I've been told that I "bottle things up and then explode". How do you not "explode"?

First, don’t tell me that the answer is just to “not bottle things up”, because that’s objectively incorrect too.

Well, no, it's not objectively incorrect. I get the sense that the main problem you have is communicating negative emotions without being overly confrontational or acerbic about it. My experience is that it's very possible to tell someone you're unhappy about something without making a major deal out of it.

Also, I'm curious about how often you find yourself in the situation we're taking about. Everybody had occasions where they have to vent frustrating, but if that's a super frequency occurrence, there might be something else going on. Sometimes it should be enough to take a deep breath, recognize that the issue is minor, and let it go.

It is not super common, but it's common enough that my friend takes notice. The issue is that I occasionally explode at work which is not good for my job security. Generally if someone is being mean to me or my fellow coworkers I get upset. My supervisor is also a huge bitch who is rude and mean to everyone and I have a hard time dealing with her at times. Most of the times I am able to shut up, but sometimes I get upset with people like that and I react inappropriately.
- I have a pretty stressful job. I've been doing it for almost twenty years. I have not "exploded at work" once. Not ever.
  This isn't an "expressing emotions isn't okay" problem, man.
- If this happens at work then yeah, definitely a personal trait that you need to work on.
  As someone who shares the same trait and has learned to manage it with time, I recommend you look into anger management. Plenty of free stuff online to start with but a professional can be a huge help, if you can afford it or if your workplace is willing to assist you with getting to a resource.
  For me the key is being self aware enough that before I blow up I recognize where I'm headed and DISENGAGING until I can settle down. Blowing up, for me, is an ego driven/lashing out issue. It's complicated and I don't feel like explaining, but that's me. I can tell when it's happening and I care more about not being unprofessional or damaging interpersonal relationships so I DISENGAGE before I get there, which does not FEEL as good, but it's necessary.
  I can't tell you exactly what you need to do, but I would bet a lot of money that you can start to identify when you're headed in that direction and stop the train before you go off the tracks. To do so you need to be willing to put your ego aside whether you think you're right or wrong and LEAVE the room or end the conversation. To do so is not easy because you want to release whatever you're thinking about the current real/perceived grievance, but if you're not being a functional member of society because you blow up in a rage then you have to modify your own behavior somehow. Disengaging is the simplest and most effective way to manage it.
  With time and more self reflection, personal work, therapy, maturity, whatever - you'll need to disengage less and less and can manage/cope without that tool. But for now that should be your goal until you learn to control yourself.
  This isn't an other people problem, it's a you problem. It's not that you're not allowed to express yourself, but there are appropriate and inappropriate ways to do so in polite society, between friends and loved ones, and in a workplace. If you can't admit that then start there.
  Get on board or lose friends, break up, and get fired.
- Sounds stressful for you and for the folks around you.
  I think you're going to find that most people don't have great advice for how to do it because it's not something they've struggled to overcome. There might be people here who have that issue or one similar enough, and overcome it, so they can tell you how they did. But your better bet is going to be to look into some kind of anger management techniques.

Don’t bottle things up.

This reminds me of something a European told me about dating in the US. "Americans say nothing is wrong and then blow up when it's a level 11 problem and i had no idea anything was wrong. Where I'm from we address it when it's a level 2 problem."

Be a level 2 problem, not a level 11 problem. That means you gotta fucking talk.

don't tell me that the answer is just to "not bottle things up"

I hate to be that guy, and believe me I was in that boat once. But the solution is to not reach the point where you are exploding from the amount bottled up.

Humans are not meant to be stoic creatures. People have feelings, that's called being human. You need to find someone you can trust(NOT A COWORKER), and every once and awhile vent to them about things that you aren't able to resolve with the person that's causing the frustration. That's your best solution.

Reading your replies, this seems to be more a super toxic work environment issue which I think if you fix, will resolve most of your issues. Due to this, I recommend ON-TOP of the previous recommendation, also either contacting HR about it, or if you do not feel comfortable with doing that, finding another job. You should not be being bullied by anyone let alone a manager. There are so many work policies in place in most work environments protecting you against this, and not to mention most civilized countries have laws against it.

