I see this pattern constantly in my work with people in tech: someone comes in struggling with anxiety, convinced they need to fix their thoughts or actions. But here's what I've learned: anxiety isn't the problem. It's a response to emotional self-repression.
What This Looks Like
Any of these sound familiar:
- You think that your natural expression is a problem, and needs to be "reformatted" for the world
- You feel things strongly but suppress the expression
- Someone told you your emotions are "too much," and you've internalized it
Here's the Cycle
- You feel something authentic you want to express. You suppress it - a pattern likely learned in childhood (for me, it was my late teens, not infancy). That suppression creates depression, frustration, and anxiety.
- To manage those feelings, you create "shoulds." I should be more productive, I should be different, I should be better...
- But the "shoulds" only reinforce the suppression, and increase the inner criticism. You're suffocating yourself emotionally, one suppressed feeling at a time.
The solution isn't to fix your anxiety. It's to stop suffocating the person you actually are.
Struggling with this pattern? Let's work together to help you break free from emotional self-repression and express what's actually true for you.