To suppress feelings without expressing them — to keep everything locked inside over a long period of time, often until the pressure becomes unbearable.

Type

Separable phrasal verb.
She bottled up her anger. / She bottled her anger up.

Verb Forms

base bottle up  ·  past bottled up  ·  pp bottled up  ·  -ing bottling up

Position (separable)

With noun: bottle up feelings or bottle feelings up.
With pronoun: bottle it up only — never bottle up it.

Collocations

bottle up emotions / feelings / anger / grief / frustration

Narrative

Tom was forty-three and had never once cried in front of another person. He had learned early — from his father, and his father's father — that feelings were private things, to be managed alone and never displayed.

For twenty years he had bottled up everything: the grief after his mother died, the fear when the company almost folded, the slow loneliness of a marriage that had gone quiet. He was good at it. People called him steady. They meant it as a compliment, and he took it as one.

The problem with bottling things up is not that it stops working. It's that one day, without warning, it works too well — and you find you've sealed something inside that you no longer know how to reach.

Register

Informal. Prefer suppress or repress in academic writing.

Tom was forty-three and had never once cried in front of another person. He had learned early that emotions were things you managed privately — so he did. He bottled up everything: the grief after his father died, the fear when he lost his job, the loneliness of twenty years in a marriage that had slowly gone silent.

One Tuesday, his daughter asked him if he was okay. He opened his mouth to say fine. But for the first time in years, the word didn't come. He had bottled up so much that even fine felt like a lie he no longer had the energy to tell.

To lose control of your emotions completely — crying, collapsing under pressure, showing distress you can no longer contain.

Type

Intransitive phrasal verb (emotional sense). No object.
He broke down and couldn't stop crying.

Verb Forms

base break down  ·  past broke down  ·  pp broken down  ·  -ing breaking down
⚠ irregular: break → broke → broken

Watch out

break down (emotions) ≠ break down (analyse/explain) — completely different meanings.

Narrative

He had kept it together through the whole thing — the phone call at 6am, the hospital, the paperwork that followed death like a shadow. Through the funeral he had shaken hands and accepted condolences and said thank you for coming forty times without his voice breaking once.

Everyone said how strong he was. He accepted that too.

Then on Thursday morning, eleven days later, his daughter put her hand on his shoulder and asked if he wanted tea. It was such a small thing. The kettle. The ordinary kindness of it.

He broke down. Not quietly. He wept the way people do when they have been holding something for too long — with their whole body, suddenly and completely.

You can brace against catastrophe. It's the small kindnesses that undo you.

Cultural note

Carries the weight of social pressure against showing emotion — and the relief of its release.

He had kept it together through the funeral, the paperwork, the long empty evenings. He had been, everyone agreed, incredibly strong.

Then one Thursday morning, his daughter put her hand on his shoulder and asked if he wanted tea. And he broke down. Not gently. He wept the way people do when they have been holding something for a very long time. You can brace against bad things. But when someone is simply, quietly kind, sometimes all the walls come down.

To consciously share your feelings — a voluntary act of vulnerability. You choose to let someone in.

Type

Intransitive (emotional). No object required.
She finally opened up to her sister.

Verb Forms

base open up  ·  past opened up  ·  pp opened up  ·  -ing opening up
regular verb

Collocations

open up to someone · open up about something · finally / slowly open up

Narrative

For three years she had talked to Dr Marsh every Thursday at four o'clock. She had been precise, articulate, and — as she later understood — almost entirely dishonest. Not in what she said, but in what she left out.

Then one evening, sitting on her friend Clara's kitchen floor with a glass of wine and no particular plan to say anything important, she opened up. Really opened up — about her mother, about the year she turned thirty, about the thing she had never said aloud to anyone.

Clara didn't take notes. She didn't offer frameworks or ask how that made her feel. She just listened, and occasionally refilled the glass.

Afterwards, driving home, she thought about the difference. Therapy had given her language. Clara had given her permission. Sometimes opening up is less about finding the right words than finding the right person.

For the first time in years, she opened up to someone who wasn't paid to listen. It wasn't dramatic. It was a quiet Tuesday afternoon, tea going cold on the table, and suddenly she was talking — really talking.

He didn't try to fix anything. He just listened. She told him about her mother, about the year she turned thirty. Afterwards she felt lighter, then immediately embarrassed, then lighter again. That was the strange thing about opening up: it always felt like a risk. And it almost always turned out to have been worth it.

To release a feeling suddenly — a sigh, a laugh, a cry. Spontaneous, brief, physical.

Type

Separable phrasal verb.
She let out a cry. / She let a cry out.

Verb Forms

base let out  ·  past let out  ·  pp let out  ·  -ing letting out
⚠ irregular: let → let → let (no change)

Position

let out a sigh or let a sigh out. With pronouns: let it out only.

Narrative

The results were posted at nine o'clock on a Tuesday morning. She had been awake since four.

She had refreshed the page eleven times before the list appeared. Then she saw her name — third from the top, in plain black text, unremarkable among all the others — and she let out a breath she hadn't realised she'd been holding for the past three years. Not a shout, not a sob. Just a long, slow exhale that seemed to carry everything with it: the early mornings, the drafts abandoned at midnight, the months of doubt that had felt permanent.

Her flatmate appeared in the doorway. "Well?"

She looked up. She let out a laugh — a real one, sudden and unplanned — and said nothing. Some things don't need words first.

When they called her name, she didn't move for a moment. Two years of early mornings and late nights, of drafts and rejections. Then her name, again.

She stood up. She walked to the front. And then, standing at the microphone, she let out a breath she hadn't realised she'd been holding for the entire journey. Just a breath. But it carried everything in it. She let it all out in one long, quiet exhale. Then she began to speak.