What are 3 things most people do wrong when they try to release emotions?
If you have been seeking release from your painful emotions you may have tried these methods and been left feeling more of a failure because you couldn’t make them work. I hope you will draw comfort from learning that it is not you. it is not your fault. Here is why many therapies simply don’t work or why you haven’t been able to heal yet.
1. EXPRESS THEM.
Many therapies focus on crying, talking about your problem or even shouting and screaming. Rather than releasing them this actually reinforces them in your neurology. Every time you think a thought, feel an emotion or recall a memory, the neurons fire in your brain along the same original path. Each time you do this you will actually be strengthening that path, making it easier for that pathway to be fired up next time. This is why small events in the present can trigger past trauma. Expressing emotions does not release them.
2. SUPPRESS THEM.
This is also called denial and we do this in a variety of ways. Most people will simply kid themselves or deny (hence the term) that they have any problems at all. Often emotions are suppressed or anaesthetised out of consciousness with addictions. Smoking, drinking, video games, TV, eating too much or a compulsion to eat a particular thing, even caffeine will anaesthetise your pain.
However, the pain and the problems are still there. The neurons are still firing, but out of your conscious awareness. Before you can release the problem you need to be honest with yourself about how you feel. It is OK to feel bad, and you can’t let go of something until you know you are holding it. How do you know if you have suppressed emotions? Here are some telltale signs:
You overreact to small things
This is known as emotional leakage. The emotions, denied in one area of your life, literally spill out in other areas. So if you are irritable, overly sentimental, get hurt by small things, even road rage, are signs that you could be suppressing emotions in another area.
Feeling tired – it takes energy to carry emotions (that’s why it’s called emotional baggage) and it takes even more energy to suppress them. If you are lacking in energy, need more sleep than most people or just have no get up and go. Many of my past clients were suffering from chronic fatigue or ME, which disappeared once they released their emotions.
You have physical pain with no diagnosable cause.
Back pain, headaches even migraines are an example of this. You have become so used to suppressing your emotions that the spill out as physical pain. Your body is telling you something in the only way it knows how. So pay attention.
Many therapies don’t have an effective technique for bringing emotions to the surface and many therapists are actually afraid of provoking their clients emotions. This is the hardest part of my job as a therapist because I need to activate YOUR pain, which in turn, as an empathy, I feel too. But you cannot release emotions you are not aware of.
3. UNDERSTAND THEM
Do you know someone who knows exactly WHY they have their problems? They know the cause, the events that led to them, how it all happened. They will know and fully understand all the patterns and triggers, and often they will find every opportunity to share them with anyone who seems even remotely interested, they will launch into their “story”. The problem is they still have the problem. Knowing why you have the problem and understanding it is a bit like knowing your car doesn’t work because its fan belt has broken, but not actually replacing the fan belt.
None of the above is good. None works. None will make you feel better in the long term.
The way to release your emotions is to do just that, release them.
Unfortunately we have been conditioned and trained to hold on to our emotions. The media, particularly soap operas and films, have tricked us into believing that once you have a problem you will always have it and the best you can hope for is to get used to the pain.
I would like to share with you that this does NOT have to be the case. You CAN release your pain and trauma so that is simply no longer there. This is a process, a technique, that literally reprograms your neurology so that those emotional pathways don’t run anymore. If you want to release your pain – then why not sign up for Emotional Clearing? Or if you want to make sense of your own pain and become a therapist to enable OTHERS to release their painful emotions then why not take our Esoteric NLP training. The world is crying out for help right now.
Own your own emotions
No one can make you feel anything. Every time you feel anything it is due to your unconscious programming. Bringing them in to consciousness is the first stage of the healing process. To do this, keep a journal of your emotional triggers. Every time you feel a negative emotion write down:
a. What was the emotion?
b. What was the trigger event?
c. What did you say to yourself at the time?
d. What did you think at the time?
e. How did what happened cause you to choose to feel that emotion?
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