Being said, if you feel that it is less of a you bottle things up, and more of a you aren't thick skinned enough to be able to handle the every day work-life without having anger issues and exploding, you may also want to look into some form of Anger management or calming technique. But honestly, it sounds like it's a combination of the first two issues and less of an anger issue.

One of the most healthy practices you can do is to fully experience negative emotion, let it wash over you and fully occupy you, then breathe deeply and let that emotion go. Holding on to negative emotion has long term health consequences. Remember that you have no control over the world, just your own reactions to the world. I have a lot of anger that I try to let go of this way. Life has become a long series of just being shit on by everyone and everything. But what can I really do about it? Keep working and moving up the ladder to where the shit sandwiches have more bread I guess. In the meantime, I try to practice mindfulness with my emotions and breathe through them. You can use the Dune Litany Against Fear with pretty much any negative emotion.

It’s not just about mindfulness or not being negative. It’s addressing your concerns / whatever is upsetting you early. It’s ok to be negative, what’s not ok is letting resentment build till you pop because you never address anything that’s bothering you

There’s a lot of really good advice here, I’ll just pitch in one thing I’ve been working on myself lately: mindfulness. Awareness of yourself, your surroundings, and how you feel (both emotionally and physically).

I’ve struggled a lot with the same problem of bottling emotions up, but I often do it because I don’t even register all of the little emotional paper cuts that feed into it. It’s helped me to make it a habit of stopping and assessing myself and asking “hows does this make me feel and why?”

Start doing that for even the little things and you’ll find it gets progressively easier to stop and assess even the bigger things. Won’t always make you feel better, but oftentimes all we need to avoid blowing up is that second of “stop and think” to make us cool off just a bit.

So you harbor resentment.

Clear the air, don't take things personally, realize other people's emotions are out of your control and move on with life.

Easier said than done, though.

It's corny and is championed by some shit heads but Meditations by Marcus Aurelius helped me to figure out how mentally center myself during tribulations.

Link to Internet Archive

It`s also on Standard Ebooks.
- Yo I've never heard of this site. The older I get the more I like public domain media. Thanks for showing me this.
There's nothing corny about stoicism, as long as you see through the people trying to monetise it.

Society doesn’t want you to have any negative emotions. I need to know how to not express negative emotions at all whatsoever unless I’m alone.

What about your friends or family? Particularly in some countries, it's true that public displays of unhappiness are taboo. Less-than-totally-public displays are kind of a huge part of people's social lives everywhere.

Friends and family will either listen to a point before saying they can't handle it, or some of them I wouldn't bring these problems to in the first place. When I do talk, I get tired of my response being the thing they focus on instead of the source causing my frustration. I've attempted therapy for years with varying success; after some bad experiences I can't trust therapists anymore. All anyone cares about is if my emotions are impacting them in a negative way, nobody actually gives a shit about how I am doing as long as they aren't directly inconvenienced.
- Friends and family will either listen to a point before saying they can’t handle it
  Well, that's good to hear. Hopefully it helps, and I'd also suggest that it means they do care, at least a bit.
  Maybe they do need to give you more time to vent, it's hard to say without being there. In general, we on the internet don't know you and can't have enough information to help you the way a therapist can.
- Well couple of things, it's entirely possible your friends and family are complete assholes, but sometimes people need to ask themselves how many times have they listened to someone when they want to express their negative emotions?
  My wife's cousin, her entire life she's never once lent an ear to a sad friend/family, had had the audacity to tell an aunt who lost her breasts to cancer that she just brings negative energy and wouldn't be invited to any gatherings at her house, now is suffering through a divorce and cannot fathom why the whole family kind of supports the husband and not her.

You need to voice your concerns when they actually come up. The idea that showing emotions is objectively bad is completely false.
You need to learn how to phrase negative comments with a neutral tone. You should not be describing anyone as mean, rude, bitch. Especially not your coworkers. Do you mean straightforward? Concerned? Talkative? Direct? Extroverted? Confident?

