The phrase "emotionally restrained" is correct and usable in written English.
This phrase is usually used in a negative context to describe someone who has difficulty expressing their emotions. For example, you could say "He was always emotionally restrained, so we had difficulty getting him to open up".
And yet under Steve's persistent prodding the emotionally restrained Larry admits he's found himself dreaming of his last encounter with Dane.
It is about two elderly unmarried sisters whose lives together seem to have been entirely uncomplicated - domestically tranquil and emotionally restrained.
The movie offers a gently satirical portrait of a particular English upper-middle-class sensibility: liberal, but sometimes effortfully so; emotionally restrained, but not lacking in feeling, for all that restraint.
She's in everybody's face, but her rage, no matter how familiar from her other movies, comes as a relief: Hank has to stifle himself in order to keep going, and we can't possibly be as emotionally restrained as he is.
These two temperament profiles are moderately stable from the second to the eighth year; studies reveal that about one-half of those children classed as inhibited at age two are still shy, introverted, and emotionally restrained at age eight, while about three-quarters of those children classed as uninhibited have remained outgoing, sociable, and emotionally spontaneous.
What sets her apart, however, is her gift for weaving elements of mysticism and sensuality into that essentially intellectual quest, in a manner that has been more expressively refined and emotionally restrained than that of Messiaen, a composer who nonetheless deeply influenced her.
She's eminently deserving of recognition for her restrained, emotionally complex portrayal of an English professor slipping into early-onset Alzheimer's, but she'd be the frontrunner even if she wasn't.
The result is one of Rohmer's most formally restrained and emotionally unhinged films.
But instead of confecting an ideological soap opera or a feel-good do-gooder melodrama, Mr. Tavernier has pulled off an emotionally rich and remarkably restrained piece of storytelling.
The virile man wasn't just sexually "assertive," "powerfully built," and "procreative," but also intellectually and emotionally "levelheaded, vigorous yet deliberate, courageous yet restrained": The virile is not simply what is manly; it is more: an ideal of power and virtue, self-assurance and maturity, certitude and domination.... courage and "greatness" accompanied by strength and vigor.
Jennifer Morrison and Ginnifer Goodwin played those emotional beats beautifully -- it was understated and restrained, which only made it more emotionally resonant.
