Symbosity

Category: Emotional Healing

Discover why these painful emotions are hanging around, and what you can do to heal their root cause.

  • The Best Coping Strategies To Restore Emotional Equanimity

    The Best Coping Strategies To Restore Emotional Equanimity

    What do you do in those moments when you feel like your life is caving in? Your mind is on overdrive, you’re trapped in an unsustainable state of emotional turmoil.

    When you’re in the midst of a distressing situation, simply stepping back and composing yourself is not an easy task. That’s why it’s important to learn some coping skills to help you restore equanimity when you’re feeling overwhelmed.

    Coping skills refers to your ability to manage and mitigate situations that cause you distress. People who are good at coping tend to keep a level head in difficult situations, while people who haven’t honed this skill tend to panic.

    Whatever is happening in your life, you know what something needs to change. So let’s look at some things you can do to cope with your situation, regardless of what you’re going through.

    Identifying coping strategies

    Man in a panic as his trauma comes to awareness

    Depending on what you’re going through, you might have a whole lot of pressure on you, and it’s also possible that you’re just not as skilled at handling the pressures that you do have.

    If you’re going through something quite extreme in your life that has shaken everything up: Such as losing someone close to you or going through a divorce, feeling overwhelmed by it all is a pretty natural part of the adjustment period. By sitting with the pain and healing the wound that’s causing the distress, that’s when you’ll feel much better.

    On the other hand, if you’re not necessarily presented with any outstanding circumstances, but you find that you’re not coping with daily life, then it comes down to how you manage your emotions, and the stressors of everyday life.

    If it’s the latter, I find that the inability to cope usually comes down to two core ingredients.

    1. You are not adapting to new situations in your life
    2. You’re trying to control the situation

    The inability to adapt can put a lot of pressure on you. You remain fixed on the past instead of being completely present with the situation at hand. If you find that you struggle to adapt to changes in your life, read the article below:

    The need for control can also create a lot of pressure. When you’re trying to control a situation that is out of your control, needless to say, you’re setting yourself up for a bad time. So instead, let go of control. Learn how to do that below:

    Signs that you’re feeling overwhelmed

    Overwhelm is really just stress levels getting out of control. It tends to happen when you have too much on your plate, and you can’t manage everything that’s happening in your life.

    Depending on what you’re experiencing and what the source of distress is, it’s important to have some flexibility in your coping mechanisms, as every situation is unique. Different courses of action will be more effective for different issues that you’re facing.

    Here are some common signs that you’re feeling overwhelmed:

    • You have difficulty managing your thoughts
    • You find it hard to concentrate
    • You feel flustered, or as if you aren’t functioning optimally
    • You feel irritable or on edge
    • You’re constantly on high alter
    • You may experience insomnia, or struggle to relax
    • There is a build-up of tension in your body
    • Your emotional state is unstable
    • You are having panic attacks or meltdowns
    • You’re overreactive or easily triggered

    Identifying what you need to coping with

    There are different ways to cope with different problems.

    The cause of your distress is one of two options, which determines what coping skills you should employ. These are:

    1. Problem-based coping
    2. Emotion-based coping

    Problem based coping

    Problem-based coping is when there’s a clear cause of your distress, and there’s an outstanding issue that needs to be dealt with. This is an issue in your life such as going through a transition, losing a job, or experiencing conflict with family.

    If your distress is problem-based, it will usually be fixed by solving the problem causing the stress. Therefore, you should take a proactive stance on the issue, and focus on problem-solving.

    Emotion based coping

    Emotion-based coping is when there is no clear cause to your distress, or there is no outstanding issue in your life. This is when you’re experiencing distress related to your past, and is usually the result of trauma or a wound that needs to be healed.

    If your distress is emotion-based, you need to heal the root cause. Therefore, it’s important to do the inner work, sit with the feelings, and heal rather than try to fix the problem.

    Ineffective coping mechanisms

    Heal from domestic abuse

    When you’re feeling overwhelmed, your first instinct might be to indulge.

    After all, you want the relief, so you tend to engage in activities that give you a dopamine boost. Even though getting those dopamine boosts here and there is okay to get you through, you don’t want to become reliant on them.

    The reason why you don’t want to become reliant on compulsive activities is because they’re an act of escapism.

    When you’re feeling overwhelmed, you need to engage in activities that help you regulate your emotional state and get to the roots of your emotional pain. Avoiding what you’re feeling is not resolving anything.