No, my supervisor is actually literally mean. She is mean to everyone and it causes a lot of struggles with everyone. I just have a harder time handling a bully than other people, and she bullies me more often than the rest of my coworkers.
- How much of the situation is within your control?
  Perhaps you can't change the supervisor. You can still leave.
  Or perhaps you can change the supervisor (e.g. talk to someone else in the org and get help).
  Or perhaps the way you're reacting is part of the problem, and that is amplifying the problem, and perhaps you can change something about how you're acting, to reduce the problem.
  There are always multiple ways to change a situation, but you have to actively seek them out yourself. People on the internet might give you useful ideas (there are lots in this thread), but they don't have the full context, so they can't give you off-the-shelf answers.

Journaling has helped me in the past.

First, don't tell me that the answer is just to "not bottle things up", because that's objectively incorrect too. Society doesn't want you to have any negative emotions.

I'm guessing you're a man. Society imposes this upon men in particular.

Tell society to fuck off. Have emotions, experience emotions, and process them like a human being.

Then take it a step further, and learn how to handle them like an emotionally intelligent human being.

I need to know how to not express negative emotions at all whatsoever unless I'm alone.

This is part of the problem. This is not what you need to know. You need to know how to express negative emotions without losing control of yourself or your reaction to your emotions.

I know it can be done because it is done in many other people on the planet.

People bottling things up and exploding when in a safe space is part of the problem.

I'll echo the idea of anger management, or even therapy in general.

Nobody who is healthy hides away their emotions. You're not alone in feeling the way you do. Society is sending you signals that you need to do something unhealthy, but that won't actually fix the problem.

I'm actually not a man, believe it or not. The other women in my life have taught me to be that way as well.
Yeah everyone is suggesting therapy, but unfortunately I won't be able to plan out something for the next month or so as my work schedule is a bit in flux. I started on SSRIs about 4 months ago, but have not really noticed any effects on them... positive or negative.
- I'm actually not a man, believe it or not. The other women in my life have taught me to be that way as well.
  Damn. I wonder if it's a cultural thing. Sometimes women are told to keep it inside, too. It's never exclusive to one gender.
  Later is better than never. So keep looking towards the future.
  You might find some helpful resources online in the meanwhile. Mindfulness and, in particular, emotional intelligence might be two key phrases to look into.

Don't take advice from neutrotypicals.

This is a question for a therapist. So my answer is, whenever you have an open mind to the idea of being uncomfortable in order to grow, start researching therapists.

Yeah so someone had recommended that I see a therapist. I just started seeing a practitioner who can give me psych meds, but my work schedule is a bit too unstable to start with a therapist at the moment. (will take several weeks for me to finalize my schedule) I have seen therapists in the past but never knew what to talk about, but it was brought to my attention that this is an issue I need to address.
- For one, it's a place where you can offload your emotions! Verbally, that is

Coping skills. It’s fine to get pissed and you may have a strong sense of justice and need to keep things even and explosions bring things back into equilibrium. A lot of “not exploding” on people can be addressed by what you do ahead of time, giving yourself escape routes, and learning new behaviors to replace explosive ones. These can be alternative activities that are incompatible or functionally just better ways to address situations.

-Identify what happens before you explode. How do you feel, what are you thinking, is it the location, people, etc?

-Time out from that moment until you come down from wanting to take people’s heads off.

-Use strategies that you find to calm you down. Some people go for walks, use stress balls, fidgets, chew gum, color, play a game. I know this will vary wildly depending on your location and what’s acceptable. The point is to find some alternative for a few minutes or even during higher stress that you can do.

-Increase activities that bring you joy. Again these don’t have to cost money and may vary depending on your interests.

I think it’s more of finding ways to express negative emotions in a healthier/safer way, and not necessarily just suppressing it.

Which, incidentally, is what not bottling it up means.
It's gotta go somewhere, the tough part is finding an appropriate place that isn't back at yourself.

I recently took an anger management class. That might be a good place to start for you. One of the takeaways I got was that it's ok to have anger, but you need to learn and use different techniques for managing it.

Take a lesson from welding class: You release what you've got bottled up just right with a little spark and you get an intense yet precise flame. It's amazing what you can get done with skillful application of said flame.

