Have you ever had a massage or done really deep yoga and experienced a release of emotions that made you cry? I have. That’s old unprocessed emotions stored in your body that needs to be released. Especially in western society, we’re taught that it’s better to suppress our emotions than feel them.
I get it. It doesn’t feel good to feel bad. When you’re rejected for something you wanted that pit in your stomach feels overwhelming. When you’ve lost someone, that grief can be all-consuming that you’re scared it will swallow you whole. When you feel sadness for the state of the world, it’s terrifying to go down that path because it feels uncontrollable.
And so we do anything to avoid feeling negative emotions.
When emotions don’t get processed, they stay stuck inside of us and gets stored in our body.
It helps to come back into your body and become aware of the feelings in your body.
Sometimes, we get into the habit of intellectualizing and overthinking things and assuming that we can fix problems with our minds. In the western world, this stems from Descartes’ “I think therefore I am”. This idea actually goes all the back to Plato and who said that we have souls that due to sensuality and ignorance, must be inhabited in material bodies. This idea is also pretty pervasive in some religious traditions that separates the mind from the body. In many eastern traditions, the mind and body are united. Eastern medicine correlates different systems with different pent-up emotions; for example, unresolved anger is associated with liver stagnation.
Only by getting in touch with the energy in our bodies can we release stored emotions and tension. Being willing to feel. be in your body, take up space, and bathe into discomfort - that’s what helps us release and heal.
In his book Waking the Tiger, Dr. Peter Levine talks about how in any threatening situation, the primitive parts of our brains will unconsciously mobilize adrenaline in our nervous system to get us to fight or flight. The body remains in high alert long after the threatening situation has passed. If you look at a rabbit or other animals, they will shake and shake after an encounter with a predator because the body has a natural way of processing and then releasing the emotion and stress.
Many humans stop the process by not allowing ourselves to feel the sensation in our bodies and allowing it to release. We become afraid of the intensity of the feeling so we start to rationalize and get stuck in our heads. I worked recently with a prospective client who experienced intense workplace trauma and has never processed the emotions from that experience. Every time she thinks about job-hunting, it triggers such anxiety and fear in her that she stays frozen and stuck.
The way out is not to get that “perfect” job or circumstance. We can fall into the trap of thinking that when we reach that “ideal” state, then we’ll finally be happy. But chasing that ideal state is just a way to avoid feeling bad and being human. When we try to hustle for our worth by chasing that approval or external validation, it only sets us up for failure. It’s got to come from within.
The way out is to feel and stay with the sensation in our body. There is no way to avoid being human - we are going to be messy and imperfect. The process of feeling and learning to be vulnerable is messy. But healing from a workplace trauma or any challenging experience comes when we’re ready to admit our imperfections without shaming ourselves and feeling what is there, instead of pretending it doesn’t exist. It comes from accepting where we are now, with all our imperfections. The ability to feel and process our emotions will only make us stronger and whole and more at peace.
I get it. It doesn’t feel good to feel bad. When you’re rejected for something you wanted that pit in your stomach feels overwhelming. When you’ve lost someone, that grief can be all-consuming that you’re scared it will swallow you whole. When you feel sadness for the state of the world, it’s terrifying to go down that path because it feels uncontrollable.
And so we do anything to avoid feeling negative emotions.
When emotions don’t get processed, they stay stuck inside of us and gets stored in our body.
It helps to come back into your body and become aware of the feelings in your body.
Sometimes, we get into the habit of intellectualizing and overthinking things and assuming that we can fix problems with our minds. In the western world, this stems from Descartes’ “I think therefore I am”. This idea actually goes all the back to Plato and who said that we have souls that due to sensuality and ignorance, must be inhabited in material bodies. This idea is also pretty pervasive in some religious traditions that separates the mind from the body. In many eastern traditions, the mind and body are united. Eastern medicine correlates different systems with different pent-up emotions; for example, unresolved anger is associated with liver stagnation.
Only by getting in touch with the energy in our bodies can we release stored emotions and tension. Being willing to feel. be in your body, take up space, and bathe into discomfort - that’s what helps us release and heal.
In his book Waking the Tiger, Dr. Peter Levine talks about how in any threatening situation, the primitive parts of our brains will unconsciously mobilize adrenaline in our nervous system to get us to fight or flight. The body remains in high alert long after the threatening situation has passed. If you look at a rabbit or other animals, they will shake and shake after an encounter with a predator because the body has a natural way of processing and then releasing the emotion and stress.
Many humans stop the process by not allowing ourselves to feel the sensation in our bodies and allowing it to release. We become afraid of the intensity of the feeling so we start to rationalize and get stuck in our heads. I worked recently with a prospective client who experienced intense workplace trauma and has never processed the emotions from that experience. Every time she thinks about job-hunting, it triggers such anxiety and fear in her that she stays frozen and stuck.
The way out is not to get that “perfect” job or circumstance. We can fall into the trap of thinking that when we reach that “ideal” state, then we’ll finally be happy. But chasing that ideal state is just a way to avoid feeling bad and being human. When we try to hustle for our worth by chasing that approval or external validation, it only sets us up for failure. It’s got to come from within.
The way out is to feel and stay with the sensation in our body. There is no way to avoid being human - we are going to be messy and imperfect. The process of feeling and learning to be vulnerable is messy. But healing from a workplace trauma or any challenging experience comes when we’re ready to admit our imperfections without shaming ourselves and feeling what is there, instead of pretending it doesn’t exist. It comes from accepting where we are now, with all our imperfections. The ability to feel and process our emotions will only make us stronger and whole and more at peace.
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