How to learn not to show emotions on your face. How to learn to hide your emotions and feelings

Question to a psychologist

Hello! I am 16 years old and I constantly hide my feelings and emotions. I got used to this since childhood, I realized that it was easier to deal with some problems this way. Pretending that everything is fine, you involuntarily begin to believe it yourself. I only cry if there is a serious reason for it. Even when I’m very sad, but I understand that the problem is not terrible, I can’t cry. And only recently did this ability of mine not to show my emotions begin to scare me. (I should note that I suppress only bad emotions, I don’t want anyone to think that everything is bad for me) I am one of those people who are always very cheerful, energetic, and whom it is impossible to think that they are sad. I don’t even tell my very close people and friends that I feel bad. Sometimes I cry all night, and then I go to school very cheerful, but my soul is sad. Sometimes I tell someone later, after a while, that there were problems then and there, it was hard. And they usually ask me why I didn’t tell you right away, and how is it even possible to pretend that everything is fine, when in fact everything is very bad, and I myself don’t know. I don't know what to do with this. In addition, I began to notice that the feelings that I hide later and do not have to be hidden: they simply disappear. It seems to me that soon I won’t have to pretend, because I’m becoming indifferent to everything, I’m becoming heartless. I hope you can help me

Answers from psychologists

Marina, it’s good that you sounded the alarm about your condition in time. Yes, you correctly noted that there is a reciprocal relationship between the external expression of emotion and the internal state. Not only does our internal state cause an emotion, but the external manifestation of an emotion can also cause an internal state that corresponds to that emotion! This was established by American psychologists (so they all walk and smile completely in public). So, if you “stuff” your feelings, not allowing them to be expressed in facial expressions, appearance and behavior, then over time they will actually begin to disappear from the palette of your experiences!

There is also such a term among psychologists as “congruence” of emotions and experiences - this is how accurately the emotions that a person expresses (primarily with facial expressions) correspond to his real experiences. There is a simple exaggerated example to understand the meaning of “congruence” - if a boy likes a girl, and for this reason he pulls her pigtails, then this means that the congruence of his experience and his behavior in connection with this is na-ru-she-na!

Just try to be yourself. If you are sad or annoyed, or you feel sorry for someone, behave naturally. You are a living person and have the right to different feelings and emotions, like everyone else.

Sincerely, online psychologist Pokolova Yanina (Arkhangelsk)

Sometimes it’s better not to show your emotions - I’ve already been convinced of this a thousand times in my life! There was understanding, but there was no strength or ability to control myself. Now I know exactly when and how to show my emotions so as not to get into trouble, and also how not to show them when the situation is clearly not in my favor.

1. In order not to show your emotions, you need to learn to curb them. To know how to control your emotions, you need to understand them. The whole system is simple! Understand what caused you to have a strong emotion (positive or negative), and then eliminate the source or remove yourself from the source of the emotion. If this is not possible at the moment, study what I suggest below.
2. In order not to show your emotions, you need to learn to rise above them. Imagine that you are a cloud. The higher you fly, the simpler and easier it becomes for you, you get rid of problems. This is one of the techniques in meditation when you expand your horizons, looking broadly at a problem rather than narrowly. Narrow-mindedness creates demons in a dark room where there is one small source of light and the rest of the space is hidden from view.
3. Remember that your facial expressions, movements, and breathing rate give you away! What you feel is always and again always reflected on your face. If possible, study the physical reaction of the body to some emotion that has arisen inside and learn to control what you do to it. First, you need to restore your breathing, because it is responsible for both sweating and the purity of your heartbeat. If you manage to bring it back to normal, you will immediately, as if in a chain, begin to establish all other emotions that you can successfully hide.
4. If you are one of those people (priority for ladies) who have everything written on their face (in the literal sense of the word) - a blush fills their cheeks, try using cosmetics that will hide unwanted manifestations. You can tone down your abundant blush slightly, drink a sedative, and at least outwardly you will seem very calm to people at this very moment.
5. In order not to show your emotions - the most important thing - you need to concentrate on something else, switch. You focus your attention on a specific event, you replay it in your head, you expect some kind of reaction, but you, in truth, do not need to expect anything precise, unless you are a behaviorist and have not understood the situation that is developing in front of you in advance. Life is a river of events and you never know what will happen in the next second. No matter how thoroughly you think through your every step, gesture and breath, you will not be able to determine with a hundred percent probability what may happen to you, so the abundant emotions that you try so hard not to show will only lead you to unnecessary, unnecessary worries. You shouldn’t worry ahead of time - it’s better to cope with problems as they arise, then there will be no emotional tension in your head, and you will be able to control yourself with enviable ease, and also give advice to others, as I am doing now. Good luck, friends!

