What is the Difference Between Psychotherapy and Psychiatry?

Psychotherapy and psychiatry sound alike, so it can be confusing to know what the differences are and when to see a psychotherapist versus when to see a psychiatrist.

The Difference Between Psychotherapy and Psychiatry

What is the Difference Between a Psychotherapy and Psychiatry?

While the two terms might sound interchangeable, there are important key differences:

Psychotherapy

Psychotherapists tend to focus on thoughts, including unconscious thoughts, emotions and behavior.

The Difference Between Psychotherapy and Psychiatry

Psychotherapists have at least a two year Masters degree and many of them also have an additional four years postgraduate training from postgraduate institute (like the Institute for Contemporary Psychotherapy, National Institute of Psychotherapies and other institutes).

Aside from traditional talk therapy, psychotherapists who go on for advanced training also provide specialized therapy including (but not limited to):

• Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR)

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR)

• Internal Family Systems Parts Work (IFS)

• Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy (AEDP)

• Somatic Experiencing

• Hypnotherapy

• Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy

• Sex Therapy (for individuals and couples)

Depending upon their skills and training, many psychotherapists can help clients to:

• Manage Stress and Anxiety

• Overcome Depression

• Develop Resilience and Better Coping Skills

Couples Therapy

• Improve Relationships

• Process Unresolved Issues, including Unresolved Trauma

• Improve Communication Skills

• Cope with Workplace Issues

• Process Unresolved Grief

• Improve Self Esteem

And many other behavioral and interpersonal issues.

Most psychotherapy sessions occur at least once a week for 45-60 minutes.

Psychiatry

Psychiatry focuses on the medical side of mental health.

Psychiatrists are mental health professions who are medical doctors (MDs or DOs). They provide differential diagnoses, prescribe psychotropic medication such as antidepressants, anti-anxiety medication, antipsychotic medication and other similar medications.

In the past, psychiatrists provided traditional psychotherapy, like Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), psychoanalysis and psychodynamic psychotherapy. However, these days most psychiatrists provide medication management. 

Some specialized psychiatrists also provide Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) for severe mental health conditions such as treatment-resistant major depression, ADHD, schizophrenia and  catatonia (a state where someone is awake but unresponsive to other people or the environment).

After the initial evaluation session, psychiatry sessions tend to be shorter in duration (15-20 minutes) to assess how a client is responding to medication management. After a client has been stabilized on medication, sessions might occur every 3-4 months unless the client needs help with medication.

Integrating Psychotherapy and Psychiatry

Clients, who need medication management, benefit from integrating both psychotherapy and psychiatric treatment and many psychotherapists and psychiatrists collaborate to integrate both treatments (see my article: Medication Alone Isn't As Effective As Including Psychotherapy).

For instance, a psychotherapist who is helping a client with anxiety will often be in touch with the client's psychiatrist to provide feedback on what she has observed in therapy sessions and to get information about medications prescribed. This is only done with a written consent from the client.

While some clients choose to only take medication, research has shown that combining psychotherapy and psychiatric treatments is most effective (when psychiatric treatment is needed) rather than just relying on medication because clients learn coping skills and strategies to deal with their mental health issues. 

Psychotherapy can get to the underlying issues that cause the mental health issues and if worked through in therapy, it's possible that medication won't be necessary for certain clients. 

In addition, when clients stop taking medication for certain mental health issues, they often go back to having the same problems they had before they took medication. For instance, if they never learned to manage anxiety symptoms or get to the root cause of their anxiety in therapy, once they stop taking the medication, they are back to where they were before they stopped taking the medication.

At the same time, there are certain mental health conditions that require medication such as schizophrenia, some forms of ADHD or bipolar disorder to mention just a few.

How to Choose Between Psychotherapy and Psychiatric Treatment

Making a decision about mental health treatment can be a big step, especially if you are new to it.

Consider what you need:

Are you looking for help with understanding yourself, improving your relationships, dealing with situational anxiety or working on unresolved trauma or are you dealing with more complex long-standing psychiatric problems?

