Brad Schipke explains why many people, especially men, struggle to feel or show emotion. Healing doesn't require a public breakdown, just confronting and releasing what you feel, alone or with others. The real problem is the pressure to either share everything or hide everything, which leaves most people sharing nothing, even with themselves.
A lot of people, and a lot of men in particular, have a hard time with feeling or showing emotion, which is completely okay. What I want to say is that you do not have to emotionally break down in front of other people in order to heal, but you do need to express and release your emotions to heal. And this was a big sticking point for me on my own journey because I didn't want to be breaking down in front of other people. And I think a lot of people feel that way too. They're told by therapists and other people that you need to feel your emotions, share your story, let the whole world know about all the awful and the worst things that ever happened to you. But you don't have to share anything with anybody else if you don't want to. You went through it. It's your stuff. You get to decide who gets to see it and who doesn't get to see it. The only thing that matters is if you face it, if you look at it. And that's the thing where a lot of people get mixed up, is that they either feel like they need to share everything with the world or share nothing with the world, and then they don't share anything with themselves either. The only person who has to face it is you. You have to confront the truth. You have to feel those emotions. You have to release those emotions. You can release them in public, or you can do what I did and release them in private. So those are 2 very different things. You can either suppress it, you can either release it. The choice is yours.