    You should be using these painful feelings as a trampoline for personal growth, and personal growth should be your avenue to manage and heal the underlying reasons why you’re feeling this way.

    If you’re simply escaping the feelings by distracting yourself, not only are you just covering up the pain, but you’re making the situation worse.

    ❌ Drown out your sorrows

    The last thing you want to do is cope by using alcohol, marijuana, or drugs (including pharmaceuticals). Taking something to relieve you might seem like the easy option as it temporarily makes you feel like you’re winning, but it’s a slippery slope.

    Taking something to deal with your problems obviously isn’t a good way to cope as they’re just a Band-Aid fix.

    • If your issue is problem-based, then taking something is just going to make you unproductive and avoid the issue.
    • If your issue is emotion-based, you’re just temporarily covering up the deeper wounds which won’t actually heal the root cause.

    My rule of thumb: Only take alcohol or drugs to celebrate, never to cope. Psychedelics are a different story, but that’s a whole other discussion for another time.

    ❌ Binge TV and video games

    Excessively watching movies or playing video games is just going to degrade your mental state. To cope with distressful situations, you need to be present with them. You need to feel the emotions and learn from them. If you’re distracting yourself by watching something, you’re just avoiding doing the inner work that is required.

    Because you’re avoiding the inner work, you’re not actually healing the root cause or doing anything to solve the problem. Likewise, you’re not going to learn from it or grow as a person.

    That’s why you should focus on being mindful during difficult times in your life, because not only will that lead to a resolution, but you’ll grow a lot through it.

    ❌ Fill your stomach

    Food is often a go-to when you’re feeling overwhelmed. Even if you have no appetite, you may find yourself eating and consuming because it’s a way to occupy yourself from the issue.

    Eating also gives you a dopamine boost which you might desperately want when you’re feeling distressed, but it’s just a cover. As soon as you finish eating, you’re going to want to consume something else, and it’s usually an unconscious process.

    Therefore, refrain from excessive eating or consuming, and try to keep your diet healthy. The temporary relief of eating junk is not worth perpetuating the distress. You want to be present with your feelings, not eat them away.

    ❌ Ruminate

    Avoid constantly playing it over in your head, or jumping to the worst-case scenario. It’s easy to get caught in needless loops when you’re drumming up the issue to be worse than it is, but not really feeling into it either or accepting the situation.

    For example, repeatedly saying ‘I’m going to fail, I’m going to fail” isn’t going to help you regain emotional equanimity. You’re just going to exacerbate the issue and torment yourself. Because you’re so focused on failing, you’re going to make failure an increasingly viable option.

    So get a grip and be productive. It’s not the time to beat yourself with a stick.

    Practical ways of coping

    Person meditating in nature

    Learning how to cope with an overwhelming situation in a healthy way allows you to manage your emotions and restore emotional equanimity.

    It’s always best to ground yourself and bring yourself back to reality, then deal with the situation at hand that is causing you distress. While you’re in a panicked, anxious state, it’s going to be counterproductive to get anywhere, and this can create a vicious cycle.

    Here are some of my best practices to cope with difficult situations, and restore emotional equanimity.

    ✅ Find a flow with your breath

    When you feel overwhelmed you go into overdrive. Your mind starts racing, which makes you feel like you need to do something. But doing something right here right now might not be a productive approach. You first need to regulate yourself, and your breath is the best avenue to do this.

    Focus on your breathing and spend at least 5 minutes solely concentrating on your breath until you find a flow with it.

    If your mind is racing, just keep bringing it back to your breathing until it starts to stabilize. Here’s what you should do:

    • Slow down your breathing
    • Take deep inhales, hold, and extended exhales
    • Breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth
    • Visualize white energy coming in, and dark anxious energy leaving
    • Continue this process until you calm down and find a natural flow with your breathing

    ✅ Put your body in motion

    Those feelings of being overwhelmed are very active energies that you want to release from your body. As tension starts to build up in your body, you need to let it go, otherwise, you’re going to become an unstable nuclear reactor.

    Motion is the best way to do this. You can shake it out, stretch, and move around until you get most of the tension out of your body and feel calmer.

    Here are some things you can do when you feel this angst and restlessness building up.

