You tell yourself you’re easygoing. You don’t yell, you rarely cry, you keep it together when everyone around you falls apart.

But what looks like calm is often something else: a lifetime of suppressing anything uncomfortable, and a body quietly paying the bill for it.

In this episode of Alive and Well, MJ, author of How to Cry and founder of the Being Method, breaks down the science of what suppressed emotion does to the body, and how to let it move through instead.

What Crying Actually Does

At its simplest, allowing yourself to feel an emotion regulates your nervous system, because it takes you through the full cycle. Anyone who has cried knows you feel better afterward.

Physiologically, crying releases stress hormone, literally out of your eyes. Depending on the type, you might also release endorphins to reduce physical pain, or oxytocin to build connection, which matters enormously, because in traumatic moments, connection with another person is often what determines whether something becomes lasting trauma or not.

Suppress the cry, and cortisol rises. Do it repeatedly over years, and chronic stress becomes your baseline. Crying isn’t weakness. It’s a physiological release we’re designed to have.

Suppressed Emotions Show Up in the Body

MJ is careful to say emotions aren’t the sole driver of physical health, there are always root causes worth exploring. But suppressed emotion makes things measurably worse.

Emotions are energy. Anger, held in, tends to manifest as tension, and the field of psychoneuroimmunology links chronic anger with cardiac issues. A common pattern in women: saying yes to things you want to say no to, then carrying resentment that surfaces as emotional turmoil, and people-pleasing itself has been linked to autoimmune conditions.

Michelle points to a study referenced in Dr. Gabor Maté’s The Myth of Normal, where people who suppressed all facial and vocal response to distressing images showed elevated heart rate and cortisol compared to those who emoted naturally. The emotion you avoid doesn’t vanish. It manifests, as discomfort, a symptom, or further down the line, disease.

Anger Has to Move Through the Body

If you’ve got anger, you have to do something with your body. Full stop. Journaling counts, MJ considers it a somatic practice because mind and body connect as you write, and she suggests writing the full furious email and then deleting it, never sending it.

Her other go-to’s are more physical: putting on music and going for a run, or phantom boxing in the kitchen, imagining yourself punching, done alone, never at a person. Michelle adds her own: whacking a pool noodle against the ground. Everyone’s body is different, so the instruction is to find what genuinely discharges it for you.

The goal is to move anger through before the cup overflows and spills onto the people you love. If you notice the early signs, tension in your body, victim-flavored thought scripts, that’s the moment to go discharge it, not when you’re already exploding.

Teaching Kids That All Emotions Are Okay

Step one is modeling it, because kids figure out their parents fast and won’t buy a message you don’t live. MJ is vocal with her kids: “I’m feeling so frustrated right now, let’s go punch some pillows.”

The philosophy: be permissive of feelings, clear about behavior. It’s okay to be angry, to cry, to feel shame, and it’s not okay to hit. The work is helping kids build space between the emotion arising and what they choose to do with it, while remembering that a toddler’s brain literally cannot produce that space yet. When her young son hits, she doesn’t take it personally, because she understands his developing brain and his frustration.

Michelle adds a powerful reflection on crying in front of kids: wiping your tears and saying “I’m fine” teaches them to distrust what they perceive. Letting them see the emotion, and see you move through it, teaches emotional honesty and gives them a chance to grow in compassion.

You Are Your Kids’ Thermometer

If you’re the primary caregiver, you are the thermometer for your kids’ nervous systems. When you wake up rushed and activated, you’ll often notice the kids fighting and hitting more, because they’re reading off you.

Your nervous system and your child’s are interconnected. Which means a large share of the household tension can come down just by regulating yourself, MJ estimates that’s roughly 80% of it, with the other 20% simply being kids being kids. She also makes the case for learning basic child physiology: kids are designed to wake frequently and to want closeness, and much of our frustration comes from expecting things their brains can’t yet do.

Breath: The Remote Control for Your Nervous System

Breathwork, MJ says, is simply using breath to change your physiological state, a built-in remote control for your nervous system. There isn’t a person alive it won’t work for, though there may be a specific technique that doesn’t suit your body.

Two broad paths: the parasympathetic route, slowing your breathing to signal safety before and during something hard, like finally hitting publish on the project you’ve sat on for years. And the sympathetic route, more intense breathing that can thin the veil between you and stuck emotion so it can finally release.

She doesn’t prescribe fixed techniques, because a count that fits a 200-pound man won’t fit a 100-pound woman. There are only four moves, inhale, exhale, hold on top, hold on bottom, so play with them and find what feels good. And it doesn’t require a long ritual: she practices while driving, doing dishes, or curling her hair, holding a five-second inhale and exhale in the micro-moments of an ordinary day.

Every Fear Is a Fear of Feeling

One idea threads through the whole conversation: all fear is a fear of feeling. Every fear we carry is, underneath, a fear of feeling something we don’t want to feel.

MJ sees it constantly with perfectionism and procrastination, ask what feeling the person is avoiding, and there’s almost always one underneath, usually shame or not-good-enough. Named simply like that, it becomes something you can actually face. And facing it, she reminds us, can be uncomfortable and safe at the same time.

Key Takeaways

• Breath is a built-in remote control for your nervous system, usable in the micro-moments of any day
• Feeling an emotion regulates your nervous system, suppressing it drives cortisol up and keeps you stressed
• Suppressed emotion manifests physically, as tension, symptoms, and over time, disease
• Anger has to move through the body, use somatic release before it spills onto others
• You are the thermometer for your kids’ nervous systems, regulating yourself lowers the whole household

Watch the full episode here: YouTube Episode

Take the Capacity Pattern Quiz Here!

Join The Capacity Method Waitlist

>>> 💌 DOWNLOAD THE NERVOUS SYSTEM RESET GUIDE <<<

🥤 MY BURNOUT RECOVERY STORY + $10 OFF HAPPY JUICE