If you aren’t feeling (or running from) hard emotions right now, you might be living under a rock.
For real. This shit is hard. So overwhelming. So heart-wrenching. So ______________ (insert your adjective(s) here).
If you have been a listener or subscriber for a while, you know that my childhood hero growing up was Spock from the original Star Trek series. I was taught that emotions were weak (at best) and dangerous (at worst) because people who could see how you felt would take advantage of you.
I became an expert at compartmentalization and dissociation. I became so hard to read, and so adept at using my mind to navigate the world that I looked as if I was impenetrable.
But then I learned that the trade-off I had made to retain some perception of control over my otherwise chaotic life meant that I was emotionally flatlined. Sure, I didn’t feel pain, but I didn’t feel joy either.
You see, Brene Brown says that we cannot selectively numb emotions. In fact, when we numb the painful emotions, we also numb the positive ones.
And then, after a lifetime of unprocessed emotions made me toxically and almost fatally ill, I learned that emotions are energy moving through our bodies. And if we thwart or stuff those emotions–if we do not give our body the support it needs to process and discharge that energy–they get stuck. And that stuck energy can have a devastating impact, not just on bodies and minds, but on others as things come out sideways; desperate for an exit point..
This damage is in addition to the havoc wrought by the addictive coping skills so many of us use to avoid feeling emotions we don’t know what to do with: shopping, gambling, alcohol, drugs, overexercising and workaholism just to name a few.
Episode 25 of the podcast walks you through 4 steps to validating (and releasing) your emotions.
But what if you have spent so long shutting down your emotions that you don’t even know what you feel? Ah, my friend. I have been there. Sometimes I still am.
Here’s the thing. Many of us have been taught to ignore, stuff, deny or to try to control our emotions. “Suck it up.” “Real men don’t cry.” And “you shouldn’t feel _,” are all part of the cultural vernacular and expectation; particularly, I think, for Gex X and older.
Here are four practices that can help you begin to identify and release stuck emotional energy in your body.
- Use an emotions list as a prompt. Because of our conditioning, many of us don’t have words around our feelings. We just haven’t practiced a whole lot. Having a list to refer to may be a helpful prompt. If you search the term “emotions list” on the internet, you will find a plethora of options to choose from. If you don’t have the time, energy or inclination to search the internet, here is a resource published by Harvard Business Review.
- Identify sensations in your body. Some of us have been disconnected from our emotional experience long enough that even a prompts list won’t resonate. If this is you, start with identifying sensations in your body.
Are your hands tingling? Does your chest feel heavy? Do you have a stomach ache or a headache? All of those physical sensations can actually be indicators of emotional energy. Those physical sensations could also be indicators of other
medical conditions so please consult with a doctor as well.
Noticing the physical sensations in my body was one of my very first steps on the path to reconnecting with my emotional experience. If words just don’t resonate, start with sensations. - Emotion Code. Here is the part where I admit that, the older I get, and the further along my healing journey I progress, the further I travel into “woo” territory. This includes exploring healing techniques that I cannot “see” but that I have still found to be effective for me.
The Emotion Code is an emotional release technique that asks the body if there are stuck emotions that can be released from the body at that time. If you want to understand more about the concept and the science behind it, you can check out The Emotion Code book by Dr. Bradley Nelson.
For the last two years, I have been supported by a dear friend who knows how to use the Emotion Code and I have found this work to be incredibly helpful and supportive for me and for my children. What blows my mind every time is that when a stuck emotion is identified, I am almost always able to be present to that feeling in
my body that I was completely unaware of just a moment before. You can find Emotion Code practitioners by following this link - EFT Tapping. EFT tapping is a technique that I was first exposed to a few decades ago, and then again in therapy within the last 10 years. Only recently has it been a technique that I use somewhat regularly. I’ll admit that I used to feel pretty silly doing it, but I am getting more acclimated. The Tapping Solution is an app that walks you step by step through the process of tapping (which is super helpful if you are new). There is also a book by the same name written by the developer of the app.
Do you know something else I have learned that is such a relief to me personally and may be a relief to you too? Often, we don’t even have to know “why” we feel a certain way in order to clear the emotional energy that is still lodged in our cells.
The truth is that some of our emotional memories may not be available to our brain(s) for whatever reason. But that doesn’t mean that we cannot move that energy out of our bodies.
And one of the other things that can keep us stuck in an emotional pattern is when we create a story around (and then often obsess) about the why behind the emotion; instead of just letting ourselves feel it and release it.
Simply identifying what we are feeling and then working through the steps I cover in Episode 25 of the podcast can be enough! Doing this work in the presence of an empathetic witness and/or a therapist can also be incredibly powerful. And if you are working with an Emotion Code practitioner, there is a simple practice embedded in the process that is designed to help clear that stuck emotional energy.
If you are feeling emotionally flatlined, overwhelmed, are experiencing physical symptoms that seemingly cannot be explained, or just want to make sure you maintain emotional health and resilience, I encourage you to try out these practices and see which ones are most supportive and helpful for you.
Be Well,
Booth
p.s. Emotional processing is so important to the management of stress and prevention of burnout that there is a Bonus Module in the 6 Steps to Stress Recovery and Burnout Prevention dedicated to this practice.