    • Shake out your arms and legs
    • Stretch your body
    • Shake your tongue, move your mouth and make sounds
    • Jump up and down
    • Breath heavily with long out exhales through the mouth
    • Do yoga or some sort of physical activity

    ✅ Resolve what’s in your control

    If you’ve done the above two exercises, you should be feeling a little calmer. Now you can start doing the productive stuff.

    Start by putting what you can control regarding the situation and what you can’t control into different baskets. If it helps, draw a T and write them down. This is a necessary step to gain more clarity on what you can do, and what you need to accept.

    Now that you’ve broken down what you have control over and what you don’t have control over, the aim is to accept what you can’t control, and act on what you can control.

    ✅ Accept the worst case scenario

    A big part of the distress comes from trying to avoid an undesirable situation or consequence. So we put all of our energy into preventing ourselves from thinking about it, but this can cause more stress in itself.

    A tactic to cope with stress that has served me well is to do the following:

    1. Think about the worst-case scenario, and allow your mind to wander
    2. Visualize the worst-case outcome as if it is inevitable
    3. Sit with the emotions and feelings that come up. Process them
    4. Once you really feel those emotions, they will start to fade as you reach a point of acceptance
    5. Put it into perspective and realize that your situation isn’t the end of the world

    The worst-case scenario is probably not very likely to happen at all, but it could have some pretty big consequences in your life. Whether it’s losing someone close to you, ruining your career, or going to prison, if you actually feel into this mental scenario like it has happened, it’s going to really hurt.

    But then as you start to feel acceptance, that sting will go away.

    Afterwards, you might feel much better about the situation at hand, because in comparison, it really doesn’t seem that bad now.

    By picturing things going wrong and where that potentially leads, you might realize that you’ll get through it. You take the pressure off yourself by coming to terms with what could (but probably won’t) happen.

    ✅ Follow it back

    Follow the string of pain back to the root cause. If there’s something I’ve learned throughout my life, it’s that there is always another layer. Whatever you’re feeling is probably not the bottom of the pit.

    When you think of a reason why you’re worried, ask yourself why that matters, and go deeper into it.

    Let’s look at an example:

    • I feel extremely stressed because if feel so ill-prepared for this test I need to complete
    • If I fail the test I might lose my job
    • If I lose my job, I’m going to go through hardships and feel ashamed
    • I’ve always felt insufficient, and failing will bring up the image I have been trying to get away from

    If you’re feeling overwhelmed, don’t just aim to cope with the situation, dig into it to find out why you’re feeling this way, and how you can take steps to heal it. Usually, there’s a deeper reason why you feel so distressed, so try to find out what it is.

    ✅ Pray

    You might not be religious, or have any spiritual beliefs at all. Honestly, it doesn’t matter. Praying is actually such a powerful tool when you’re feeling overwhelmed or distressed, and you’re not sure what to do.

    Maybe you won’t hear a voice talking back to you (actually, I’m almost certain you won’t), but the act of praying releases energy. In a way, you’re handing over your burden to a higher power, which allows you to release it, at least somewhat.

    Prayer really takes the pressure off your shoulders, and you might get moments of clarity and insight while you’re doing it too. So if you’re ever in a tough position, pray to a higher power, and feel how freeing it really is.

    ✅ Have a conversation with yourself

    When I’m in a difficult situation, I find that it really helps to have a conversation… with myself.

    As if I was talking with a therapist or someone I trust, I open up to myself and rant. What’s more important is that I actually listen to myself, and respond… like verbally respond to myself.

    So talking to myself starts to take a two-way conversation. One side is the afraid, overwhelmed child who doesn’t know what to do, and then I respond to that side from a more mature, authoritative position. A conversation with myself might go something like this:

    • I have no idea what to do! I feel abandoned, nobody understands, I feel alone. I just can’t believe this keeps happening, why does nobody help!?
    • It’s okay, it’s okay. You have been in this situation many times before, you know how it’s going to play out
    • No, I don’t! This time it’s different. I don’t know if I will get through this, why is it always me!?
    • It’s you because you can handle it. It’s happening for a reason, and you’re going to grow as a person through this, you just need to trust the process. You are cared for, you are guided. We’re going to get through this together, just take one step at a time, and let’s get the ball rolling. What can you do right now?
    • I guess I could stop pacing around for a moment and calm myself down. It’s not that urgent.