If you are dealing with a mental health issue that requires medication (e.g., ADHD, bipolar disorder), starting with a psychiatrist is a good first step. Then, once you are stabilized on medication, you can see a psychotherapist to help you to make the behavioral changes that medication alone won't do.

How to Discover What is Right For You

It's easy to get confused about the differences between psychotherapy and psychiatry.

The Difference Between Psychotherapy and Psychiatry

You're not a broken machine that needs to be "fixed". You're a human being which means that, like everyone else, you have messy, complicated and wonderful parts of yourself. We all do.

Rather than focusing on being "perfect", the goal is developing a better understanding of yourself, practicing self compassion, finding the right tools and strategies to deal with life's inevitable ups and downs and living a meaningful life.

About Me

I am a licensed New York psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR, AEDP, EFT (for couples), Parts Work (IFS and Ego States Therapy), Somatic Experiencing and Certified Sex Therapist.

I have helped many individual adults and couples over the years.

To find out more about me, visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.

Also See My Articles:

Why is Experiential Therapy Better Than Traditional Talk Therapy to Deal With Trauma? 

With Experiential Therapy, There Are No Blank-Slate Therapists 

The Mind-Body Connection: Experiential Therapy Offers a Window Into the Unconscious Mind 

Coping With Ambiguous Loss

The term ambiguous loss was coined by Dr. Pauline Boss in the 1970s. She is an internationally-recognized American educator, researcher and family therapist.

She has written a few books on the topic of ambiguous loss:

• Ambiguous Loss: Learning to Live With Unresolved Grief

• Loving Someone Who Has Dementia: How to Find Hope While Coping With Stress and Grief

• The Myth of Closure

What is Ambiguous Loss?

Ambiguous loss is defined as a loss that lacks closure or a clear understanding. 

Dr. Boss classified two types:

• Physically Absent But Psychologically Present: A loved one is gone physically but remains present in the minds and hearts of family and friends (e.g., a missing person, estrangement, giving up a baby for adoption, separation). The experience is: Gone but no certainty if they are alive or dead, which often leads to a search for answers.

Coping With Ambiguous Loss

• Physically Present But Psychologically Absent: In this type of loss a person is physically present but they are emotionally or cognitively absent (e.g., dementia/Alzheimers; traumatic brain injury; chronic depression; an intense preoccupation with work, technology, etc.) The experience: "Here but not here" which leads to grief for what is missing.

Ambiguous loss is considered the most stressful loss because it usually doesn't allow for typical grieving rituals and closure.

Coping With Ambiguous Loss

Coping with ambiguous loss involves accepting that complete closure may not be possible.

Strategies for coping include:

• Finding Meaning: Acknowledging the ambiguity and that the situation is not within your control but finding personal meaning for yourself

• Balancing Emotions: Managing the tension between hoping for a return/recovery and accepting the current reality

Coping With Ambiguous Loss

• Seeking Support: Utilizing therapy or a support group for emotional support and to validate your experience

Clinical Vignette

The following vignette, which is a composite of many different cases, illustrates how someone can cope with the ambiguous loss of a loved one being physically present but psychologically absent:

Gina

When Gina's mother, Ann, was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, Gina felt crushed. Her mother had always been an intelligent, active and loving person who held a responsible job as a hospital administrator for many years before she retired.

Coping With Ambiguous Loss

Several years after Ann retired, she complained to Gina that she was getting forgetful and confused. When Gina discussed this with her brother and sister, they decided to take their mother to a neurologist to get evaluated. That's when they were told that their mother was in the middle stage of Alzheimer's.

The neurologist provided them with resources for their mother and support groups for them, including the Alzheimer's Association. 

They talked about the diagnosis as a family and realized they had different views. Gina and her sister felt their mother should be told because they knew she would want to know what was happening to her and be part of the planning. However, their brother, who was the eldest, said their mother would only get upset if she knew so she shouldn't be told.

After going back and forth about this decision for several weeks, the brother relented and said he would go along with what Gina and her sister thought was best.

When they told Ann, they weren't surprised to hear that she already had a feeling that she might have Alzheimer's because her mother and maternal grandmother had it (although people don't always inherit Alzheimer's).

