The Impact of Stuffing Emotions (and How to Unlearn the Habit)

Raise your hand if you’ve ever stuffed an emotion. Yep—two hands up for me!

It’s something we’ve all done—and probably learned to do well. Modern life teaches us to keep it together. Smile. Be productive. Don’t “overreact.” And when the hard stuff hits? We’re expected to quietly deal with it later—if at all.

But over time, this habit of emotional stuffing takes a serious toll.

For me, it cost at least 3.5 years of living fully—probably more. My nervous system was overloaded from buried trauma, early-pandemic stress, and constant emotional masking. And when I got the Alpha strain of COVID-19, it broke me. Physically, mentally, emotionally.

My body said: no more.

Fatigue. Brain fog. Autoimmune flares. Stress. Anxiety. I didn’t know the root cause until I began *unlearning* the habit of stuffing emotions.

How I Unlearned the Habit—and Took My Health Back

I wrote my way out.

Every day for six months, I sat down and wrote for 20 minutes. Not pretty writing. Rant writing. Rage scribbling. Then I followed it with a self-compassion meditation. That combo began healing me almost immediately. A week in, my symptoms began easing. Six months later, I felt whole again.

Now I write 2–3x a week. Because emotions still come. But now, I *notice* before I stuff. I do my best to pause. To process.

I remember one of my early “healing milestones”—a trip to Costco. (Stay with me here.) I used to get totally drained in places like Costco, malls, airports—probably from how my nervous system processed sound and light.

That day, I tucked my cart to the side and stepped into a narrow aisle. A man came barreling at me with his cart, yelling and laughing like a maniac, trying to run me down. It shook me up. But I didn’t want to shove the pain and fear down.

So I paid for my items and walked to my car. Once I was in the car, I screamed.

A full-on, primal scream.

And just like that—I felt better. I released it.

That’s all it took. The emotion was out.

But let’s be real: in our modern society, that kind of release is not “acceptable.” In some cultures, emotional expression is seen as strength. In Italy last fall, I often saw men yelling at each other one moment and hugging and crying with each other the next. Elsewhere, I've seen women grieving loudly and openly in public. It was raw. It was real. And it was beautiful.

Stuffing emotions doesn’t make us strong. *Processing them does.*

That’s not weakness. That’s release.

And yet many of us were conditioned to keep it together. To smile. To move on.

But our nervous systems never forget what we stuff.

If you're dealing with chronic physical symptoms, emotional fatigue, anxiety, or just feel like you’re not fully living, please know this:

You’re not broken.
You’re not alone.
And healing is possible.

I’ve created the Create More Calm Group Membership where I teach you what I’ve learned about the nervous system, how unprocessed emotion impacts our health, and the exact writing and meditation practices that helped me recover.

If this resonates, I’d love to have you with me.

You don’t have to keep holding it all in.

Let’s create calm—together.