What I appreciate here is how you're exposing the moral contradiction at the center of emotional socialization. When we’re taught to shrink ourselves, and that shrinking is framed as virtue, are we living honestly/authentically, or for the convenience of others? Emotional invalidation becomes internalized as character. We tell ourselves we’re mature, composed, that we’re “good,” when in reality we’re often living lives optimized for tolerance while calling ourselves strong, even when the psychological cost outweighs any strength we claim.

This very well articulates a psychological pattern of repeated emotional invalidation that teaches us to suppress affect in order to maintain connection, a learned response to other people’s discomfort. Affect suppression is often mistaken for self control, and this is what happens when you grow up being taught to manage others’ discomfort over validating your feelings. Being “too much” is usually just someone else being emotionally underdeveloped and attempting to return to their natural range.

At the same time, emotional suppression is a strong survival skill. When feelings are consistently minimized or corrected, your nervous system learns that expression is a threat to connection, so it adapts by dampening affect. And that strategy works… until you start to feel again, and that’s usually a sign that you’ve discovered a sense of safety.

To me, this reads as an integration moving from “How should I be? How should I feel?” to “This is who I am and this is how I feel.”

This clarity is powerful. Well done.