The idea that politicians represent citizens in politics is at the core of representative democracy. But while previous research has focused on how policy positions and descriptive characteristics of politicians and citizens match, little is known about how citizens actually experience representation. We argue that representation experiences can invoke strong emotions that are linked with an individual’s propensity to (dis)engage from/in politics. We draw on thousands of narrated reports from citizens in representative samples fielded in five Western democracies (N = 9,884) to document their representation experiences. Based on extensive emotion and political participation batteries, we examine how different experiences of (mis-)representation evoke patterns of emotions that are associated with changes in individuals' willingness to participate in politics. Moreover, we find that different forms of representation (e.g., substantive, descriptive) elicit different emotions. These findings indicate that representation experiences are inherently emotional and contribute an individual-level explanation for why individuals (dis)engage from/in politics.