Quote "Repression is the unconscious blocking of unacceptable thoughts, feelings and impulses. The key to repression is that people do it unconsciously, so they often have very little control over it." How do I know if I'm repressing my feelings at all?
I suppose you can't really know about repressed feelings (since they're mainly unconscious), though I'm no expert. I'll tackle your thread in regards to specifically just sexual/romantic orientation, since it's in this section of EC. From a personal POV/experience, I suppose what you can do is normalize things to yourself (e.g. normalize the possibility of an attraction towards the same sex, normalize the idea of being gay, irrelevant of whether or not you think you might be- after all, you probably don't know at this point, if you're repressing a lot of things), and work on reversing previously internalized homophobia or toxicity, if relevant. Once you're able to give yourself the room and the time, and put your mind at least in a healthier and accepting place for yourself, some previously repressed emotions or attractions may emerge. Sometimes we repress "unacceptable" things- e.g. the idea of being gay- because we're unable to face them, or have grown up believing and internalizing that they're wrong. We might not even realize all the unconscious beliefs or thoughts and mechanisms at work, but by putting ourselves in a healthier and more accepting state of mind- towards anything we might discover about ourselves, whether that's being gay, or bisexual, or any identity- that's when previously unacknowledged or repressed feelings may appear, because we've given ourselves the validity for those to be discovered and accepted, and faced head-on. As with many things I suppose, we are sometimes only able to figure out, explore, and see certain aspects of ourselves when we are ready to face them and give ourselves the 'permission' and validity to do so.
