My parents emotionally abused me and then inadvertently encouraged me to repress my emotions, not just as a coping mechanism for that abuse, but by essentially telling me (and other people) that repression of my emotions is most impressive "quality." They only ever praised me or bragged about me for being "a trooper" or having a "high pain tolerance" or "never complaining." When I was a child, my dad would brag to people that I was so 'stoical' that he never knew I was sick unless I was so sick that I couldn't function at all. Which is actually fucked-up, and should have been concerning because you need to know when children are ill. I never felt like I could tell him when something was wrong, or when something bad happened, because it would have been complaining and then I would be departing from the only part of my identity that was valuable or not shameful.

So now I try to remind myself that emotional repression isn't an identity, or a virtue, by complaining all the gd time. Like my shoulder hurts rn, fyi.