Nice people tend to let things go, they will eventually catch up and you will blow. Instead when something happens or something is said you need to stand up right in that moment. This way it was dealt with and there is nothing to bottle up.

Set and enforce boundaries with everybody in general and specifically for people you feel overstep. Basically either faux-pas or actively try to fuck with or trespass you in any way
Grey rock people who you believe are antagonising you

Some dark humor helps.

Got to therapy. Seriously

Journal. Let your feelings out, incrementally, in a place that you don't feel vulnerable for doing so.

Today co-worker did X, they're a cunt. It annoys me because Y. Seriously, Co-worker is a dick. At the time I wish I had done Z, but Z is illegal. Nexr time I'll try [reasonable action]

There's a journaling format that I really rate call "jackal journalling", invented by Kate Raffin, and based on NVC. It's basically what you say - brain dump of abusive/judgemental thoughts, but with an added layer of going back and analysing the feelings associated with each thought, and trying to identify the unmet needs they express. It can be really helpful for turning a head full of anger/despair/whatever bad thoughts into a useful assessment, and it can help give direction as to what to do next too.
template: https://communicationforlife.co.nz/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/jackal-and-giraffe-journal-6-pages-FINAL-Kate-Raffin.pdf

The people commenting on here are unhinged. Clearly a lot of "I was treated poorly by my boss so you should deal with it too" energy.

I saw someone imply it couldn't be bad unless you were being physically threatened with a knife at work. Ive seen people say you should just say how you feel when you feel it, but that won't change the main problem here which is that its not okay for a supervisor to treat people poorly.

Nothing you change about yourself will change your supervisor. People quit managers not jobs, in most cases. It wouldnt be unreasonable to look for other work or to request a change in supervisor/team.

I would say therapy and find a healthy way to offload steam such as exercise or meditation or walking your dog or hitting a few balls at the driving range...etc you get the idea.

Regarding therapy, if you want to explore that it may take a few tries to find someone you click with but I have many friends who swear by it and say it was one of the best things they have done.

I would suggest that you try to process those swallowed emotions at a later time. Ask yourself why these things bother you, can you let them go, do you need an outlet to relieve them. Maybe you can relieve that pressure before you blow.

I do not have any helpful outlets. The things that people say are outlets don't work for me.
Running? I do it. Doesn't help. I ruminate during a run.
Venting to a friend? Doesn't help. I feel guilty for bothering them, they get frustrated with me for bothering them, and it's wrong to do that to people who have busy lives and their own problems.
Venting to ChatGPT? Occasionally will help a little bit, but usually does not help. It's not a real person and does not understand me, but prevents me from harming others by venting to them. Also helps me ruminate on my problems.
Writing down my thoughts? Doesn't help. It makes me ruminate.
- Helpful outlets don't just fall in your lap, though. You have to do the work of trying things and see what sticks. You can start with small, achievable distractions if that makes it easier, too. For me, it's taking a super hot shower and singing along loudly with music blaring. It's just a short amount of time, but it stops my brain from going down a bad road sometimes when I can tell I'm about to have a rough time.
  You are not a passenger in your own life, and you are going to have to start actively making changes if you want things to improve for you. It's not going to just randomly happen to you.
- I was thinking about something like going to the shooting range or kickboxing. A bit of controlled violence might do the trick.
- Have you tried primal screaming?

I get on GTA or Just Cause 3 and start blowing shit up.

What is this 'society' nonsense? You can express your desires and feelings without having to explode, that's the solution. And when you eventually do, because you're human and mistakes will happen, apologise profusely and understand "the work" is not yet done. Also whatever you propose is not only a denial of your own humanity, in vain and for your own detriment (and immature too, which is not a good look!), but also the kind of things dudes try before they shoot up churches and festivals.

You are human, after all, a social animal. You're gonna have to open up as calmly as you can when the situation calls for it, instead of not saying anything because you don't feel brave enough to be vulnerable (maybe you feel like the people around you will only misunderstand you and make it worse?), so resentment doesn't add up in the background and you don't end up exploding. And I'm not just preaching here, I'm speaking from experience!