    Naturally, one of the sides talking starts to reassure the other side. It comes out naturally in response to my rant and expressing myself. This is actually a really powerful coping mechanism, because as my higher self kicks into action, I feel very reassured, even though it’s from myself.

    ✅ Do the healing

    Now that you’ve identified what’s really going on, you need to take steps to heal those wounds and actually resolve these underlying causes. Healing requires you to sit with your feelings and be completely present with them. This is why it’s so important to be mindful, and allow yourself to experience whatever you’re experiencing.

    By doing this, you’re going to evolve as a person and be able to better handle these sorts of situations when they arise again. So if your situation is emotion based, do the work to heal the wound that is causing this pain.

    ✅ Take care of yourself

    When stress levels rise and you’re struggling to cope, self-care really tends to go out the window. And because you’re not looking after yourself, you tend to feel worse.

    Therefore, make sure you’re looking after your body and mind. Take some extra time to care for yourself, and see how this translates into your situation.

    Here are some things you should look out for:

    • How is your diet? Are you eating well, or has it gone out the window?
    • Are you biting your nails, pulling your hair, or partaking in some sort of self-destructive behavior?
    • Are you exercising and getting enough sun?
    • How is your hygiene? Are you still doing regular hygiene practices such as showering and brushing your teeth?
    • Are you allowing yourself space to rest and recharge?

    ✅ Get out in nature, often

    Regularly getting out in nature has been a game-changer for my mental health during difficult times in my life. There’s something special about being out in nature. Nature has a very grounding effect to it which melts the stress right off from your shoulders.

    A walk in the park is better than nothing, but I suggest getting out in a reserve, or the wilderness if you can. If it’s within your means, go somewhere where there’s no urban development and not too many people.

    Just be in the elements for a while, and you’ll feel the tangible effects of it.

    Go for a nice long walk in nature without listening to music or playing on your phone. You might not notice it immediately, but after returning home you will feel much fresher, like your cup is full again.

    I suggest you make a habit of getting out in nature at least a couple of times a week. Do it daily if you can and report the difference after a week or two.

  • Here’s How I Learned To Manage Panic Attacks

    Here’s How I Learned To Manage Panic Attacks

    When you are emotionally in a bad place, people tend to tell you ‘Everything’s going to be okay’. Mental health is often disregarded because most people don’t understand what it’s like to suffer at the hands of this demon.

    People with panic disorders are not crazy, and these matters should be considered seriously. In this article, I will tell you about my own experiences with panic attacks, and how I learned to deal with them. 

    How I developed a panic attack disorder

    Man in a state of panic

    My anxiety attacks began with issues that were out of my control. As I’m writing this, next to me is my passport with an expired visa. My visa expired months ago, meaning I have been living illegally in Vietnam.

    I’m stuck.

    Two repatriation flights have been canceled, and I still have no way of returning to my home country due to the ever-evolving situation of the pandemic. So I’m waiting indefinitely to hear back from my embassy, hoping for some good news.

    In December 2021, I quit my job in Hanoi and moved to the coast with my partner. We both had our business visas extended through an agent in February since we didn’t have sponsors, and quickly plugged into work again.

    This is a fairly normal situation here in Vietnam. Over fifty percent of the expats have business visas, and we never had problems until recently. The rules changed without warning, and now many people are caught in a difficult situation, without any way of leaving the country, and no way to stay in the country.

    One day, my partner and I were waiting for our bus back home, and the driver refused to let us on without giving us a reason why. By that time, I already felt that something strange was going on.

    A few hours later, I got a message telling me that classes would be suspended until further notice due to another spike in cases. As an English teacher, everything was put on ice.

    The next day, we were able to catch a bus back home. Stores were closed, the beach was closed, and the streets were empty.

    This continued for days, and I started feeling sad. This uncomfortable situation was exacerbated by my salary being suspended due to the pandemic, including the previous month I had worked. I started to worry as I was running out of money, and my salary for the month never arrived.

    I managed to stay calm until I heard back from my legal agent regarding my visa. He told me that the immigration stopped issuing visas to foreigners, but didn’t give an explanation why.

    Never in my life, had I thought I’d be an illegal alien. I imagined myself being deported, being interrogated by police officers, being put in a cell for violating the law. This is when the panic attacks began.

    What happens to your body during a panic attack?