Knowing that she would decline over time, Ann was very sad, but she was also a practical person. She asked her children to arrange for visits with a geriatric social worker and an elder care attorney to advise them.

Gina and her siblings each had different reactions. Gina's brother tended to be stoic and he didn't want to discuss his feelings. Gina and her sister supported each other in their grief. They talked frequently. They also joined an online Alzheimer's support group and felt relieved to hear that other adult children were going through the same emotional ups and downs as they were experiencing.

Gina also sought help in individual therapy because she wanted the privacy to talk about things she didn't feel comfortable talking about in the support group.

She told her therapist that she had always relied on her mother for emotional support and advice whenever she had to make big decisions and the thought of not being able to do that made her feel tremendous grief.

As her mother declined, Gina's therapist recommended that she work on a family photo album with her mother. So, Gina gathered together the loose family photos her mother kept in a box, bought a photo album and went through the pictures with her mother as they placed the pictures in the album.

She and her mother laughed and reminisced about the events in the photos for hours. Her mother told her she hadn't thought about some of the people and events in the photos for a long time.

They also listened to some of her mother's favorite music which she enjoyed when she was younger. This also stimulated certain memories for her mother.

While her mother was still able to garden, Gina's sister and Ann spent time planting in the mother's garden, which they both found relaxing.

Gina's brother took Ann for walks around the neighborhood and pointed out places that Ann knew from years ago. 

Although the medication the neurologist prescribed helped to slow Ann's decline, eventually, Ann could no longer be maintained at home with a home health aide, and Gina and her siblings had to make tough decisions.

At that point, their mother had declined so much that she only remembered her children intermittently. She was also frequently agitated, which was so different from how Gina and her siblings had always known Ann to be prior to the onset of Alzheimer's.

Gina and her sister wanted to explore nursing homes, but their brother refused to even consider the idea. The thought of putting their mother in a facility was beyond what he could bear. So, he decided to take time off from work and, with the help of an aide, took care of Ann full time.

He soon discovered how exhausting this was--even with Gina and her sister relieving him for a few days out of the week and the help of a home health aide.

When Gina's brother needed to return to work, they spoke with the geriatric social worker who helped them to find facilities that were suitable for their mother. They visited several places, which were good but left each of them feeling very sad.  These facilities had memory units to help patients with dementia and Alzheimer's, patients were well taken care of, but the sight of many elderly impaired patients was upsetting.

At that point, Ann was no longer able to make decisions for herself. Gina and her siblings had already consulted with an elder care attorney to establish a durable power of attorney with Gina in charge. Then, they chose a facility close to where they all lived so they could visit Ann frequently.

At each stage of her mother's decline, Gina felt, at times, that her sadness and grief were unbearable. But she continued to discuss her feelings with her therapist and in the Alzheimer's support group because this was unlike any loss she had ever experienced before.

Over time, even though she felt tremendous sadness and grief, she accepted she couldn't control what was happening to her mother. 

There were some days when her mother seemed content to be participating in activities at the facility and other days when Ann glared at Gina and her other children and said, "Why did you put me here?"

Every time Gina felt she had come to accept her mother's condition, she had to contend with the next stage of her mother's decline. 

Gina's friends, who had older parents who were still functioning well, seemed to want to avoid talking to Gina about how she felt. Gina felt frustrated about this, but she understood that they had their own fears for what might eventually happen to their parents.

In addition to therapy and the Alzheimer's support group, Gina also felt some comfort in journaling. 

After her mother died, Gina felt a mixture of sadness, grief and relief that her mother was no longer suffering. 

She told her therapist she felt guilty that she felt relief and her therapist normalized what Gina was experiencing. She told Gina that it's common for adult children to experience a mixture of emotions including relief.

Gina learned to accept that her grief and sadness would come in waves so that she could feel better for a period of time but, seemingly out of nowhere, she felt tremendous sadness.

Over time, Gina learned to live with her grief. There were even days when she felt hopeful and grateful for what she had in her life. 

She also volunteered to be a peer group leader with the Alzheimer's support group so she could help others to deal with their loss and provide them with a sense of hope.

