Why the Emotions You Are Suppressing Are Costing You More Capacity Than You Know
My dog died a few weeks ago.
His name was Tiberius.
His first owners called him Zenace the Menace. We changed his name and he grew into it completely. Present. Loyal. The kind of dog who never met another dog he did not immediately befriend.
He was in my office for almost every coaching call I ever held. He walked beside me through chemotherapy when walking was the only thing that helped. He showed up until his last day. Not because it was easy. Because showing up was simply what he did.
When he died I told my clients the truth the next day.
That I was grieving. That I was also fully present for them.
Both things true at the same time.
I want to tell you why I am writing about this here. Not to perform grief or demonstrate resilience. Because what happened in those calls is the most honest example I have of what I actually teach.
The false choice most businesswomen make
Most businesswomen believe they have to choose between feeling something hard and functioning.
So when grief or fear or overwhelm shows up, the instinct is to push it aside. To manage it. To put it somewhere it will not interfere with the work.
And that suppression is exactly what costs the most capacity over time.
Because holding something down requires real energy. Ongoing, consistent energy. Energy that should be going into decisions, presence, creativity, and income.
I could be fully present for my clients the day after Tiberius died because I was not spending energy suppressing what I was feeling. I was holding myself through it instead.
That is the distinction that changes everything.
What suppression actually costs
A businesswoman who is suppressing something hard is running her work on a divided engine.
Part of her is doing the work. Part of her is managing the emotion she cannot afford to feel right now. The second part is invisible on the outside. It does not show up on a time sheet. But it consumes real and significant capacity every single day.
Decisions feel heavier than they should. Content that should flow comes out flat. Presence with clients feels effortful instead of natural. The creative energy that makes the work magnetic gets quietly consumed by the suppression happening underneath.
And the income reflects a depleted version of her rather than the full one.
More suppression. Less capacity. Lower income. More exhaustion.
What processing actually looks like
Processing is not falling apart. It is not losing the ability to function.
It is giving the emotion space to exist without making it mean something catastrophic. Feeling it without adding a story about what it says about your capacity or your future. Trusting it is survivable. Letting it move through rather than parking it somewhere in the body where it will cost for months.
The women I work with who have the most sustainable capacity are not the ones who feel the least.
They are the ones who have learned to feel fully and function anyway. Not because the feeling stops. Because it no longer requires all of their energy to manage.
What Tiberius taught me
He never managed his emotions.
He felt everything completely and was immediately present for what came next. No residue. No holding back. Fully in whatever moment arrived.
He accepted every dog he met. Every person. Every moment. Without conditions and without the weight of what came before.
And he walked beside me until he could not anymore. Not because it was easy at the end. Because showing up was simply what he did.
I am still learning to do what he did naturally.
But I am closer than I was before he died.
If you are carrying something hard right now and you have been telling yourself you cannot afford to feel it, I want to offer you a different perspective.
The cost of suppressing it is already showing up in your capacity and your income whether you name it or not.
Processing it is not the detour from your work. It is what makes the work possible.
I have openings for 1:1 coaching right now for women who are ready to build this kind of capacity.
"What's Really Driving Your Overworking." Three minutes. Link below.
What would open up in your business if the emotions you were managing stopped costing you energy?
Ruth Duren is a certified life coach and MBA. She works with high-capacity businesswomen to clear the beliefs and patterns keeping their effort from matching their income. She has openings for 1:1 coaching. Learn more at ruthduren.com.
