repression and health

this resonated with me hardcore this morning. oh, cultural upbringings....

Dr. Gabor Maté: “When the Body Says No: Understanding the Stress-Disease Connection”

AMY GOODMAN: You talk about emotions like anger sharing with our immune system the same role of defending our boundaries, saying when we repress emotions, we may also repress our immune defenses. How does that play out in various diseases?

DR. GABOR MATÉ: Well, when I looked at the kind of people that would be coming under my care in palliative care, but also the kind of people who would get sick when I was in family practice, a number of salient characteristics presented themselves. One was the repression of anger. People didn’t know how to express negative emotion. They were afraid to do so or did not know when they were angry. People who were pleasers, they tried to always not to disappoint other people. They never knew how to say no. They took on everything without a murmur, because they saw their role as always being the caregivers and the caretakers. And they had an exceedingly powerful sense of duty, role and responsibility.

Now, if you look at the role of healthy assertion of boundaries and anger, for example, it’s actually there to protect you. I’m talking about healthy anger. It’s not there to attack anybody; it’s just there to protect your boundaries. That’s the same role as the immune system have...

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self-expression

there were all these things i wanted to post about after my chaotic social-justice-funding whirlwind last weekend. new donor circle, new community fund, new models, new thoughts...i had all of this inspiration and energy. and i can feel it slipping away and i don't know how to hold on.

for a hot second there this fall i was so good about writing, voicing what i needed to say. i've fallen out of that and i can literally feel it in my body, like i'm trapping self-expression in my gut. i've had a frog in my throat for the past month that i just can't shake; i'm wondering if it's my thoughts desperate to escape in the form of mucus. ew.

not that i haven't been expressing myself at all. it's just that i'm simply...not good at it. i've never been good at it, it's the WASP in me, i suppose :) but it really is something i want to be better at, to say how i feel, what i want, or even just what is going on in my head. i think part of the reason why i get so easily frustrated with other people at times is because i don't realize they can't read my mind.

so. i think i want to start going to therapy again. some iteration of it, at least. when i went to a therapist in high school, i would always cry the whole time. no matter how good of a day i'd had, or what she asked me about, it would always quickly dissolve into tears, and i usually had no idea why. if i'm really really honest about the reasons why i haven't gone back... the unavoidable, no-good-reason-for-them-god-why-am-i-crying-if-i-feel-happy tears probably have a great deal to do with it. and, the sheer denial: i don't *need* a therapist. i'm healthy, happy, not depressed, not out of control, not any other things that i tell myself i should be in order to "deserve" a therapist. but maybe i should buy myself a holiday present this year: a 50 minute hour of someone's listening ear.

xo.