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Each person is unique, and, accordingly, his character, temperament, and habits are unique. People who are highly emotional cannot hide their feelings, and sometimes this leads to undesirable consequences. This can cause quarrels with friends, a breakup with a loved one, problems in the family and at work. Such people often realize their problem and understand that they should not give vent to their emotions, but they cannot stop in time. So how can you learn to hide emotions or at least suppress them, if necessary? And is this possible?

How to learn to hide your emotions and feelings

The answer is yes. You just need to follow some fairly simple recommendations that will make your life much easier and help you improve your relationships with people around you.

You need to create a mental attitude that only insecure, complex people with low self-esteem are led by emotions. You need to clearly understand that a strong person will always be able to convince his interlocutor that he is right calmly, without shouting or excessive display of emotions.

You need to try to increase your self-esteem. To do this, you need to carefully analyze all your strengths and weaknesses, as well as your achievements and failures. Do not forget about impartiality and objectivity. In addition, the goals that you intend to achieve both in the near and distant future will give you self-confidence.

To learn to hide your emotions, try to treat the events that happen to you with humor. The ability to find something funny in the most ordinary situations, as well as the ability to sometimes laugh at yourself, will greatly help you. No one will argue that laughing is much better than causing a scandal.

Learn to look at yourself to some extent from the outside. Pay attention to the behavior of people who react just as violently as you to the events that happen to them. Believe me, you don't look any better in such situations.

Surely, if people thought about how unpresentable they look in moments of anger, they would try to restrain their emotions. This is especially true for women, because it is unlikely that any representative of the fair sex will want to look unsightly in the eyes of others.

We told you how to learn to hide your emotions. We sincerely hope that our advice will help you achieve true harmony both in your own inner world and in relationships with the people around you.

How to suppress your emotions and not show it

If emotions overtake you spontaneously, remember that in a situation of excessive emotional stress you cannot make any decisions (except in emergency situations when it comes to your life). For the most part, recommendations on how to learn to hide emotions in this case are as follows:

• gather your thoughts and slowly count to ten;
• Normalize your breathing by inhaling slowly through your nose and holding your breath for a while, then exhale slowly through your nose. While breathing this way, concentrate on your inner sensations;
• if the situation requires it, then excuse yourself and leave the room to be alone;
• Cold water will help you come to your senses - wet your forehead, hands and temples;
• You can distance yourself from your experiences by looking at surrounding objects, trees or the sky, and if at the same time you silently describe their appearance, then very soon you will be able to switch from your emotions to the environment;
• Drink a glass of water very slowly and deliberately, concentrating on how you feel.

Remember to prevent excessive tension; walks in the fresh air, creative activities, and interest clubs will help you prevent emotional overstrain.

How to suppress emotions when necessary

“You should have not gotten excited, restrained yourself, and then expressed your opinion” - we often use this phrase after a violent manifestation of emotions, both negative in quarrels and positive in joy for something. We often call this hint from our mind “hindsight.” And as life experience shows, reason is right. But why does this happen after emotional outbursts? And how to overcome the emotions that often complicate our relationships with society.

Psychologists are of the opinion that expressing emotions is necessary. But in order to maintain a relationship with someone, it is often more beneficial for us to suppress emotions than to express them.

