We have written a 3 part series on trapped emotions. This is part 2. Trapped emotions are a valuable point of learning for all of us. We trust and hope that you enjoy the share and learn something from your experience with us all.
How we experience trapped emotions:
- Our body generates an emotion or emotional response to the situation we in, based on what has been programmed in our subconscious over the years.
- We feel the emotion, thoughts and any physical sensations that go along with it.
- We experience the emotion fully, choose to let the emotion go and move on from the experience.
If all 3 steps were completed fully, we successfully move on from the emotional experience and shouldn’t cause us any problems in the future. However, if any step was interrupted or not completed the emotional experience is incomplete and emotional energy is likely to become trapped in our body.
Do you ever feel that you are struggling under the weight of something that you can’t quite put your finger on? Perhaps your life is not turning out how you had hoped. Perhaps your attempts to form lasting relationships never seem to work out. You may wish that certain events in your past had never occurred but feel powerless to move beyond them. You may even have an uneasy feeling that your present is being held hostage by your past in some vague and indefinable way.
You’ll be amazed to find out that “emotional baggage” is more literal than you had imagined. Although they are not visible, they are very real and if you listen, become still and quiet you can feel them, hear them and sense them.
You know you have trapped negative emotions when:
- You are overwhelmed by negative emotions of sadness, fear and anger.
- You get irritated or tired around people and need alone time.
- You make wrong assumptions overreact and/or misinterpret information or people’s behaviours.
- You carry everybody’s emotional pain as if it were your own.
- You have physical pain, especially neck, shoulder and back pain.
- You have allergies and food intolerance.
- You experience self-sabotage in your career, relationships, and health.
- You pretend that everything is fine, but inside you feel unhappy or disconnected.
- You feel vulnerable and exposed all the time.
- You are always tired, low in energy or experiencing insomnia.
- You feel frustrated and anxious most of the time.
- You feel like your future is held hostage, struggling or things are weighing you down.
- You deny your emotions even before they can occur (bottling up, keeping it inside, hiding emotions)
- You avoiding challenges, situations and/or your emotions through changing the subject.
Trapped emotions get in our way. They sabotage our efforts to create the life we want and make us miserable along the way. Freeing this emotional energy, stuck in our bodies can shift our lives in a positive way. It’s healing and liberating. And you are worth it!
I grew up in a home where the motto was “Children are to be seen, not heard.” There was little emotional expression allowed, let alone accepted. No one was there to validate or help us process emotions in a healthy way. Anger was met with anger, the fear went unacknowledged, and there was plenty of shame to go around failure.
My parents didn’t model how to deal with difficult emotions, as they struggled with that themselves. When those emotions showed up, I often felt overwhelmed and inadequate, ashamed of my failure to be a good child.
I learned to bury my emotional pain deep inside, feeling invisible, ashamed, angry, alone, and unable to ask for what I needed. Trying to hide the pain, from others and myself. I built walls, put on masks, and soldiered on, for better or worse, as this is what I knew was best or so I thought most of my life.
As a child, I hide from the emotional pain by delving into the world of books, TV, music and academics, as friendship didn’t exist either. As an adult, I realized I was strong enough to face it all. I wasn’t a little child anymore; I didn’t have to hide. Now I have resources available finally face the pain that used to overwhelm most of my life and begin to heal it.
The truth is, we all hide our emotions occasionally or maybe even most of the time. We pretend, avoid, and deny uncomfortable emotions in an effort of self-preservation, as a defence mechanism.
We do this most often with difficult emotions like shame, fear, or anger. When we experience events that emotionally overwhelm us and we’re unable to process what is happening, accept our emotions, and express them through our body and mind, we hide them deep inside us where others can’t see them. And we end up hiding them from ourselves too. Yet, they’re still there.
In order to lead a healthy full life, we need to move through all emotions fluently. Emotions are supposed to be felt, processed by the body, mind, spirit connection, and at some point, our body once processed let go of it. It usually goes very quickly and easily for positive emotions that result in us feeling good.
You’re born for amazing things – don’t let your trapped emotions hold you back!
In order to process emotional distress, we need to move through it, to be able to release it from our body so it doesn’t get stuck there. We, therefore, need to learn to express our emotions in a healthy way, in the body, mind and spirit connection. First, we need to learn to recognize and accept our feelings as they come and go.
Buddhist teachings tell us that human suffering is caused by aversion and resistance to what is happening and acceptance is liberating. So wouldn’t you want to move into acceptance to allow you to release the things that don’t serve your highest good?
Our next blog post on Trapped Emotions will discuss the 3 Steps to Process Trapped Emotions.