We Keep Repressed Emotions In Our Mouths

Every morning Laura woke up with a severe pain in her jaw. Sometimes even with a headache that lasted all day. The young woman had seen specialists who had prescribed her to sleep with a discharge splint to protect her teeth. Apparently Laura had a habit of clenching her jaw tightly while she slept.

However, despite the splint, Laura continued to wake up daily with a deep malaise. In addition, it happened that the girl, during the day, also clenched her mouth. Whether at work, on the bus or watching television at home, she always had to be vigilant to relax her jaw, which seemed to live in a continuous state of tension.

Even being so young, due to the continuous tension that her jaw endured, Laura had already lost several teeth and had damaged many others. Her dentist had told her that her teeth and gums were more typical of an old woman than a 35-year-old girl, her real age.

Tensions accumulated in the mouth

On the recommendation of her dentist, the young woman sought psychological help and that is how she came to the consultation. Little by little, we began to work to find out the origin of that tension that affected his jaw so much.

In therapy, we went back to her childhood and Laura could remember how every time when she was a child she protested something or protested against what her father thought, he gave her a little blow on the mouth to make her shut up. It was not a slap, nor did it cause enormous physical pain, but the blow was forceful enough for the girl to internalize the idea that “protesting is forbidden.”

Like the drop of water that is wearing away the stone, those hundreds of taps that the girl received in her childhood were marking her character and over the years, Laura automated the habit of pressing her mouth to repress her opinions and complaints. Stopping talking helped the girl so that her father did not get angry with her, but the price to pay was too high, the accumulated tension ended up making her sick due to her weakest point, her mouth.

After doing her therapeutic work, Laura was finally able to talk about the frustration, the accumulated anger and the sadness for everything that happened. In addition, the young woman understood that the reasons for keeping silent had disappeared, she was now an adult who could and knew how to defend herself.

In addition, the young woman promised herself never to be silent again, nor to repress her opinions : “I have the right to speak,” Laura commented to me and told herself in the sessions. Precisely, the young woman decided to tattoo this phrase to never forget her past, or the importance of expressing her emotions.

The climax of his release took place at a family gathering. The moment her father began to say the same atrocities as always, instead of shutting up, she expressed her disagreement and expressed her opinion by stating to her father that she would never shut her up again. When he started yelling, Laura calmly got to her feet and left the meeting.

The young woman called me several years later to tell me that her mouth problems had improved a lot, her gums already partly regenerated, in addition to having healed, was more in line with that of a person her age.

The emotions that we repress, that we silence, over time can cause physical damage to our body. To rediscover the body-mind balance, it is essential to work to recover our voice, our words, our ability to act and defend ourselves from abusive people.