In everyday life, our wisdom is limited to advice that is aimed at combating emotional extremes. We often hear:

• in grief - “don’t kill yourself like that, everything will pass”,
• in joy - “don’t rejoice, so that you don’t have to cry”, in case of whims - “don’t be picky”,
• during apathy - “well, shake yourself up!”

And how can we learn to hide our emotions and maintain complete control over the outburst of emotions if, first of all, we lose the ability to manage our current state? Trying to cope with their emotional world, people delved into the mechanism of experiences and tried to use it more intelligently than nature. One of the systems aimed at regulating emotions is yoga gymnastics. Yogis developed a number of breathing and physical exercises that made it possible to get rid of emotional stress and partly from worries.

If you want to learn how to suppress emotions, you need to turn to yoga. Some elements of the yoga system were used to create the autogenic training method. Psychologists are sure that auto-training is one of the techniques that allows you to suppress emotions. Auto-training techniques are not as primitive as advice to keep yourself within the bounds of decency when you are ready to explode from a surge of emotions. The famous phrase: “I am calm, I am completely calm” is practically a balm for your tense nerves.

Another available method to suppress emotions is laughter therapy. When a person laughs, three times more air enters the lungs, which increases the amount of oxygen entering the blood, blood circulation improves, blood pressure decreases by calming the heart rate. During laughter, the production of endomorphin increases ( anti-stress substance), which leads to the release of the body from adrenaline (stress hormone).

Dancing and listening to music have a similar mechanism of action on the body. You can also easily “defuse” the situation with a cheerful smile or a sparkling joke.

We try so hard to hide everything we really feel from those who should probably know our true feelings the most. Alas, each of us from time to time tries to hide our emotions from others. Although we may not realize it, along with this secrecy we begin to gradually change our behavioral patterns.

1. You start caring about others

When you feel depressed and depressed, you may find it easier to cope with other people's problems than with your own. Unfortunately, this makes you feel even more exhausted and tired.

2. You disappear from the lives of people you care about.

You actually fall out of their sight for long periods of time. You stop keeping in touch with them and withdraw into your own little world. Instead of speaking out, you prefer to hide everything.

3. You are constantly busy with something.

You may find that you are more emotional when you have nothing to do. This may motivate you to engage in constant hectic activity. Without a single free moment to yourself, you try to ignore the emotions you hide.

4. “I’m fine”

This soothing phrase comes out of your mouth more and more often when you suppress your emotions. After all, if everyone thinks that everything is fine with you, then you yourself begin to think that this is almost so. However, this does not solve the problem.

5. Internal anxiety increases in you

When people constantly suppress sadness, anger, or pain without allowing it to come out, an internal anxiety arises that “dangerous emotions are about to break through.” Therefore, even if you pretend to ignore them, you are still afraid of giving yourself away and try to avoid people.

6. You start feeling false positives.

You feel very bad inside, but outwardly you mask your condition with caustic humor and false positivity. On the one hand, the most insightful loved ones can immediately recognize your pretense, but on the other hand, such “acting” exhausts you.

7. You feel the need to control everything.

You plan everything in advance so that every second of the day is under your control. You don't allow time for surprise or spontaneity because it can make you think about the feelings and emotions you've been keeping bottled up.

8. You run the risk of having a bad relationship.

This relationship may not necessarily be toxic, but rather inappropriate and untimely. With a new person in your life, it is easier for you to hide everything and keep your emotions under tight lock and key. In this way, you try to change your external environment to counteract your internal sensations.

9. You turn everything into a joke

Even if you feel like you are drowning in your sadness, you try to turn it into a joke. Laughing at your pain becomes a way to get rid of it. It is a defense mechanism that allows you to control your emotions and also keep people trying to help you at arm's length.

10. Unfortunately, your positive emotions suffer too.

When you lock your feelings away, your positive emotions are locked away along with them. If you don't allow yourself to express sadness or grief, you may find that you can no longer express joy.