    It's okay to fail

    Panic attacks happen without warning. They feel like concentrated fear is being injected directly into the brain. It’s the tricks of the mind that can jumpstart someone’s body.

    One minute I’m happy singing and dancing to my favorite tunes, the next thing I know, my heart is pounding like a drum, and my mind races.

    During one instance I had a dry mouth due to a breathing exercise I was doing. I panicked because my mind was telling me that having a dry mouth would kill me. It’s irrational, I know, but the mind doesn’t discern.

    There is usually a consistent sequence of events during a panic attack:

    What happens as a panic attack is beginning?

    As a panic attack begins, the first symptoms I experience consist of a tingling sensation tingles running from my toes to my scalp. This sensation is accompanied by hot flashes. Simultaneously, the activity of my stomach halts, causing discomfort. As panic attacks set in, I often feel nautious.

    What happens during a panic attack?

    During a panic attack, my heart rate increases, sending more blood to my body causing my muscles to go stiff. I imagine that is what the initial stages of a stroke may feel like. During this sensation, my mind begins to race, and the incessant thinking gets out of control.

    Thoughts and feelings become overwhelming. My vision tends to lose focus and blur, giving objects the appearance of moving. At this point, I feel like I might faint. My panic attacks are generally quick, lasting for 3-5 minutes on average.

    What happens after a panic attack?

    After a panic attack, my body is exhausted. My muscles ache, especially in my back, shoulders, and neck. I usually feel mildly dizzy, and my vision remains blurry for about ten to fifteen minutes. The aftermath lasts longer than the panic attack, so I always take it real easy following a panic attack.

    How to manage a panic attack

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    Here are some techniques that have helped me regain composure during a panic attack:

    1. Deep breathing. Deep breathing works like magic for me. Whenever I feel my heart throbbing, I start regulating my breaths by inhaling for five seconds, pausing for five seconds, and exhaling for five seconds. By breathing consciously, you will feel your heart slowly return to its normal pace.

    2. Relax your muscles. It is important to learn how to relax your muscles when you’re experiencing a panic attack. The more stiff your muscles become, the harder your panic attacks will be to manage. Lie down and allow yourself to feel heavy. Consciously breathe into your muscles to loosen them up.

    3. Listen to music. Music can help relax me when undergoing a planet attack, although certain types of music can exacerbate the issue. When I feel a panic attack coming on, I listen to soothing music without lyrics while focusing on my breathing.

    4. Open up. Some who are suffering from panic disorder are subconsciously drawn to what we call the safe zone. It’s important to feel safe. In my experiences, confessing to someone I trust has helped me. By confessing, I was given what I needed such as affection and love without judgment.

    5. Cry. At first, I wasn’t very expressive of my emotions until I was in a position where all I could do was cry. That made me realize that crying is good because it’s a release. When we are crying, we are letting our emotions out, and at the same time deep breathing which is beneficial when you’re experiencing a panic attack. Don’t hold back the tears, let them rip.

    6. Do moderate exercises. Sometimes, my fear triggers the fight-or-flight response. When this happens, my mind tells me to move, to flee, so what I do is some exercise to harness that urge. I used to live in an apartment with a pool, and I remember jumping in and swimming until my breathing was regulated. I’m thankful for that pool. Also, jogging and walking outside helped me along this journey.

    Daily practices to help manage anxiety and panic attacks

    Meditating in nature to regulate emotions
    1. Yoga. Yoga is one of the best practices that helps manage stress and anxiety. With yoga, you are inviting mental and physical relaxation. Whenever I do yoga, I feel focused on the present, and my mind is centered. There are lots of Yoga tutorials available on YouTube, but I highly recommend the ones that last for 30 minutes or more.

    2. Meditation. When you’re experiencing a panic attack, meditation can help you connect to the rawness of emotions, and find composure within them. I normally meditate after yoga, and child’s pose meditation tends to help me mitigate the effects of a panic attack.

    3. Connect with nature. I always say that nature is the best medicine. Nature makes me feel relaxed, and it’s a great remedy when you feel a panic attack beginning. If you do not have access to the beach or mountains, you can buy some plants. I used to live close to the beach and mountains, but I had lots of plants in my apartment. Watering them and just looking at them relieved my stress tremendously.

    4. Reading and writing. These two activities help me track the progress of my mental health. I have a journal where I write down my emotions and the triggers, the intensity of the attacks, and activities that helped me. I also recorded the duration of my sleep daily. It was my way of improving my anxiety awareness. It is important to have a journal so you can read back what worked for you, and what you can continue doing. 

