The Suppression Of Male & Female Feelings

• Society teaches us to deny certain types of feelings.
• Males are taught not to get emotional.
• Being emotional is ok if you are female.

Society seems to have a long tradition of suppressing feelings, and most of us have been actively encouraged to do so from an early age.

For example, you have probably seen or experienced a time when a crying child was told to “shut up” or “be quiet” by their parent, otherwise they would receive some form of punishment.

This type of parenting is so common that most people actually consider it to be normal behaviour, and so we don’t give it much thought when we experience it ourselves or see it being done to others.

However the effects on the developing child are far from normal, as a child (or adult) who is constantly exposed to such treatment will quickly learn that in order to avoid receiving punishment (or disapproval) from others, they must hide their “bad” feelings.

As a result, the child begins to pretend to themselves, and/or others, that everything is ok when in reality it is not.

Later in life this denial may then lead to suppression (consciously making an effort to forget) or repression (subconsciously buried) of their feelings.

Whilst these coping strategies may appear to work in the short term, eventually these suppressed or repressed negative emotions will find their way to the surface.

When they do, they will usually manifest themselves in the form of addiction, obsession or compulsion.

Criticising Male Feelings

Criticism is something all children experience at some point in their life, and usually first comes from the child’s parents.

Boys for example, are often told not to cry or express sadness because they should “grow up”, start acting like a man and stop being a “little girl”.

Therefore whenever a boy does cry he is immediately made to feel embarrassed, and so is taught (either directly or indirectly) not to express such emotions in public, or even to himself.

Note : The term “directly” is used to mean you are told whether something is good or bad with words. “Indirectly” means you are told whether something is good or bad without words, such as a shake of the head, a disapproving look or a certain behaviour being allowed to continue as if it were normal.

Not all parents however are quite so harsh, and most will allow some degree of emotion to be expressed. Although in general, the underlying message boys are given when growing up is that “men don’t cry”.

This societal denial of male emotion is normal throughout most countries of the world, which is why men are stereotyped as being unable to express their emotions properly.

Very rarely will a man allow you to see him cry, or become very emotional about a subject, because since a boy he has been taught that doing so is socially unacceptable.

Criticising Female Feelings

From childhood, girls are indirectly taught that crying or displaying emotion in public is acceptable behaviour. But only as long as they don’t express too much emotion, otherwise they may then be accused of trying to emotionally manipulate others.

From a male’s perspective, women are generally stereotyped as being very emotional. As a result, most men expect women to get upset easily, and are very accepting of this behaviour when it occurs.

In fact when a woman does get upset, the male is presented with one of the few socially acceptable occasions in which he can also express emotion in public.

However when it comes to displaying anger in public, this is considered to be less socially acceptable for females. Women who do so, may be viewed as “un-lady like”.

Negative Subconscious Memories

As you can see, society teaches both sexes from an early age not to express (deny) “bad” socially unacceptable feelings.

As a result, children become very good at forgetting the bad things that happen to them, or pretending that things are different to how they actually are.

Although this forgetting or pretending is usually an effective short term coping strategy, the memories of those experiences and their associated emotions will all be stored in the subconscious mind of the child.

The effect of these subconscious memories will vary depending on what that child experienced, or was exposed to.

However in general, low self esteem and self sabotage later in life are common consequences of negative subconscious memories.

Adult Denial

Like children, adults seek short term relief from negative feelings by trying to forget about them. Although this “voluntary amnesia” is usually assisted by some kind of “distracter”, such an addiction to food, drugs or alcohol.

However the effect still remains the same; the negative memory is stored in the subconscious as an unresolved issue, and will eventually reappear later in life.