Conclusion

There are two types of ambiguous loss. I focused on the physically present but psychologically absent because this type of loss isn't addressed as often as the physically absent but psychologically present.

The vignette presented a daughter with a mother who had Alzheimer's. This type of loss could also involve someone coping with a sick or cognitively impaired spouse.

Coping With Ambiguous Loss

Both types of ambiguous loss are difficult, but with help there is hope.

Getting Help in Therapy

Loved ones can be well-meaning but often say and do things that are unsupportive.

A licensed mental health professional, who has an expertise with helping clients to cope with ambiguous loss, can help you to navigate the stages of loss.

Rather than struggling on your own, seek help from a qualified mental health professional so you can learn to cope with ambiguous loss.

About Me

I am a licensed New York psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR, AEDP, EFT (for couples), Parts Work (IFS and Ego States Therapy), Somatic Experiencing and Certified Sex Therapist.

I have helped many individual adults and couples over the years with grief, loss, trauma and many other issues.

To find out more about me, visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.

Also See My Articles

The Challenges of the "Sandwich Generation": Raising Children and Taking Care of Elderly Parents

Coping With the Loss of Loved Ones - Common Reactions 

The Many Layers of Grief 

You Continue to Have an Internal Relationship With Your Parents After They Have Died

Coping With the Loss of a Pet

Coping With the Death of an Abusive Parent

One of the most complicated experiences of grief is coping with the death of a parent who abused you.

This is especially true if there were times when this parent was kind and caring and, at other times, abusive or just abusive most of the time, which can create confusion for the child being abused. And that confusion often continues into adulthood.

Coping With the Death of an Abusive Parent

In a prior article, Unresolved Trauma: Coping With a Passive Parent Who Didn't Protect You From Abuse, I wrote about an example of this issue in the vignette in that article.

Under these circumstances, it's common to feel a mixture of feelings including relief, sadness, grief, guilt and shame.

Since the parent who abused you is dead and if they didn't express remorse, this means that they can no longer express their remorse and ask for forgiveness. For many adult children, this is its own form of loss.

How to Process Your Emotions While Coping With the Death of An Abusive Parent

• Acknowledge All Your Feelings: It's important to acknowledge all of the mixed feelings you might have towards your dead parent--all the messy feelings like relief, grief, sadness, anger, resentment, guilt and shame.

Coping With the Death of an Abusive Parent

• Be Aware of Your Personal Survival Strategy: Whether your brain and body are numbing or your mind is overanalyzing, recognize that these are your coping strategies for the moment. Grounding techniques and breathing exercises can help you to stay relatively calm. Exercise, even walking, can help you to release some of this "stuck" energy.

• Grieve For the Lost Potential: You might find yourself grieving for the parent you wish you had and deserved to have in addition to any grief you might feel for your actual parent.

Why is Grieving Under These Circumstances So Complicated?

• Biological Paradox: Your brain's attachment system, which seeks connection, and your threat system, which detects danger, are both activated simultaneously. This can lead to internal chaos for you.

• If There Was No Reconciliation: Death removes any chance for the parent to understand, acknowledge and make amends for the abuse. You are left with many unresolved and complicated feelings that you need to work out on your own or, preferably, with the help of a licensed mental health professional who has an expertie in this area.

• Fragmented Memories: It's not unusual for a parent to be warm and loving at one point and threatening and abusive at other times. This can make it very difficult to understand who this parent was to you and how you feel about them. If the abuse occurred when you were young, you might even experience this parent almost as if they are two different people in your life.

• Lack of Validation: Other people might praise your deceased parent at a funeral or memorial service which can feel isolating because it doesn't match your reality. Even close relatives who might know your parent's abusive nature might tell you, "Don't speak ill of the dead" which can also make you feel alone and lonely in your experience.

What Can You Do to Heal?

• Validate All Your Feelings: Accept that it is normal and common to feel many contradictory feelings at the same time. 

• Prioritize Your Peace of Mind: You are not obligated to place your deceased parent who abused you on a pedestal, nor are you obligated to attend their funeral if it will compromise your peace of mind. Others might not understand or agree, but you have to do what is right for you.

