Do emotions scare you?
Don’t stuff down your emotions now.
I know, it’s overwhelming and you feel so many things.
If you care about the health and well-being of your body, don’t stuff it down, don’t bottle it up.
It sticks trauma in our bodies and I don’t have enough time to go into all the reasons that’s an issue.
We don’t need any more of THIS trauma in our bodies. Nope, no more.
Who’s having a chronic pain flare up today? Who is having migraines? Who is having joint pain and arthritis flare ups? Who has a stomach ache? Who is having muscle tension? Whose chronic anything is flaring up right now? Who was having a decent week and now you’re spiraling and it all feels so heavy and you don’t even want to move?
You’re stuffing your emotions into your body because you haven’t been taught how to process them.
It’s not possible to do that over one post. That’s something I have to do individually over sessions. But I do have a redirecting trick if you’re new to emotional processing and don’t know how to begin.
Think of emotions like an endless river. No ending, no beginning. It changes how it looks depending on the landscape, but it’s always the same river. You can have angry torrential rapids and you can have areas where it’s so calm and slow you’d think it was a pond.
I give you this visual because when we talk about emotions, we want to segment them into individual beings almost. They arise like entities, like ghosts that haunt us and grab hold and make us feel bad things and we go into resistance about dealing with them. Then when we talk about redirecting them there’s resistance too, because it sounds like bypassing or a missed opportunity to process it that you’ll never get back.
But the emotions will always be back. The water never stops flowing.
Set the intention that when it comes up and when you’re consciously or subconsciously tempted to stuff it down, there is a percentage you’re willing to sit with and process, and the rest is going to go from your body into a physical object (or multiple objects). Rocks, crystals, or the ground beneath your feet is great. They can hold and transform these energies like pros — because they are.
Ideally, as you go, you increase this percentage. But what is it today? 1%? 20%? 90%? There’s no wrong answer. It just what works for you for today.
This is for all emotions, not just the ones we think we don’t like. You’d be surprised how uncomfortable people are with emotions like happiness, joy, or excitement. Some people freak out even more with those. They all end up in the same place.
If it’s really overwhelming and you’re really triggered or stuck, never mind visualizing anything, get up and shake it out of your body. Literally, just start shaking everything. You can repeatedly tap the chest at the thymus (a few inches down from the space between your collar bones) while you do it for a little extra nervous system regulation if you want to. Then spend a few minutes in easy Goddess pose. That might mean holding for 5 seconds and then going into neutral for 5 seconds repeatedly or sitting backwards in a chair like a dude bro while maintaining that pose.
We’re pretty terrible with emotions as a society, we treat emotions like the enemy who isn’t to be trusted, or the neighborhood pest who won’t go away and leave us alone, and we’re also really abusive to bodies in this society. Not coincidentally at all, emotions are the domain of the body. We just haven’t been taught anything.
You can message me to set up a session if you want something more tailored to you personally. But I think this is a pretty good start for most of you who’re new at emotional regulation and processing.