bottle up your feelings

Meaning

This expression means to deliberately hide or suppress your emotions, especially sadness, anger, or worry, instead of expressing them. People often use it when advising someone to talk about their problems rather than keeping them inside. Over time, doing this is generally seen as unhealthy or stressful.

Examples

• It's not healthy to bottle up your feelings; you should talk to someone about what happened.

  It's not healthy to bottle up your feelings; you should talk to someone about what happened.

• She tended to bottle up her feelings until she eventually lost her temper over something minor.

  She tended to bottle up her feelings until she eventually lost her temper over something minor.

• Instead of bottling up his feelings, he started writing in a journal to process his grief.

  Instead of bottling up his feelings, he started writing in a journal to process his grief.

• I know you're upset, so please don't bottle up your feelings.

  I know you're upset, so please don't bottle up your feelings.

• He has a habit of bottling up his feelings, which makes it hard to know what he's really thinking.

  He has a habit of bottling up his feelings, which makes it hard to know what he's really thinking.

Common Mistakes

• ✗ He bottled up his feeling.

  ✓ He bottled up his feelings.

  The noun 'feelings' is almost always plural in this idiom because it refers to emotions in general.

• ✗ She bottled down her feelings.

  ✓ She bottled up her feelings.

  The correct preposition is 'up', signifying containment or sealing, not 'down'.

• ✗ I don't want to bottle my emotions.

  ✓ I don't want to bottle up my emotions.

  Without the particle 'up', the verb 'bottle' just means to put liquid in a bottle rather than suppressing emotions.

Related Expressions

Practice

• If you keep ___ your feelings, you'll eventually explode with anger.

  💡 Use the -ing form of the verb.

  Show answer

  bottling up

• It's better to talk about your problems rather than ___ them up.

  💡 Use the base form of the verb.

  Show answer

  bottle