Don't worry, the anger would never be directed at innocent people like that. It is directed at the self. So the end result you speak of may occur one day, but to the self and not others.
It's not that I don't feel brave enough...I know that I'm not supposed to say anything in response. I get in trouble when I do so. The person I have trouble with is not understanding in differences of opinion.
- I'm sorry to hear about this, it sounds more serious than what I thought. I think you should talk about it with the kindest/most understanding person you know. You might not be able to talk to this person because you might "get in trouble" but you can talk about them/the situation to get a clearer picture. Take care, dingus, and don't lose hope.

The trick is having people with whom it is safe to voice negative thoughts and opinions. Generally it's the same people who confide in you. There are also other ways to vent that pressure a little bit in the short term, but expressing that negativity to other people is not really replacable.

For guys (as I assume you are), this can be very hard to find, or to build these kinds of relationships for cultural reasons, but it is fundamentally necessary to being an emotionally healthy person.

You voice the small negatives on an ongoing basis so they don't pile up to the point that they're explosive.

Getting a therapist, so you have someone you're paying to hear your negative thoughts and feelings can make it easier to start. Its often hardest at the beginning because when you first start voicing the things you've bottled up ongoing, the intensity will generally be higher than is pleasant for people to be around, and you kinda have to let off enough emotional pressure for a while before the intensity comes down. A therapist could be helpful in doing that without having to unpack the culturally ingrained masculine discomfort with vulnerable or uncomfortable emotions (in some ways, in other ways therapy is harder. But it's private and comes without the normal social expectations of being positive)

Good luck! This is a really hard thing to work through for a lot of men, as a society we really set men up to fail in this way

With out most respect - is there any chance that you are one of the people who is so hang up on being nice that they never think about other people?

https://youtu.be/g7RAPS8mE94

That was a very interesting video.
I do not think I am at all like the man in the video. The man in the video seems to just agree with everything even if he doesn't want to, which is not what I think I do. I do not overcommit and then resent people for it. If someone is an asshole to me then I don't at all agree to do things to keep the peace.
I more have issues when someone is actively being mean to me or others trying to provoke me or others. Or when I am having a bad day and am acting too depressed about things and am then called overdramatic or oversensitive.

You have to do something physical. Run, do some intense workout with cardio and weights, wail on a punching bag. Maybe all 3.

Let your brain focus on something that isn't words in your head, and exhaust you physically, and you'll quickly learn how inconsequential other people's petty BS really is in the grand scheme of things.

Without having your specific details hard to tell...

But I will drop my two cents. Don't be a social retard and rage at people esp after holding something back.

Handle things as they come. If somebody doesn't like it they can get fucked. You will notice over time that people who don't like you bringing up your concerns as they happen usually were there to fuck you over.

Authority doesn't like to be challenged and this is one of the tactics used by authority to suppress reasonable discussions. Then when pleb explodes, it is his fault.

Not sure if this is applicable to you but if youa te dealign with somebody in position of authority given this some thought.

You are not your thoughts, nor are you your emotions. You are the observer of those things. Somebody presses your buttons, but it is your choice whether or not those buttons fire. For example if a child said some hurtful things to you, would it have the same impact as an adult? I should hope not. What is stopping you from viewing somebody as a child, especially if they are acting like one?

In addition to cardio, try breathing and cold water. Always breathe through your nose, even when running. Try to breathe through your nose as a cold shower takes your breath away. Or go for the full ice bath. An ice bath tells your body (the producer of anger emotions and chemicals), “hey, I’m in control here, you are not good at assessing threats”. The mind follows the breath, or the breath follows the mind.

But if I’m being honest I’ve always had a hot temper, and what is really helping me is Lithium. It allows me to observe anger without being overwhelmed by it.

Have you tried just not exploding? Like, maybe turn your emotions off so that instead of exploding in rage you just feel a vague annoyance? It's called alexythymia, and I highly recommend it; it makes shitty things much easier to deal with.

Dude I would love to be able to induce that rn

Bottling things up is totally fine if it works for you. The people telling you not to do that are just projecting because they can't do it.

Bottling things up is very unhealthy.
- Ah, one the people showed up. How surprising.