When Emotions Become Physical

All the places emotions go

WHEN EMOTIONS BECOME PHYSICAL

All the places emotions go

While we all know that we have an emotional body that has the capacity to feel emotions, many of us are disconnected from actually feeling emotions when they arise. Why is this? There are several reasons. One is that culturally we view emotions as child-like. We believe only children should feel, but that as adults we should be logical, reasonable, objective and have it all together, therefore there is no room inside of us for emotions to be felt. Two, we are afraid to feel some of the things we feel. While we might have certain emotions that we label as “ok” to feel, others are definitely “not ok” to feel. The ones that aren’t ok to feel we avoid, push a way, numb, deny or disassociate from altogether. Three, emotions tend to bring an element of action with them. If we truly feel how we feel then we will either need to accept something that we don’t want to accept, or change something we aren’t ready to change. All of this creates a cultural and personal container of limited emotional access.

Where do emotions go if we don’t feel them?

While some people might think that they just disappear or stop existing, others know that they must go somewhere. Even if we aren’t aware of what we are feeling, meaning we don’t register our emotions when we are having them, doesn’t mean that they don’t still impact us. They do. They just impact us at levels other than our emotional self. What are these other levels? One is our mind. We might feel cloudy, foggy or confused. We may not be able to organize ourselves or our life in a coherent way. We might feel scattered or distracted. When experiencing those things often we won’t make a connection to our emotions, but rather we think something is physically wrong with us. Another level of impact is on our spiritual or soul self. We feel aloof, disconnected from our purpose, or can’t feel our heart or the heart of others. We might make a connection that this has something to do with not being able to feel our emotions, but often we relate it other things like not being “gifted” in some way or having any special skills. Thirdly emotions impact our physical body. The expressions of this are as endless as the lists of diagnoses that we have for sensation and illness patterns in the body. From pain, to musculoskeletal conditions, gut, skin, heart, lung, kidney function, etc. Whatever body part you can find to name can be impacted by unfelt emotions.

I am not saying that everything we experience is because of our incapacity to feel emotions. What I am saying is that unprocessed emotions can manifest themselves as other expressions in our body-life, and often as things we think have nothing to do with our emotions at all. After having worked with 1,000s of people over the past 20 years -ish, what I can say with confidence is that most all expressions in body-mind-soul have an emotional component. This doesn’t mean that other aspects of our being don’t also need to be addressed, but the emotional aspect is the one that people avoid addressing the most.

THE PHYSICAL EXPRESSION

Emotions in the body

You may have heard the expression “you need to feel it to heal it”. Why is this? Remember that healing is wholeness, and when we don’t feel something it is our attempt to keep whatever it is that we aren’t feeling, separate. If we don’t feel it then we don’t have to integrate it, and if we don’t integrate it then we perpetuate fragmentation or the “unhealed state”. Most people are in vicious cycles of not feeling and then wonder why they aren’t healing. Others think they have been feeling too much all along, but haven’t touched the deeper layers that keep them looped.

Just like you can’t force a flower to bloom, you can’t force yourself to heal. All you can do is create the conditions for feeling (and healing) to occur. The more you move towards those conditions that allow for feeling and healing, the more you open into it. It is like diving into the vast unknown of yourself. You don’t know what is there to be felt, but slowly you enter, door by door, until you arrive at the center of yourself. Each door represents something your emotional body has felt, but which perhaps didn’t register to you. As you approach the door you start to feel the charge that is there and as you walk underneath the threshold you feel the intensity of what was once experienced, but left unprocessed. As you feel it, the feeling takes you through the door and out the other side. There are many doors, but each door takes you closer and closer to your true nature.

Why is feeling so important?

It’s because what we don’t feel will express as an undesirable malfunction in some other part of our body or life. Claiming lack of awareness of our emotional body and our emotional states isn’t enough here. We need to advocate for ourselves, our health and our well-being by doing the work of self-inquiry to find out what IS already here waiting to be felt. While most people delay beginning the process of self-discovery until something is “wrong” with their body or mind, you don’t have to wait. You can start the process now simply by asking “what am I feeling today?” Then pause and listen. Acknowledge a few things you feel in that moment. A couple of words is enough. You don’t even have to get it right. You just need to create space for whatever emotions might be there, to be there. You are giving them permission to be there just through acknowledging them. This starts the process of discovering what you are feeling and developing the capacity to meet your emotions.

All of this equals greater health and well-being. Remember having & feeling emotions doesn’t mean that there is something wrong with you or that you are un-evolved, in fact it is the opposite. It is normal to have emotions. It is how we learn, grow and also a means to hearing the higher aspects of ourselves. Emotions provide guidance about what is and isn’t working in our lives. They are a fuel source to make needed changes that are necessary for us to make. Without emotions we feel lost, unclear, unmotivated and like we don’t have enough energy to know what to do or how to change. When we feel our emotions, clarity comes through the other side, but the key here is that we have to feel them.

We can’t just approach the threshold of the door and hover outside of them, which is what most people do. We have to walk into the fire of them, let them wash over us and then come through the other side changed. Once felt we can’t un-feel, which is good, it’s like once healed we can’t un-heal. When we have found our way all the way through one door, then we are finished with that door. There may be other doors that look or feel similar, but they each have their own unique flavors and learnings. What you’ve seen and claimed as whole is integrated. The path is to continue integrating until you’ve arrived at the center of wholeness. This is what it means to be well and to live a life of well-being.

Dr. Amanda Lalita Love

Network Spinal Chiropractor at the Sanctuary for Heart Magic, A Mentor for Heart-Led Healers at Soul Luminaries & the Writer of The Everyday Divine

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