What Happened to My Body When I Suppressed My Emotions

“Our bodies communicate to us clearly and specifically, if we are willing to listen.” ~Shakti Gawain

As a child, I was never taught to regulate my emotions. I learned instead to override them—pushing through stress, swallowing tears, and even hiding a cast at dinner, afraid that showing what had happened to me would create anger instead of care.

By the time I was a teenager, I turned to drugs and alcohol to manage my emotions. It was easier to feel nothing at all than to be bombarded by emotions I had no clue what to do with.

This turned into a ten-year drug addiction until I finally found sobriety after hitting rock bottom and realizing I needed help. I’d been cut off by my family, had resorted to sex work for cash, and had been living in my car and couch surfing for months when I finally realized I couldn’t keep living this way and needed to start facing the emotions and trauma to move forward.

But, when I got sober, the emotions came back stronger and deeper, especially with a decade’s worth of poor decisions piled on top of unprocessed childhood trauma. I felt intense anxiety along with shame and guilt about what I had done to my body, what I had done for money, and what I had allowed others to do to me.

With the emotions also came a laundry list of health problems, including severe PMS and gut issues.

I felt out of control of my body and saw doctor after doctor without getting any answers—only medications to ease my symptoms. I had just learned to live without substances, and I didn’t want to start adding them back in, even if they did come from a doctor this time.

At first, I figured the physical and emotional problems were separate from each other. I mean, how could both be related? But, as I made my way from doctor to doctor with little to no relief from any of my problems, I began doing my own research and testing out alternative ways to find healing and not resort back to living on the streets addicted to heroin.

It didn’t take long for me to realize my body and my emotions weren’t separate at all. Suppressing or ignoring feelings had left my nervous system on high alert, my hormones in chaos, and my gut in rebellion. Every mood swing, every bout of fatigue, every digestive upset was my body speaking—loudly—because I hadn’t learned to listen.

It wasn’t a supplement, a therapist, or a new diet that finally started to shift things—it was actually sitting with the feelings I had spent decades running from.

The first time I let myself really feel the anger, the grief, and even the shame I’d buried, my body trembled like it had been holding its breath for years. I can still remember doing a hip-opening yoga class and just breaking down crying halfway through. My body finally felt safe enough to let some of what had been buried go.

I was finally facing all my feelings around the abuse I’d experienced, the decision to enter sex work to make money for drugs, and my choices and their consequences—including stealing from family and ruining relationships.

As I stayed with these feelings, I finally saw the sexual and emotional abuse that occurred when I was a child and connected the dots from this early abuse to the abuse I continued to allow into my life.

My hormones didn’t magically settle overnight, and my gut didn’t suddenly stop protesting, but for the first time, I wasn’t fighting against myself. I was listening.

I learned that my physical symptoms were never separate from my emotional ones. Every headache, every sleepless night, every PMS mood swing was a message. And every time I tried to “push through” instead of feeling, the message only got louder.

Over time, I started small: letting myself cry without guilt and finally saying no to the things and people that drained me. For example, I realized I no longer wanted to continue with the successful marketing business I’d built because it forced me to cater to people that I didn’t even want to sit in the same room with. I was no longer willing to stay quiet or tolerate what didn’t feel right just to keep the peace.

I also started journaling to process messy thoughts that went all the way back to childhood—thoughts around not being good enough, being too weird and too out there, and feeling the need to hide my true self to fit in and get along with people.

It was terrifying at first—I felt untethered, exposed, and completely vulnerable—but slowly, my body began to relax. My mood swings softened, my gut started to settle, and I felt like I was finally inhabiting my own life instead of running from it.

I realized that the very thing I had feared—my emotions—were actually the key to my healing. Feeling wasn’t weakness. It was information. A compass pointing me toward balance, alignment, and what I now recognize as my dharma (soul’s purpose).

In Ayurveda, we talk about honoring the body’s natural rhythms—the cycles of energy, the shifts of vata, pitta, and kapha—and listening to what your body truly needs in each moment. Suppressing your emotions is like trying to swim upstream against your own current: it disrupts your flow, creates imbalance, and can make your hormones and digestion rebel.

When I allowed myself to feel, to honor my inner shifts, and to create daily rituals that supported my natural rhythms—warm nourishing meals, gentle movement, quiet reflection, and early nights—my nervous system slowly began to settle. My hormones became steadier, my gut calmer, and I finally felt like I was living in alignment with my own life instead of constantly battling it.

Suppressing your emotions may feel safer in the short term, but in the long run, your body will make itself heard. Listening, feeling, and honoring yourself—that is where true healing lives. Your body is speaking. Will you answer?

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