Emotions can be beautiful and they can be messy. Experiencing positive and negative emotions is part of being human. Many things we experience can be out of our control causing frustration, anger, sadness and grief, but how we manage our emotions is always in our control, it’s a choice. It’s important to foster emotional wellness. When you push down, hold back, ignore or avoid these challenging emotions, you are suppressing your emotions. Suppressed emotions create a snowball effect in the body, mind and spirit. When one part is out of balance it can impact the other parts. Finding healthy ways to cope is crucial in maintaining your health and wellbeing. Realizing the link between body and mind is helpful with understanding how deeply connected negative emotions and your health really are.
What is the mind-body connection?
In traditional western medicine, the mind and body are typically treated separately, with an emphasis on surgery and pharmaceuticals, treating only the symptoms and not the person as a whole. Thankfully eastern medicine made its way into the western world which promotes a holistic approach to health, integrating the mind, body and spirit. The mind-body connection is the link between your thoughts, emotions, attitudes and behaviors which greatly impact your overall health and wellbeing. A few small examples of the mind-body connection that will probably sound familiar are when you feel anxious, you get a knot in your stomach or when you feel stressed, your shoulders tense up, when you take a nice deep breath, you feel more relaxed. Your mind and body are constantly communicating with each other via biological functioning.
Why do we suppress negative emotions?
Many people haven’t learned how to cope in healthy ways and some emotions can feel too difficult to share or process for a variety of reasons. Challenging emotions such as anger, fear, sadness and shame may seem easier to just ignore. Inevitably, when you don’t express or process your emotions the body ends up doing it for you in the form of depression, anxiety, pain or illness.
Where do suppressed emotions go?
Suppressing your emotions will always result in some type of short term stress response. The concern is when you continuously suppress your emotions or you suppress emotions from a traumatic event in your life. These challenging emotions need to be expressed and processed. When you experience negative emotions and ignore or suppress them, overtime, it can create an imbalance or a block in your energetic and physical body resulting in illness or dis-ease. This unprocessed emotional energy is stored in your organs, muscles and tissues. The body holds these negative emotions, experiences and trauma impacting emotional, mental, physical and spiritual wellbeing.
How do suppressed emotions show up in the mind, body & spirit?
- Mentally. Cycle of negative thought patterns.
- Emotionally. Keeps us stuck, makes us more irritable, creates blocks, anxiety and depression. Essentially it makes it even harder to cope when we don’t tend to our emotions.
- Physically. Chronic Tension, Pain & Illness: Digestion issues, insomnia, high blood pressure, heart disease, cancer.
- Spiritually. Disconnects us from our wholeness.
5 mind-body therapies to release negative emotions
Mind-body therapies can help you shift, uncover and release stored emotions in the body.
- Yoga
- Breathwork
- Mindfulness Meditation
- Bach Flower Therapy
- Transpersonal Energy Healing
Perhaps you’re struggling with an illness and this resonates or you know that you’re someone who has a tendency to suppress your emotions and want to learn how to manage them better so you can have a thriving life.
Even if you’re not comfortable sharing your emotions with another person, just journaling can be extremely helpful in getting the emotions out. I know it can seem scary to release the hurt and pain, but I also know it will help you feel better long term.
I deeply believe in the concept I’m sharing here and it’s the foundation of the work I do with clients. Releasing suppressed emotions can be truly transformative.
