The Effects Of Bottling & Brooding Emotions, From A Psychologist

The phrase "positive vibes only" may be well-intentioned, but the pressure to be happy-go-lucky all the time can also lead people to ignore their true emotions. According to Harvard Medical School psychologist Susan David, Ph.D., there are two common ways to avoid processing internal pain that can worsen mental health in the long-run. 

Bottling occurs when people push aside their emotions to experience forced positivity or gratitude rather than accepting their genuine emotions with compassion. This creates an amplification effect, David says. 

"Internal pain doesn't just go away because we choose to ignore it," she explains. "Internal pain is something that we need to actually face." 

She compares bottling emotions to holding a heavy stack of books for a long distance. Over time, this becomes exhausting and makes it difficult to see what's directly in front of you—including people who may be willing to help. 

"The opposite of bottling is brooding," David says. This occurs when someone recognizes their emotions but resents and feels stuck in them rather than working through them. 

In their simplest terms, bottling is the act of pushing emotions aside, and brooding is the act of sitting in those emotions. While they may look different, David says they both have a real cost to mental health and overall well-being. 

People who have a tendency to either push aside difficult emotions or get stuck in difficult emotions tend to have higher levels of depression and anxiety and lower levels of self-worth. 

While bottling or brooding may seem like easier alternatives to actually seeking help or working through a difficult emotion, both require a lot of mental resources. In fact, they can end up draining so much mental energy that a person can no longer problem-solve their way out of the situation or move forward productively, David says.

The first step in appropriately dealing with emotions is to acknowledge them and put a language to them. Rather than associating certain emotions with negative or positive, she recommends describing the feelings.