Lewis HowesYour Personal 24/7 Greatness Coach

Why We Repress Parts of Ourself

5 Jul 2026 · 1 min

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In this segment, the speaker explains why humans tend to repress emotions and traits that are deemed socially unacceptable—such as insecurity, shame, anger, and bitterness. He argues that this repression stems from our relational nature and fear that revealing these parts will alienate us from others. However, he contends that the opposite is true: suppressing these aspects creates an internal “shadow” that distorts our personal frequency, leaving us out of alignment with ourselves. This internal misalignment prevents genuine connection with others, because true connection requires being in sync with one’s own authentic self.

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they're not parts that are societally acceptable. That's why we repress them. So we're very— They look ugly to others. Exactly. So we're very relationally dependent species. And so anything that's shameful or not approved by the masses, we typically repress that. So it's the insecure, the ashamed, the angry, the bitter, all of those, they get pushed into the shadow. So oftentimes we don't feel safe looking at that stuff. We don't wanna admit it's part of who we are. Because fundamentally, actually, we think it's going to disconnect us from people around us if we accept that this is part of who we are. But the opposite is true. Because if this stuff is within you, it's distorting your frequency, it's disconnecting you from yourself. You're out of alignment. You're out of alignment. And if you're disconnected from yourself, then you can't be connected with others to the level that you could be.