When a big emotion arrives, most of us do one of two things. We react, or we shut down.
We react by blowing up, saying things we regret, letting it spill out sideways onto the people around us. Or we shut down, going quiet, swallowing it, and letting it sit in the body for years. Neither one feels good, and neither is really about weakness. They’re just the two defaults most of us were handed. Learning how to express your emotions in any other way was never taught.
I know both well. For a long time, shutting down was my own go-to. When the feeling got too big, I disconnected from it entirely, until I didn’t know what I was feeling at all.
Why reacting and shutting down don’t work
Here’s the problem with both. An emotion is energy. When we react, that energy explodes outward and usually lands on someone we love. When we shut down, it doesn’t disappear, it gets stored. Emotion doesn’t know time. It can sit in the body for years and resurface when we least expect it, an idea explored in Bessel van der Kolk’s The Body Keeps the Score, often showing up as tension, anxiety, or a reaction that feels far bigger than the moment deserves.
And neither reacting nor shutting down lets us be heard, which is so often the very thing we longed for underneath the feeling.
How to express your emotions without reacting or shutting down
There’s a third way, and it can be learned. It starts with feeling what’s actually there, in the body, rather than running from it. Naming it. Letting the energy move through you rather than exploding out or freezing in. And then expressing it from a grounded place, not a reactive one.
This is slow, gentle work, and it changes everything. On the other side of it is something most of us rarely feel. Relief. Calm. The quiet contentment of having felt something fully and let it go. And the experience of finally being heard.
A season for your voice
This is exactly what we’re exploring inside Oasis right now, in a new season all about finding your voice and expressing your emotions in a way that sets you free. If you’ve spent years staying small, or swinging between silence and outburst, you’re welcome here. There’s a free week to feel it for yourself.
Come and find your voice inside OASIS with us.
With care, Anna x