    5. Avoid substances. Our bad habits only work as a temporary fix. It’s an enjoy-now-suffer-later type of system. For others, alcohol makes them relax, but in my own experience, it triggers panic attacks. After a particularly bad panic attack, I decided to stay away from alcohol and tobacco as I didn’t want to experience an episode like that ever again.

    6. Practice gratitude. Panic attacks cause us to overthink about the future, so being present is a good way to stop our minds from doing it. We have no control over the future, but we can navigate our present.

    How to help others through panic attacks

    Woman holding space for her friend

    Managing a panic attack is one part of the journey, but other people are a major aid here too.

    If someone you know is going through a panic attack, you can help them find composure by following these steps:

    1. Don’t judge. If someone tells you they are suffering from either of these mental disturbances, that means THEY TRUST YOU. Despite feeling ashamed about their condition, they picked up as much courage as they could muster just to let you know about their battles against their demons. They expect you to not judge, so be decent enough to not judge them.

    2. Do not panic. If you happen to be with someone who is having a panic attack, it is very important to stay calm and not panic, as well. One of the common reasons why someone who is having a panic attack is not vocal about it is because he/she is scared that the other person might also panic. Just relax and don’t add another layer of fear to it, as things could go wrong, and exacerbate the situation. Be their rock, and help ground them.

    3. Be the safe zone. If your loved one is telling you that they are panicking, the best thing you can do is to make them feel safe. Hugging and cuddling is my personal favorite. In my own experience, being hugged and cuddled gives me the feeling of home. The feeling of safety. The power of interpersonal touch does not only benefit the person who is trying to escape the darkness of fear, but it also helps lower the stress of the hugger/cuddler. It’s like hitting two birds with one stone.

    4. Be careful with your choice of words. Words play a very vital role in this situation. Typically, if someone is panicking, our automatic responses are ‘Everything’s going to be okay’, ‘Just relax’, and ‘Calm down’. Trust me, these phrases don’t help. The brain of the person suffering from a panic attack is too clouded as he/she was already programmed to feel the opposite. They need words of assurance like ‘I am here for you’, or ‘I am with you’, which also affirms safety and security. If you don’t know what to say, just try to execute rules number one, two, and three.

    5. Do not assume. Ask questions. To tell you honestly, sometimes, it’s hard for someone who suffers from anxiety and panic disorder to open up about their triggers and requests. They would never want to talk about it because they fear being judged. What you can do is ask the person if he/she wants to talk about it calmly. Ask if they need anything. Initiate the conversation and encourage the person without giving him/her the feeling of being forced. Just talk normally with a calm tone of voice. As simple as that.
  • How To Heal Emotional Pain: Intuitive Steps To Find Peace Of Mind

    How To Heal Emotional Pain: Intuitive Steps To Find Peace Of Mind

    Your feelings add flavor to the human experience, but it’s certainly not all sunshine and rainbows. Sometimes you’ll hurt. Life will suck, and there’s absolutely nothing you can do about it, besides experience it.

    In today’s society, we’re conditioned to avoid pain. We’re either told to suck it up, or we’re given something to fix it.

    Our society treats emotional pain as the enemy when it’s a quintessential part of the human experience. Emotional pain might suck, and sometimes it’s going to feel like you’re being dragged through gravel, but as long as you learn how to manage it and heal it, the pain will pass.

    In this article I’m going to share some ways to manage emotional pain, to prevent it from getting out of control.

    What is emotional pain?

    Person dealing with severe emotional pain

    Emotional pain refers to emotions that cause suffering or misery – Induced by an emotional wound or trauma.

    Each emotion has a vibration, ranging from heavenly to hellish. Heartbreak is generally considered to be more painful than anger, but anger is still a form of emotional pain as it makes you feel miserable. 

    Emotional pain is unpleasant to experience no doubt, but it’s not necessarily a bad thing. We’re going to hurt sometimes because our world is a turbulent place. That’s why it’s important to learn how to manage your emotional pain.

    To understand vibration and its association with emotional well-being, read the article below:

    The function of emotional pain

    Emotional pain is like a distress beacon. The function of emotional pain is to indicate that something is out of balance with your emotional body – And needs to be tended to.

