We have written a 3 part series on trapped emotions as it’s such a valuable point of learning for us all. I trust and hope that you enjoy the share and learn something from your experience with us on it.
What is trapped emotions, how do we identify and heal them?
As I sit here thinking where or how to start writing on this rather deep topic, I feel quite emotional. I realise the heavy impact trapped emotions have had on my own life thus far and at the same time, I am quite relieved that I’ve been able to identify the parts of me that have been hiding trapped and unbeknown to me. Now that I am on my spiritual journey – as we all are – I am able to allow myself to sit with these emotions and to explore my true feelings about aspects of myself. It is indeed a blessing to be able to get real with one’s self – exploring one’s feelings with kindness, love and understanding – unrestricted, gently but powerfully holding space for oneself to navigate the sea of emotions stored deep within.
We all have a journey, a journey in which we experience life, we learn and heal through it, as we learn and accept things as it is. When I decided to take charge of my own healing, I had no idea where to start. The message came to me one evening as I sat enjoying a quiet cup of tea – looking through my balcony sliding door at the world outside that I would not find the answers out there, but that I hold the answer to all my questions in life – the answer to releasing what was holding me back – my trapped emotions – was me and that in order to find the pain, hurt, guilt and suffering I would need to become still in order to listen to the story my inner being wanted to tell me.
It is then that I started scheduling myself ‘me time’ in my calendar. That me-time became my quiet time – a time that I could just be still and listen. I was humbled by the fact that my soul was ready to talk to me… ready to share with me… and that I, this human being – living a spiritual life, was evolved enough to know when I was being called to honour my higher self. So I obeyed the call for truth and carved out time for myself each day to sit quietly – listening. It is during this time that I became more and more aware of the physical discomforts in my body. I then started to wonder what my soul was trying to tell me – did I need to go for a full medical? Was there something wrong? Before I could clarify my thoughts into worry – I heard a strong and loud voice say, “No, go deeper!?” It’s during this time that I became more and more aware of physical discomforts in my body. I then started wondering, is my soul trying to tell me there is something wrong, that I need to have things checked out? Before I could even finish this thought I heard a strong and loud “No, go deeper!”
Go deeper? What did that mean? How deep is deeper? It was then, that I was gently guided to walk towards these uncomfortable questions – instead of running away again. So – I did – I allowed myself to be deeply immersed in this inward journey of my feelings, my thoughts and my dark places. It was during one of these inward journies that I discovered my old friends – fear, anger, insecurity, failure, shame, frustration, confusion and low self-esteem to mention a few. The song – Hello darkness my old friend – comes to mind, because these feelings met me like a jealous long lost lover – needily clinging to my heart. Every discomfort in my body had its own set of emotions – each with their own story to tell from my childhood till now – I was surprised about their impact on my life the power I had given them.
As my journey into the unknown emotional wasteland of my inner self, I learned to sense into my body and its discomfort and little by little I grew stronger and more available to work through the anxiety of reconnecting with powerful and painful old stuck emotions. I soon realized that the only way to work with the pain and hurt caused to my younger self was with the love and understanding of a mother. I also realized that I was learning about myself and that I needed to be kind to myself – letting go what I couldn’t control and loving myself into releasing what I could. It was vital that I gave myself all the love, kindness and understanding that I could offer up at this time of introspection as I realised that it takes immense hard work and bravery to go where there’s pain, suffering, bad habits and patterning. I got to the point where I simply had to give my self permission to allow and accept all the emotions that were playing through my body – I had to feel and understand the anger, shame, fear, insecurity and so much more in order for them to be released finally.
You need to understand – that while I was going through all this – I didn’t have the benefit of the understanding that I was releasing trapped emotions and that this process of releasing was all part of the experience – I just knew I was in a lot of pain and needed to shed whatever was making me feel this way. It is only through the process of researching my symptoms and my emotional state of being that I realised that had been working through all my trapped emotions from my childhood. Emotions I didn’t initially even know I had and didn’t know how to deal with. Big boys don’t cry remember – or so were told growing up. Talk about pattering and programming! Wow – I had it bad.
It’s important to realise that we are all emotional beings – even those who say they aren’t – are – they just haven’t gotten in touch with their emotional side. Emotions are a normal part of our everyday life and we should be free to express these emotions freely – except we aren’t. Except we aren’t. Somewhere along the way, many of us learned that it’s not safe to express our feelings and so we learnt to repress our emotions – especially those deemed ‘negative’ in order to fit in, earn love, and be accepted.
Emotions are expressed differently given any situation we may find ourselves in. Challenging times may call for a different set of emotions to peaceful times for example. This is because we interpret and see the world through our emotions, which have been programmed over time as our subconscious mind records and stores all that happens to us, even though we can’t remember it most of the time. Through this library of experiences, we create belief systems and our subconscious mind uses this to respond and/or act in a specific way when facing challenging times.
As we live through the days and years of our life we are continually experiencing all sorts of emotions. Life can be difficult and emotions can sometimes feel overwhelming. All of us experience negative emotional extremes at times. Most of us would rather forget some of these challenges, traumas, experiences, but unfortunately, the influence of these events can stay with us in the form of trapped emotions.
Sometimes, for reasons that we do not yet understand, emotions do not process completely. In these cases, instead of simply experiencing the emotion and then moving on, the energy of the emotion somehow becomes “trapped” within our physical body.
So instead of moving beyond your angry moment, or a temporary bout with grief or depression, this negative emotional energy can remain within your body, potentially causing significant physical and emotional stress.
Our next blog post on Trapped Emotions will discuss how we experience emotions and how you know you have trapped emotions to deal with.