Keep calm and carry on….a message so ingrained within society that it’s found itself into our
everyday language, a phrase we’ve grown up hearing and feels about as English as a cup of tea and eating fish and chips.
The ability to hold great restraint for emotions in the face of adversity has been a hallmark of English culture for centuries.
But is there a potential cost to managing ourselves in such a way? Of course only we can know
ourselves if a way of coping with emotions causes us difficulties; nobody has the right to change how we deal with things and for many people it will feel an acceptable way of coping.
However there is likely a catch to dealing with our feelings in this way for a long period of time.
Our emotions are an innate response to things, people and situations in your life. If somebody
passes away we experience grief, if we connect to somebody on an intimate level we will feel happy and maybe even love.
If we do something that hurts those we love we may experience guilt, all of which are innate responses to such situations that give us information about the impact of certain events and inform us on what to do with that situation. You’re not in conscious control of your
feelings, but you can be in conscious control of what you do with those feelings.
Our body has hundreds of automatic process that it uses to help regulate itself. Without such systems we would not survive.
Take for example the idea of eating. We all know that in order to survive we have to fuel our body. If you go 24 hours without eating you will feel hungry, if you go 48 hours without eating you’re likely going to be desperate to eat something, I know I would anyway.
Your hunger response is a reaction to a lack of food, and signals to your body that it needs nutrients. Now imagine if you applied the stiff upper lip idea to your hunger. Keep calm and carry on as your body tells you that it’s starving and in need of food, eventually your body will begin to shut down and won’t function as it should.
This is not a subjective idea, if you do not eat, you will eventually die, and hunger signals are there to keep us alive.
Similarly our emotions can react in the same way, if you ignore your emotions for long periods of
time, you begin to lose very important signals your body has used to help you figure out what is
happening in certain situations. Shutting down the system will lead to a repression of those
emotions, either spilling out in other areas of our lives, or leaving us feeling numb or confused about how we feel.
Of course, keeping a stiff upper lip on the odd occasion is unlikely to harm anyone, much like
skipping the odd meal won’t cause us any harm.
However if we continually relate to ourselves in such a way then eventually there maybe repercussions. Therefore expression and acknowledging feelings does not make you weak, it just means you’re paying attention to automatic responses to situations happening in your life.
Therefore instead of keeping clam and carrying on, maybe we could try and keep calm and be considerate to yourself.