• Externalize Your Emotional Pain: Writing a no-holds-barred letter, which you do not send, or writing in your journal can help you to express all your contradictory feelings and begin to process any unfinished business between you and your deceased parent.

• Get Help in Trauma Therapy: Grief counselors often don't have specialized training in how to deal with complex grief like this. Working with a trauma therapist, a licensed mental health professional who is trained in complex trauma, can help you to work through your mixed feelings and overcome the unresolved trauma. There are various modalities of trauma therapy including:

• EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing)

• AEDP (Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy)

• Somatic Experiencing 

• Parts Work Therapy (IFS and Ego States Therapy)

About Me

I am a licensed New York psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR, AEDP, EFT (for couples), Parts Work (IFS and Ego States Therapy), Somatic Experiencing and Certified Sex Therapist.

As a Trauma Therapist, I have helped many individual adults and couples.

To find out more about me, visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.

Also See My Articles:

Grieving For a Parent Who Wasn't There For You

Coping With the Loss of a Loved One: Common Reactions 

Coping With Complicated Grief 

Mourning the Loss of a Father You Have Never Known 

Letting Go of Resentment

Grieving For a Parent Who Wasn't There For You

Grief for a deceased parent isn't always related to how close you were.

Grieving For a Parent Who Wasn't There For You

In fact, grief related to the loss of a parent you weren't close to can be even more intense than grief for a nurturing parent because it often involves grieving for what  you hoped for and never got (see links for my articles about grief below).

For adults who have lost a parent under these circumstances, part of the grief is knowing that the warm loving relationship you might have wished for can never be experienced after your parent died. The death can bring a painful finality to your wish and wash away any hopes you might have had to improve the relationship.

Clinical Vignette:

The following clinical vignette is a composite of many different cases with all identifying information removed:

Alex

Alex was in his mid-30s when he received a phone call from his stepmother, a woman he had never met, telling Alex that his father had terminal cancer. She told him that his father was in hospice and he wasn't expected to live more than a few days.

Before Alex could respond, his stepmother put his father on the phone to say a few words. It was clear to Alex that his father was heavily medicated and Alex didn't know what to say. His father asked for Alex's forgiveness for walking out on Alex and Alex's mother more than 30 years ago. He said he regretted not ever contacting Alex after he walked out on them.

Alex was shocked and confused. He didn't want to reject his father's dying wish, so he told his father that he forgave him. Then, his stepmother got back on the phone and told Alex that his father was too weak to talk any more. Before she hung up,she told Alex she would keep him apprised.

Not knowing what else to do, Alex sat for several minutes to take in what had just happened. When he was a child, he would ask his mother where his father had gone and his mother would tell him that his father was away on a business trip. But as weeks turned into months and years, Alex realized his father wasn't returning and he never asked his mother about it again because he didn't want to upset her.

Alex buried his feelings about his father and tried not to think about him. But there were times in his life when Alex felt sad that his father wasn't there for him, like when he graduated high school, when he graduated college, when he got married and when he had his first child. But during those times he didn't allow himself to dwell on those thoughts.

By the next day, Alex thought he might want to go visit his father before his father passed away, but then he received another call from his stepmother that his father died that night. She said she planned to have a memorial service in a few months and invited Alex to attend and meet his half brother, Jack.

A wave of profound sadness came over Alex. His wife attempted to soothe him, but Alex was too confused, anxious and angry to talk about it. He never even knew he had a half brother.

His wife said to him, "But you haven't seen your father in so many years and you don't even remember him. So, why do you feel sad?"

Alex couldn't explain why he felt so many mixed emotions, but after weeks passed and he didn't feel any better, he got help in therapy.

Grieving For a Parent Who Wasn't There For You

His therapist helped Alex explore his feelings and he realized that, even though he didn't allow himself to dwell on being abandoned by his father, he always had a wish that he and his father would reunite and they would develop a strong father-son relationship. But now that his father was dead, the reconciliation was impossible and this made him feel deeply sad.

