Someone asks how you’re doing. Maybe it’s another mom at pickup, or a coworker, or your sister on the phone. And before you’ve even checked in with yourself, the words are already out of your mouth:
“Good! Busy, but good.”
You’ve said it a hundred times this month. Maybe today. And maybe that morning you’d had a phone call that knocked the wind out of you, or a fight with your partner that never got finished, or you woke up at 3 a.m. with your heart pounding for no reason you could name.
Saying you’re fine was never really the problem. The problem is that we never tend to the fact that we aren’t. We don’t make the time for it, because no one ever told us how much it costs our health. That’s what I want to help you see.
What happens when you don’t
Here’s the thing about a swallowed feeling: it doesn’t go away. Your body feels it. The tight throat. The clenched jaw. The breath that goes shallow. Your nervous system stays on alert, because as far as it’s concerned, something is still unresolved.
Do that once, and your body can handle it. Do it a dozen times a day for years, and it adds up. Every swallowed feeling takes up room. Eventually there’s no room left, and your nervous system hits its limit.
That’s when it comes out sideways. You snap at your kids over spilled milk. You cry at a commercial and have no idea why. You lose it on your husband over the dishwasher, when the dishwasher was never the problem. Or your body says it for you, with a headache that won’t lift, a gut that flares, a neck that locks up, or exhaustion that sleep doesn’t touch.
None of that means something is wrong with you. Those are signs that your nervous system is full.
Where do your swallowed feelings go?
Have you ever thought about where your swallowed feelings go? Because they go somewhere. Let me tell you what the research says.
When you push a feeling down, your nervous system doesn’t get the message that it’s over. It stays braced. Your body keeps releasing stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline, and when that happens day after day, year after year, it starts to change how your body works. Inflammation goes up. Your immune system gets confused about what’s a threat and what isn’t. Your gut, your sleep, your hormones, and your pain levels all start to feel it. Your nervous system has less and less room to handle anything else, so the smallest stressor tips you over.
And this isn’t some fringe idea. A twelve-year study from the University of Rochester followed people who tended to bottle up their emotions and found they had a higher risk of dying early, including from cancer. The landmark Adverse Childhood Experiences study, which followed more than seventeen thousand adults, linked early emotional stress to higher rates of autoimmune disease, heart disease, and cancer decades later. And when researchers ask people to simply write about what they’ve been holding in, their immune function improves.
Dr. Gabor Maté spent years as a physician watching this play out, and he wrote a whole book about it, When the Body Says No. Over and over, he saw the same pattern in people with autoimmune disease, chronic illness, and cancer: lifelong habits of swallowing anger, putting everyone else first, and never saying no.
And look at who gets sick. Women make up the large majority of people with autoimmune disease. A lot of researchers believe part of the reason is how many of us were raised: be nice, don’t make a fuss, don’t be too much, take care of everyone else first. We got very, very good at swallowing it. Our bodies have been keeping track the whole time.
I’m not telling you this to scare you. I’m telling you because if you’ve been chasing symptoms for years and nothing has stuck, this might be the piece nobody has ever asked you about.
So, what’s the answer? Stop saying you’re fine and tell everyone how you’re really doing?
No. That isn’t the answer either.
When people first learn that swallowing their feelings is hurting them, a lot of them swing the other way. They start telling everyone everything: the cashier, the coworker, and the friend who always turns the conversation back to herself.
And then they feel worse. More exposed. More misunderstood. Because not everyone is a safe place to put your heart, and that’s okay. Some people can’t hold what you’re carrying. And, most importantly, that isn’t their job.
Unloading on someone also isn’t the same as processing. You can tell the story of what happened ten times, to ten different people, and never once feel it. Retelling keeps you up in your head, analyzing and explaining and building the case. The feeling itself is still sitting in your body, waiting.
What you’ve been pushing down doesn’t need an audience. It needs you to tend to it.
It’s your responsibility (and that’s good news)
This is the part nobody wants to hear, and I say it with so much love: it’s your job to process what you’re feeling. Not your partner’s. Not your best friend’s. Not your therapist’s, even if you have a great one.
That might sound like a burden. To me, it’s freeing. It means you don’t have to wait for the right person to ask the right question at the right time. You don’t have to hope someone notices. You get to decide that your feelings matter enough to make room for them.
And that means making actual time and space for it in your life, the same way you make time for the dentist, the grocery store, and everyone else’s needs.
What tending to it actually looks like
It doesn’t have to be dramatic, and it doesn’t take hours. It can look like this: Sitting in the car for ten minutes before you walk into the house, and asking yourself, “What did I feel today that I didn’t let myself feel?”
Writing it out, messy and unfiltered, for your eyes only. Then throwing it away.
Letting yourself cry in the shower instead of holding it together until it passes.
Noticing where it lives in your body, whether that’s your chest, your throat, or your stomach, and staying with it for a few breaths instead of grabbing your phone.
Letting yourself be angry, out loud, somewhere private. Anger doesn’t make you a bad person. It’s information.
The first few times, it might feel awkward or even a little scary. That’s normal. You’ve spent years learning to push this stuff away, and your body isn’t used to being listened to. Start small. Five minutes counts.
So, the next time someone asks how you’re doing, you can still say, “Good! Busy, but good.” You don’t owe everyone the full story.
Just make sure someone knows the real answer, and let that someone be YOU.
