E=mc²

It’s not just an epic Mariah album. It’s a useful code to remember: energy needs somewhere to go.

I’m fascinated by the different ways women around the world are culturally taught to handle emotion.

The English have the stiff upper lip: stay composed, don’t let them know you’re rattled. In parts of East Asian culture, emotional restraint can be associated with maintaining harmony and not burdening the group. Swedish culture has its own appreciation of moderation and self-control. French women are often stereotyped as more emotionally expressive but socially contained. Dutch culture has a reputation for directness. American culture tends to give greater permission to talk about feelings.

And then there’s Irish culture — particularly the one I grew up in Northern Ireland. We have language for being pissed off!

You could be raging. Someone could have done your head in. You could tell a story about what happened with enough theatricality to entertain all one million of your first cousins. Steam was allowed to come out. Occasionally feathers flew.

We aren’t wallflowers.

What struck me wasn't that one culture has more emotion than another. Of course it doesn't. Human beings have emotion. The difference is what we're taught to do with it. Many cultures teach women how to conceal emotion beautifully: remain pleasant, maintain harmony, don't make a scene, don't appear affected, keep your dignity.

But they don't necessarily teach us what to do with the feeling afterwards, and emotion that is continually inhibited doesn't simply cease to exist. The body still has to process the physiological activation that came with it. Basically it gets stuck in the body and becomes obvious when things start playing up.

It is an actual biological response that will happen to you when you suppress emotions that cause stress that makes you chronically release cortisol. Your body is going to thank you AND you will be more beautiful and less tired!

Cortisol is a steroid hormone produced by your adrenal glands that acts as your body’s main stress response system. It regulates metabolism, manages blood sugar, controls blood pressure, and lowers inflammation.

Energy needs movement. Talk. Walk. Cry. Write. Dance. Laugh about it with a friend who can keep secrets and understands privacy. Say you're furious when you're furious. Let the feeling complete its journey rather than turning it into an identity, and importantly, being emotionally expressive doesn't mean making somebody else responsible for your emotions.

You don't have to shout, accuse, manipulate or make someone uncomfortable to let them know you're hurt, angry, disappointed or rattled. Emotional honesty can be incredibly clean: That annoyed me. That hurt. I'm angry about what happened.

Someone with a bit of backbone isn't going to run simply because you've shown them that you have feelings. Healthy relationships aren't built between people who never rattle each other. They're built between people who can tolerate the fact that occasionally, they will.

You can have an emotional response without creating an emotional hostage situation.

Composure is a wonderful quality, but composure and suppression are not the same thing.

Don’t bottle your feelings. Process them. Use them. Move them. And, as hard as it can be, turn that energy into something different, because energy doesn't simply disappear. It changes form.

The real-life version of E=mc² : energy cannot be created or destroyed, it can only be changed from one form to another. Just like food becomes fuel ..

Frustration can become action. Fear can become courage. Anger can become a boundary.
Heartbreak can become clarity.

Don't suppress the energy. Transform it.