Then I thought, those little lines that bunch together every time I squint, maybe I could get rid of them too? "Oh yes", said the lovely doctor whose whole face did not move at all, "that's easy and requires very little, and the results are always excellent". Of course that's all that was needed to convince me.
After the treatment, I started noticing that those little lines at the inside corner of my eyes had indeed disappeared; but instead, little lines at the outside of my eyes had appeared! Basically, my eyes still wanted to squint, and they just found other - non-immobilised - muscles to do it, leaving me with wrinkles elsewhere.
Repression or denial of emotions works exactly the same way. You can make them go away for a short time. You can chase/drink/fuck/gamble away those messy feelings or memories.
But before you know it, they pop up elsewhere; they may have changed shape - from fear to anxiety to panic - or changed their expression. But in the same way as putting a blanket over a sleeping dog does not make the dog disappear, repressing or denying your feelings won't make their cause disappear.
Sometimes you have to accept that there is a mess, be it emotional or facial, and use the awareness to gently introduce change. In my Botox case, the change will be to aim for graceful ageing rather than fake youth.
What are you trying so hard to hide that it has no choice than to pop up elsewhere?
What if you took it out, and looked at it just for a brief moment?
Maybe you'll find out that whatever you are repressing is actually less scary in the daylight of your awareness than in the darkness of your subconscious...
If you liked this article, you may also like this one on why we need to feel our emotions, even or especially the "negative" ones.