    If we never experienced emotional pain, we would never learn. We would continue making the same mistakes because there would be no repercussions. Therefore, emotional pain doesn’t only indicate an emotional wound – It’s a learning mechanism.

    Emotional pain becomes emotional baggage when it isn’t healed. You can learn more about emotional baggage, and how to let it go in the article below:

    Worst forms of emotional pain

    There are many different types of emotional pain, and it can be caused by many situations. Experiencing emotional pain is a universal human experience, yet every form of emotional pain is unique.

    Imagine each emotion as a spectrum. Depending on the severity of the event that caused the painful emotion, the feeling can range from being a slight sting that will come and go, to a deep trauma you may carry for many years.

    Here are some of forms of emotional pain that are considered to cause the most suffering.

    • Grief: Nothing can quite parallel the feeling of losing someone close to you, and knowing that person you love is gone
    • Heartbreak: Undoubtedly, heartbreak can be a torturous experience, and it can take a long time to heal
    • Betrayal: Feeling betrayed by someone you trust can lead to intense emotional distress as it shatters the foundation of trust
    • Guilt: Guilt is considered to be one of the lowest-vibrational emotions, and it can make you feel like absolute crap
    • Shame: Shame is also considered to be one of the lowest-vibrational emotions, and has a huge impact on your confidence and self-esteem
    • Resentment: Resentment can be a particularly painful emotion that can be very difficult to heal
    • Regret: Regret can have long-lasting implications, and feels like a wet blanket that can be difficult to heal
    • Hatred: Hatred, with similarities to resentment is an extremely painful emotion that serves nobody

    What are some signs of emotional pain?

    Everyone experiences emotional pain differently, as emotional pain manifests in different ways. Here are some general signs of emotional pain.

    • Agitation and moodiness
    • Distress and worry
    • Feelings of being overwhelmed, and the fear of not coping
    • Consistent negative thoughts and feelings
    • Feels of exhaustion and burning out
    • Lack of joy in the things that normally provide joy
    • Lack of energy and motivation
    • general discomfort and dissatisfaction with life or oneself
    • Inescapable feelings of dread, hopelessness, anguish, and anxiety
    • Inability to let go of the past

    Managing emotional pain vs healing emotional pain

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    To understand emotional pain to a deeper extent, I first need to iron out some terminology.

    • Managing emotional pain refers to mitigating it, but not necessarily healing it. The wound is still open
    • Coping with emotional pain refers to dealing with severe emotional pain when it’s getting out of control
    • Healing emotional pain refers to closing the wound so the emotional pain no longer exists

    Managing emotional pain doesn’t necessarily mean you’re healing it. It just means you’re mitigating it.

    Healing emotional pain occurs from digging into it, processing it, and discarding it. There can be a lot of helpful strategies to manage emotional pain, but healing emotional pain generally takes time, and may require more elaborate activities such as therapy, ceremonies, and holistic and spiritual practices.

    Often, emotional pain lingers because you don’t confront it. While you deny what you’re feeling, you’re sabotaging the process of healing. It’s okay to hurt. Hurting can be healthy in fact, it shows that you’re human!

    A big part of life is to experience the negative side of it. Without contrast, you can’t grow and evolve as a person.

    Do medications help to manage emotional pain?

    Although some medications can be helpful in certain situations, I would not take medication to manage emotional pain if it can be avoided.

    Understand that emotional pain cannot be ‘fixed’. It needs to be healed, and medications just numb the pain. As I’ve mentioned, pain is a signal that something needs healing. It’s there to help you grow as a person and become happier, healthier, and wiser.

    If you’re taking medication to numb your emotional pain, you are not healing it, and it’s likely to cause more disintegration of your emotional body.  

    The truth is we’ve become so conditioned by an instant gratification culture, where the quickest, easiest option reigns supreme. Your emotional pain is not your enemy. It’s a messenger of important insights and wisdom that can’t be discovered any other way.

    In a way, drugs just shelter you from your problems but don’t solve them. It’s a temporary escape.  Emotional pain will not permanently go away without addressing it, doing the inner work, and making the appropriate life changes.

    To understand why escaping your pain is a bad idea, read the article below about my story about escapism.

    Strategies to manage your emotional pain

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    Get out in nature

    Spending time in nature helps you declutter the mind while reconnecting to a place of calm. If you are struggling, it’s important to get out in nature often and escape the hustle and bustle of the chaotic urban battlefield.

