The Generation That Wasn’t Allowed to Feel
Gen X — and many older Millennials — grew up in households where emotions were rarely met with curiosity or compassion. We were the generation expected to stay quiet, stay small, stay strong, and stay grateful, even when our hearts were aching.
Our parents didn’t mean to harm us. They were teaching us exactly what they were taught. But the reality remains: many of us grew up in environments where feelings were treated as inconvenience, weakness, or disobedience. If you cried, you were told to stop. If you were sensitive, you were told to toughen up. If you struggled emotionally, the message was often, “You’re fine,” even when you clearly weren’t.
Living through that shaped us far more than we realized.
We became adults who learned to function while burying our emotions, to keep peace by avoiding conflict, and to minimize our pain because acknowledging it felt unsafe. Many of us learned to silence our intuition, perform strength, and carry burdens quietly so we wouldn’t be a problem to anyone else.
And yet, beneath every layer of coping, our inner child never stopped needing something simple and deeply human: softness, space, emotional safety, and the permission to feel.
This series exists because so many of us are finally recognizing how much those early messages shaped us — and how deeply we want to heal the patterns we inherited.
How Emotional Suppression Becomes Stored Energy
One of the most important things I’ve learned through Reiki, coaching, and energy work is that emotions don’t disappear just because they’re ignored. They settle into the body. They become patterns in the nervous system, tension in the shoulders, tightness in the chest, numbness around the heart, and hesitation in our voice.
Suppressed feelings don’t remain quiet forever.
They live inside us as energy waiting to be acknowledged.
For many of us, this has shown up as difficulty expressing needs, a reflexive fear of conflict, overthinking, people-pleasing, or doubting our own emotional truth. We weren’t taught how to process emotion — we were taught to push through it.
Over time, this disconnect becomes a kind of internal drift: a feeling of being far away from ourselves, unsure of what we feel, want, or need.
This is exactly where Reiki becomes transformative.
Energy does not respond to force.
It responds to awareness.
And suppressed emotions rise the moment they feel safe enough to be seen.
The Inner Child: The Part of Us Still Waiting to Be Heard
Inside every adult with an emotionally dismissive childhood lives a child who once needed comfort, understanding, and emotional permission.
I’ve seen this over and over — in clients, in the parents I support, in the children I’ve cared for, and in my own healing journey.
When those early emotional needs are dismissed, children grow into adults who are fiercely independent, emotionally guarded, hesitant to trust, and disconnected from their inner wisdom. Vulnerability feels risky. Asking for support feels foreign. Feeling emotions can feel like standing on unfamiliar ground.
Healing begins the moment we acknowledge that this inner child still exists — not as a weakness, but as a truth. They have been waiting, often for decades, for someone to say:
“You’re allowed to feel now. You’re safe.”
Reiki, conscious self-talk, and energy alignment are powerful because they speak the language the inner child recognizes — the language of presence, gentleness, and emotional permission.
How the Law of Attraction Helps Us Heal Suppressed Emotion
The Law of Attraction doesn’t punish emotional suppression; it simply mirrors our internal landscape. When we carry unresolved or buried emotional energy, our experiences tend to reflect those patterns. It’s not judgment — it’s information.
Repeated emotional loops, relationships that echo old wounds, self-worth struggles, or the sense of “why does this pattern keep happening?” are often signs that something within us is asking to be felt.
Healing suppressed emotion even slightly — even gently — shifts everything.
The Law of Attraction responds immediately to emotional honesty.
Cycles begin to soften.
Self-talk becomes kinder.
New patterns form.
Intuition becomes stronger.
Relationships reflect more authenticity and clarity.
We don’t heal the past by fixing it.
We heal it by changing the vibration we carry into the future.
Reiki and Energy Work: A Soft Path Back to Ourselves
Reiki is not a replacement for emotional work — it is the doorway into it.
For a generation trained to numb or override emotion, Reiki offers a completely different experience. Reiki meets us where our bodies have been holding tension for years. It brings calm where the nervous system used to brace. It brings softness where emotional armor once lived. It brings clarity where confusion had settled in.
Reiki gently lifts suppressed energy toward the surface, not to overwhelm us, but to release it.
It allows us to feel safely, slowly, and with grounding.
The Law of Attraction teaches us that emotion is guidance.
Reiki teaches us that emotion is vibration.
Together, they remind us that emotions are not the enemy — they are the pathway back to alignment.
Conclusion: Our Generation Is Learning to Feel Again
We are the generation that is finally turning inward, looking at the emotional wounds our parents never had permission to acknowledge. We are doing the work they didn’t know how to do. We are breaking patterns not through force, but through awareness.
As we reconnect with our emotions, our inner child, and our energy, we create a new foundation for the children in our lives. We give them what we never had: emotional safety, space to feel, and permission to be fully themselves.
When we heal our suppression, we heal our lineage.
This is how generational change begins — one aware adult, one softened heart, one moment of truth at a time.
Supporting article:
https://ingramspath.medium.com/gen-x-and-emotional-suppression-how-a-generation-learned-to-speak-again-a22a5501ab90?utm_source=chatgpt.com
Related blog by Wendy Lynn Johnson:
https://wendylynnjohnson.com/blog/how-reiki-supports-children-with-anxiety-anger-and-emotional-overwhelm/
Comments
One response
Wow, Wendy,
Your insight is just phenomenal. The method is practical and works. I, too, am offering a path— a program where people learn to accept themselves and create a new self to share with others through the art of dance. I aim to bring confidence and courage to individuals, enabling them to share their new selves with others in a supportive, no-judgment environment that fosters connection and acceptance. All the while, creating fun and excitement and adding spark to their life and to all around them. People become so skilled at this that they begin to share their new selves with their families, friends, co-workers, and communities without even realizing it. It becomes a contagious place and practice for everyone who enjoys its environment. People just like the feel of it. Funny, they just have a difficult time trying to explain it when asked to.