His therapist helped Alex to grieve the abandonment and the loss of a relationship he wished for but now would never have. He also worked on his anger about his father asking him as he was dying to forgive him because, even though Alex said he forgave him, he wasn't sure how he felt.

As Alex continued to work on these issues in therapy, he realized how much he had stuffed his feelings from the time he was young because there was no one to help him with his complicated feelings about being abandoned and never seeing his father again. He believed his mother did the best she could, but she wasn't emotionally equipped to help him when he was a child.

After his father's death, when he spoke to his mother, he realized her memories of that time were different from his. She believed she had sat him down, talked to him and comforted him after his father left. When he told her what he remembered, she denied it, so Alex dropped the subject.

The memorial service was several months away and Alex had mixed feelings about going. Part of him wanted to go to meet his half brother and to find out more about his father, but another part of him didn't want to go. Even though he knew logically that none of this was his half brother's fault, he felt hurt and angry that his half brother had the relationship with his father that Alex wanted.

Then one day Alex received a call from his half brother, Jack, and they talked for over an hour. Jack said he could only imagine how difficult it must have been for Alex to get the call from Jack's mother after so many years. He also hoped they could meet and get to know each other.

Over time, they developed a relationship and Alex decided to go to the memorial service.

It took Alex a while to sort out his feelings about his father and his anger about the way his mother lied to him when his father left. But he also felt relieved to release the emotions in therapy--emotions he had suppressed for so many years.

Over time, Alex worked out his grief in therapy and maintained a relationship with Jack.

Getting Help in Therapy

Grieving for a deceased parent is difficult and it can be that much more difficult when a parent hasn't been there for you.

Getting Help in Therapy

Rather than trying to deal with these complicated emotions on your own, seek help from a licensed mental health professional who has experience helping clients with grief and loss.

About Me

I am a licensed New York psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR, AEDP, EFT (for couples), Parts Work (IFS and Ego States Therapy), Somatic Experiencing and Certified Sex Therapist.

I am an experienced psychotherapist who has helped many individual adults and couples.

To find out more about me, visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.

Also See My Articles

Mourning the Death of a Father You Never Knew

Common Reactions to the Death of a Loved One 

The Many Layers of Grief 

The Emotional Impact of Losing Both Parents

Who Are You After Both of Your Parents Die?

Writing to Cope With Grief

Managing Emotions: What is the Life Cycle of an Emotion?

Many people struggle with allowing themselves to experience their emotions. 

The Life Cycle of Emotions

This is often because they were taught at a young age, either directly or indirectly, that certain emotions need to be controlled or suppressed--especially emotions like sadness, grief, shame or other uncomfortable emotions (see my article: Overcoming Trauma: You're Not Defined By What Happened to You).

The Life Cycle of Emotions

In therapy people learn that emotions are like waves. 

They have a life cycle: They ascend, peak and subside. 

Driven by a neurochemical release, this often occurs in as little as 90 seconds (see my article: Developing Emotional Regulation Skills).

Emotions Are Like Waves

An emotion often starts with a trigger, intensifies as the brain processes the emotion and peaks when physiological sensations (e.g., heart rate) are most intense. Then the emotion will subside as the body processes the neurochemical surge.

Let's break this down further to understand the life cycle of emotions:

• The Rise: An event triggers a reaction which causes a surge of neurochemicals in the brain. The feeling begins as a sensation in the body. This might include a tightness in the chest, a flash of heat or the sensation of a drop in the stomach. 

• The Peak: Usually within as little as 90 seconds the emotion reaches its maximum intensity. At that point, the "reptilian brain", which is the oldest part of the brain, can take over and trigger the fight, flight or freeze response. This often causes an inability to think straight.

• The Fall: If the emotion is not stimulated again by further thought, the chemicals dissipate from the blood and the sensation subsides.

How Do Emotions Get Prolonged?

While the natural physiological wave of an emotion is short, emotional experiences can last for hours or days if you "feed" them. 

This happens by replaying a story in your mind, ruminating about it, and overanalyzing it, which creates another 90 second loop and another and another.

How to Manage the Wave of an Emotion

• Label the Emotion: Acknowledge the emotion ("I feel angry" or "I feel sad") to reduce its power.