There are situations when we simply need a figurehead. You can, of course, buy glasses with a nose and mustache, but we don’t think that you will be understood correctly. So you better take our advice. They will help you hide your emotions at the right time.

Tomatoes and lemons

Psychologists say that the most difficult things to hide are embarrassment and disgust. There are people who, even in situations of extreme embarrassment, will never blush. And there you are - blushing at any compliment from a more or less handsome young man.

In fact, embarrassment manifests itself in everyone, just in different ways (for example, sweaty palms). Only this is easier to hide than a crimson complexion, you must agree. This cannot be completely avoided, but reducing the brightness of the “color” is quite possible. You need to convince yourself that others don’t care about your burning cheeks. Most often this is true. You can also use the techniques that are often offered in acting courses for liberation.

Their essence is to artificially create situations that will cause embarrassment. You can, for example, stand at the exit of the subway and ask: “Can you tell me how to get to the subway?” Get ready to be looked at as if you were a fool. But after the fifth or sixth time, the embarrassment will subside, and you will get the hang of it. Such training will make you feel much more confident. Now let's move on to the lemons. Disgust is best demonstrated by your curled mouth - when the muscles of your face involuntarily clench into a grimace at the sight of something unpleasant.

The best way to hide disgust is to abstract yourself from the object that causes this feeling. Picture in your imagination a small house with a fireplace and yourself in it, a large teddy bear or a porous chocolate bar the size of a brick. Simply put, what calms you down. A more radical way is to pinch yourself on the arm (the painful shock will cause your brain to switch and your face to return to its normal state).

Laughter through tears

Why, when you can’t cry at all, do you urgently need a tissue, and when in absolute silence someone very important talks about something serious, are you ready to burst into laughter for any reason? This is the effect of the “no” law. Our body constantly requires a surge of adrenaline, and if you don’t jump with a parachute on Sundays, then the release happens in this way.

We all have a pattern since childhood: if it’s impossible, then we need to get this item immediately. Tell yourself: you can laugh and cry too. In any situation. You will see that you will immediately want to laugh and cry less. There are a couple of timeless ways to hold back your tears. The first is to count to ten in your head, stopping for, say, a sausage.

No, no, no need to run to the refrigerator. It will look like this: “One - sausage - two - sausage - three...” And since we’re talking about food, it also helps cope with tears. Carry something sweet in your purse for such occasions, such as candy. The second way is to remember a funny story.

Much has been said about the benefits of laughter, but nevertheless Sometimes laughing is just rude. Switching your attention will help you restrain yourself. If you feel that the laughs are already coming, turn sharply away from the object of laughter and multiply seven by thirty-six in your mind, take a deep breath, and then remember the first stanza of “The Stranger” by Blok. You can also draw something in a notebook or try to compose a song.

Terribly interesting

Sometimes you have to hide such a thing as interest. Boys don't like it when girls pay too much attention to them. Still, they are the hunters, and we are the victims - and this formula has been strengthened over the centuries. To hide your interest, try to stay away from the object of desire, talk more quietly, and do not fiddle with your clothes.

Because all of the above actions speak of your difficult attitude towards him. If your hand just reaches out to twirl a strand of hair (on a subconscious level - a sexual appeal), take something in your hand. You will be surprised, but hiding fear is the easiest thing to do. Manifestations of fear are not as obvious as other emotions: dilated pupils, stiffness of the whole body, slight dizziness. Naturally, if you have to go on stage in a minute, but your arms and legs don’t want to obey, this is not very good. To begin with, you should try to determine the causes of fear.

Maybe you are shivering from clowns because as a child your parents showed you a film about a killer clown and your fragile mind, having absorbed this information then, still associates them all with creepy monsters? If there is no time for soul-searching, there is another, much faster way. Promise yourself something very pleasant - for example, adding new shoes to your wardrobe, if you can overcome yourself now.

A smile will also help hide fear - the fact is that when our lips form a smile, a signal is sent to the brain, meaning peace and calm. Then the brain reduces the emotional load on your body, all limbs relax, the tongue begins to function normally again, and you act like a queen.