According to Ayurveda, when you hold strong feelings in the your heart–feelings like guilt, grief, resentment and anger—it creates physical stress in the heart and blood vessels. When you hold the fire of angry feelings in, blocking them, they burn where they are being held. Burning means inflammation in the cells. Inflammation is caused by Pitta, and suppressed Pitta causes heart issues.
Depression can also result. Not speaking out, holding anger in the body, can also put pressure in the thyroid which is located near the larynx and the voice. If you push yourself too hard to succeed or complete a project to a deadline you could be overstimulating the thyroid, pushing yourself, which can result in exhaustion of the gland. As it is recovering you can feel exhausted and depressed, in a hypothyroid condition.
Other pitta locations in the body can also be affected: the liver, gall bladder, skin, eyes, cardiovascular system. Pitta may be blocked because you feel angry at the world or at a specific person or situation and you can’t see a way to change it. Your blocked anger, burning without an outlet, may lead to burnout, no motivation, depression.
Depressed, taking time out from reality.
Recently I realized I was suppressing my Pitta anger and irritability around a friend I play bridge with. My friend can be very critical when someone makes a mistake in our friendly bridge games. One day at bridge I was about to play the wrong card and I asked, “Can I take back the card?” In a friendly game people don’t mind if you take back a card. We don’t keep score. But in a competitive game, once it is seen by another player it can’t be changed. My friend said “No, you can’t do that.” “I thought this was a friendly game,” I told her. “It is a friendly game,” she said, “but I don’t want to lose. So you can’t do that.” I said, “The game can’t be friendly when you want to make a change and competitive when you don’t want an opponent to made a change. It’s either friendly for all or competitive for all. So now we’re in a competitive game.” After saying what was my truth, I played the card and didn’t change it. Usually I would not have said anything, I would stuff my annoyance and shut my mouth.
After the game ended, she apologized and said “I should not have done that. I apologize. It was a friendly game. I let my competitive nature get the best of me.”
When I spoke up and did not suppress my thoughts and feelings, and I was surprised to feel that my energy increased. I felt balanced within myself, there was no residue of anger. What I had not realized was that not speaking up made me feel dull and irritable.
It feels better to speak up for your truth; it is empowering, you gain energy. Not speaking up diminishes you and your energy and you may end up depressed if you do this all the time. And withholding is not good for a relationship. Later she apologized, but even if she had been mad at me, I would have felt balanced simply because I expressed my feelings and didn’t bottle them up.
May we all speak our truth (or at least write it in Morning Pages 10 minutes every morning!)
