of us was once a small needy ball of flesh and bones that required very basic stuff to live. Despiste the simplicity of our needs at such a young age, it is not always easy for adults to provide that basic stuff.

Our emotional expression is our only hope of trying to satisfy these primal needs.

Emotions continue to play the same role throughout the first few years, and I would even say, throughout our entire lives. They are intended to guide us towards the satisfaction of our deepest desires.

So, how do we disconnect from some of them?

Babies are born feeling that they deserve to be fed, warmed, held and soothed. They will scream until someone attends to their calls for attention. They experience no doubt at all about how worthy they are. They don’t judge their needs and they don’t judge the means they use in order to have those needs met.

There is a very basic intention to that primal protest that is rooted in our survival mechanisms and fueled by our sympathetic energy.

It’s an emotional response for survival that will only be successfully completed if the caregivers are able to attune and respond to the baby’s needs consistently over and over again, as they grow in autonomy and develop the capacity to reach for the things they need by themselves.

But, when those needs are not met, and there can be a bunch reasons why parents can’t always be fully present (both physically or mentally), the emotional protest feels unsuccessful, leaving the child with a sense of threat. Not a silly innocent threat, it's actually life-threating for the baby. It’s a deep intense feeling that comes from a biological drive for survival.

Babies and young kids need secure bonds in order to survive. To develop an internal sense of safety, to learn how to trust on themselves, kids need to experience a strong and attuned connection to their adult caregivers.

When this connection fails, and their needs aren’t consistently met, their nervous system intensifies the response, which can increase the protests going from screaming and agitation to aggression, rage, breaking things, rolling on the floor, etc. Or, very often what happens is that the child gives up the hope that someone will attend their protests. If their protests and emotional expressions don’t lead to an expected effect (connection to the adult), they begin to believe that there is something wrong with their inner experience, they start to disconnect from their core needs and the emotional expression of them.

From a neurophysiological perspective, they go from sympathetic hyperarousal (with fight-or-flight mechanisms) to parasympathetic hypo arousal, shutting down their life force and ability act upon their needs.

That’s when we start dissociating from our bodies.

Our bodies will keep sending messages to our brains through the sensations that naturally and automatically arise as we navigate the world, guided by our neuroception, but when it becomes safer to “not feel”, we set a pattern that will stay with us through life. Our drive to survive is such that we prefer to disconnect from ourselves rather than from the adults we depend on.

photo taken by @marisabernardes

If we look for example at ANGER, which is perhaps our first survival tool – babies only know how to get “angry”.

As we have already seen, faced with a failure to meet their primary needs, children will eventually tend to repress anger, disconnect from that internal drive which, instead of keeping them connected to others, seemed to have weaken the bond, especially if the expression of these emotions represent a real threat, like, if they trigger retaliation, verbal or physical violence by the adult.

Thus, we quickly begin to see anger as something bad, associating it with behaviors that could cause harm, physical or verbal aggression. However, anger is an emotion that expresses a set of bodily sensations related to our needs and that may or may not translate into behavior.

This judgment of anger as something bad happens because we didn't have the necessary support to experience and hold these intense internal experiences when we were young, we weren't taught to use impulses in a healthy way. Transforming a sensory experience of activation of the sympathetic nervous system in a contained, creative and useful way.

When the caregiver is attuned and able to be with the child's intense activations with presence and ventral support (co-regulation), the child gradually develops the ability to self-regulate, becomes more resilient in sustaining these moments of high excitement and develops confidence in their abilities.

Healthy aggression is the inner strength that allows us to express what we feel, be it hunger, tiredness or cold when we are babies, or verbalizing what we need in adults, it is the solidity that allows us to establish physical and relational boundaries, or the determination to act and pursue what we desire.

So, emotions are at its core, physiological survival mechanisms. They’re attempts to get our core needs met. And even if many of us had to disconnect this remains true.

If, in any way, you feel limited in the experience or expression of your emotions, I hope that this essay helps you to understand how that process is related to our neurophysiological defense mechanisms and, although we cannot go back in time and change the past, our nervous system has the ability to transform itself in the present and recover pathways that were shut down for survival purposes and environmental adaptation.

Yes, it is possible to gradually recover the ability to live fully and from a place of stability. How can you do that?

• With the presence and support from another mammal-human, preferably one that has a good capacity for self-regulation and that does not project its unresolved issues onto you;

• Through education and familiarization with your body and the way your nervous system navigates the waves of activation;

• Through the repetition of conscious experiences of feeling safe, bringing mind and body to work actively together;

• Recognizing the defensive and behavioral patterns that keep you trapped in reenacting situations that perhaps no longer serve you;

• Aknowledging the emotions that are constantly present and the ones that are rarely felt;

• Play and curiosity;

• Returning to the body and allowing the completion of defensive responses that were not allwed in the past, either motor or emotional;

It is necessary to develop an internal sense of safety and to find / create an external safe environment. You will then find the trust to take the steps into the unknown.

To learn more about the Autonomic Nervous System, check out the next essay, following the “right” arrow down below!