Habits formed based on emotional expressions lead to the mechanization of emotional activity, significantly weakening both emotional liveliness and creative potential.

Emotional Habits and the Binding of Creative Energy

Habits formed based on emotional expressions lead to the mechanization of emotional activity, significantly weakening both emotional liveliness and creative potential. When a habit becomes established as an automated, routine way of expressing feelings, a person’s conscious involvement in these movements noticeably decreases. As a result, the energy that might have been directed toward creative self-expression becomes “bound,” and the feelings themselves “fade,” losing their richness and the capacity to transform into an original creative idea.

As noted in one of the cited materials:
"The development of habits from expressive movements (i.e., those connected with emotional regulation) has the most negative and pernicious influence on emotional life—a claim that cannot be made about habits formed from volitional activity.

What explains this difference in the influence of habits?

It is that the emergence of a habit weakens and pushes aside the participation of consciousness in the movement—thereby creating mechanization and automation of activity." (source: link txt, page: 2048–2049)

Continuing this thought, another excerpt emphasizes that emotional habits lead to the fading of the very feeling and a loss of its creative force:
"But besides the very valuable influence of habits on mental development, they can also have a negative effect. I am not only referring to bad 'volitional' habits, but especially to 'emotional' habits, the habitual emotional 'attitudes.' In this case, the feeling itself fades, becoming mentally powerless—as if it loses its color, is weathered away, and loses its creative strength." (source: link txt, page: 2049–2051)

This becomes particularly evident in a child's development. When a child accumulates emotional habits, the mechanization of expressive movements occurs, and consequently, the source of creative energy is diminished:
"And a child, as it accumulates 'emotional' habits—even though this process in a child, fortunately, is very complex and drawn out—loses its creative power: the forms of expressive movements become mechanized, and due to the formation of habits the source of creative strength is obscured and even exhausted—transforming the child from a lively, active, and gifted individual into someone passive, incapable, and apathetic." (source: link txt, page: 2204–2205)

Thus, habits based on emotional expression negatively impact emotional vitality and creative potential precisely because they reduce emotional activity to repetitive, predetermined patterns, effectively "binding" mental energy and hindering free and original creative self-expression.

Supporting citation(s):
"The development of habits from expressive movements (i.e., those connected with emotional regulation) has the most negative and pernicious influence on emotional life—a claim that cannot be made about habits formed from volitional activity.

What explains this difference in the influence of habits?

It is that the emergence of a habit weakens and pushes aside the participation of consciousness in the movement—thereby creating mechanization and automation of activity." (source: link txt, page: 2048–2049)

"But besides the very valuable influence of habits on mental development, they can also have a negative effect. I am not only referring to bad 'volitional' habits, but especially to 'emotional' habits, the habitual emotional 'attitudes.' In this case, the feeling itself fades, becoming mentally powerless—as if it loses its color, is weathered away, and loses its creative strength." (source: link txt, page: 2049–2051)

"And a child, as it accumulates 'emotional' habits—even though this process in a child, fortunately, is very complex and drawn out—loses its creative power: the forms of expressive movements become mechanized, and due to the formation of habits the source of creative strength is obscured and even exhausted—transforming the child from a lively, active, and gifted individual into someone passive, incapable, and apathetic." (source: link txt, page: 2204–2205)