Breathe Through the Emotion

• Breathe Through the Emotion: Stay present with the physical sensations without trying to fight it or suppress it (see my article: Square Breathing).

• Let It Go: Allow the emotion to pass naturally instead of feeding the emotions.

Conclusion

Knowing about the life cycle of emotions is essential for improving mental health, developing emotional intelligence and developing a better relationship with yourself and others.

About Me

I am a licensed New York psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR, AEDP, EFT (for couples), Parts Work (IFS and Ego States Therapy), Somatic Experiencing and Certified Sex Therapist.

I have over 25 years of experiencing helping individual adults and couples.

To find out more about me, visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.

Why Do People Suppress Their Emotions?

Many people have a difficult time experiencing certain emotions in a healthy way so they suppress their emotions, which has health and mental health consequences.

Emotional Suppression

Which Emotions Are Commonly Suppressed?

The following emotions are the ones that are commonly suppressed among people who feel they need to hide these emotions:

• Anger: Anger is often perceived as being aggressive or out of control (even for people who are experiencing anger in a controlled way). Frustration and rage, which are part of anger, are often suppressed (see my article: Fear of Anger is Often Coupled With Guilt and Shame).

• Sadness or Grief: Crying or showing sadness or grief is often discouraged in our society, especially for men. This often leads to emotional suppression.

• Fear or Vulnerability: Society tends to value strength so showing fear or emotional vulnerability is discouraged (see my article: The Emotional Vulnerability of Being in a Relationship).

• Shame and Guilt: Shame and guilt are often discouraged in Western culture because there is a negative perception of emotions (see my article: Understanding the Difference Between Guilt and Shame).

• Envy and Jealousy: Many people push down feelings of envy or jealousy because these emotions are perceived as negative (see my articles: Overcoming Jealousy and Is Envy Ruining Your Relationships?).

• Disappointment: Disappointment is similar to sadness. Many people hide these emotions to appear "strong" and not to burden others (see my article: 5 Tips For Overcoming Routine Disappointments).

Why Do People Suppress Emotions?

Emotional Suppression

• Social Conditioning: As mentioned above, many people are taught to be "tough" or polite which leads to hiding emotions which are perceived as negative.

• Fear of Judgment: People who suppress certain emotions often fear that they will be judged or criticized for expressing certain emotions, so they suppress these emotions rather than expressing them.

• Maladaptive Coping Mechanism: People who suppress certain emotions hide these emotions as a maladaptive coping strategy to avoid discomfort or situations they feel would be overwhelming for them (see my article: Avoidance as a Maladaptive Coping Strategy).

What Are the Consequences of Emotional Suppression?

The most common consequences of emotional suppression include:

• Mental Health: People who suppress emotions are at a higher risk for anxiety, depression , emotional numbing and trauma-related issues as compared to people who express their emotions in a healthy way.

Emotional Suppression

• Physical Health: These symptoms include high blood pressure, heart problems, chronic pain and other physical symptoms (see my article: How Emotional Suppression Can Lead to Physical Health and Mental Health Problems).

• Emotions Resurface More Intensely: People who suppress their emotions often discover that these emotions resurface in a more intense way. They are also more at risk, compared to people who can express their emotions in a healthy way, for alcoholism, drug abuse and other impulsive or compulsive way

Get Help in Therapy

If you tend to suppress emotions that make you feel uncomfortable, you could benefit from getting help from a licensed mental health professional.

Get Help in Therapy

Learning to express your emotions in a healthy way can help you to be more self aware, reduce anxiety and stress, improve health and mental health and develop healthier relationships (see my article: Learning How to Express Your Emotions in a Healthy Way).

Rather than struggling on your own, seek help from a licensed psychotherapist so you can live a more fulfilling life.

About Me

I am a licensed New York psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR, AEDP, Parts Work (IFS and Ego States), Somatic Experiencing and a Certified Sex Therapist.

I work with individual adults and couples.

To find out more about me, visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.

Also See My Article:

Allow Yourself to Feel So You Can Heal