    Whenever I’m battling my demons, I get out in nature as frequently as possible – As nature is incredibly soothing. When out in the elements, stress melts right off my shoulders.

    Go for walks in a park or hike through the wilderness. Sit by a lake and you’ll notice the constant clunking of your mind slowing to a ticker. Don’t listen to music or engage your phone while you’re in nature, just be present with your thoughts and emotions.

    Nature has a profound impact on your emotional state. That’s why more cities are acknowledging the importance of green space, and mustering up the initiative to implement more into the modern human habitat.

    Stop trying to escape it!

    Nonresistance is an important philosophy when it comes to managing emotional pain. As resistance is a key component in suffering, resisting your pain compounds your suffering.

    Therefore, don’t bottle up your pain because this will make it worse in the long run. You should surrender to your emotional pain and let yourself feel it fully. You need to let your pain pass through you without trying to defer it.

    When you build the habit of allowing emotions to pass through instead of bottling them up, you will start to feel better every time you do.

    To learn more about the philosophy of nonresistance and why it’s a crucial element in managing emotional health, visit the link below:

    Be present

    Mindfulness is key in managing emotional pain. Emotional pain is often created through being fixed to the future or bound to the past. When you’re here in the now, you realize… You’re okay.

    Emotions such as guilt, shame, and resentment stem from the past. Emotions such as stress, worry, and anxiety come from the future. When you are present and let yourself just be, nothing hurts you.

    The catch is that it’s difficult to be present, especially in our rapid and stimulating lifestyles. You need to practice mindfulness and enjoy the present moment as much as you can. The more present you become, the more your pain subsides.

    Here’s a resource to help you get more into the now:

    Let it all out

    Energies are stored in your body, so it’s important to let them out. You can do this by expressing yourself emotionally and moving the energy through motion.

    If you feel sad, cry. If you feel angry, vent. Get into the habit of opening the bottle of emotions by being calibrated with the way you’re feeling. The more you express yourself, the better you’re going to feel.

    Here is a technique to help you release those pent emotions to manage your emotional pain.

    Indulge in therapeutic hobbies

    Therapeutic hobbies are great for relieving emotional pain. Hobbies that get you out of your mind and into your body temporarily subside your emotional pain, because that pain is no longer the focus of your attention.

    When you’re feeling some painful emotions, try hobbies such as:

    • Yoga
    • Painting
    • Hiking
    • Swimming
    • Sport
    • Reading

    Particular hobbies that don’t require a lot of thinking and generally have repetitive actions become a sort of mantra. They help you enter a present space which is why they can be so helpful.

    Write

    Writing is a good way to translate your emotions into words and process your pain. Writing is often my go-to when I’m dealing with something painful, because it’s an avenue to express myself.

    Some of the content on this website has been a way to dump emotions and untangle my thoughts about certain topics. Especially when I get engrossed in writing and enter a state of flow, I completely forget about the pain I’m experiencing.

    Whether you want to journal or creatively write, it doesn’t matter. Start writing your emotions down, and see if it helps you manage them.

    Meditate regularly

    Meditation is especially effective for processing emotional pain. You learn how to listen to your emotions and feel them via meditation – And this is what moves the needle with healing.

    If you are experiencing anything painful, regular meditation can help manage and heal those emotions.

    Go into the pain and explore it by meditating, and you’ll discover the pain subsides after a while.

    Make changes to your lifestyle

    Emotional pain can compound when you feel stuck in the same situation. Change things up in your life to clear the energy and create some movement.

    If you’re always in the same places, doing the same things, it’s going to be harder to get out of your headspace. So change things up and refresh your life. You will be filled with new stimuli, experiences, and opportunities.

    If you have wanted to learn an instrument, take up surfing, or start doing exercise, now is the time to make lifestyle changes that make you happy. Do something new to give redirect your focus.

    When your emotional pain becomes too much

    Person trying to cope with severe emotional pain

    Sometimes, emotional pain can become too much to bear. You try your best, but the sting of failure can debilitate you. The shame of making some fatal mistake can haunt you for a very long time. After a while. it can become too much.

    When you feel like you’re falling apart and you’re not sure how to manage your emotional pain, it may be necessary to seek support from someone who is trained to guide people through their darkest nights.

    Otherwise, if you’re struggling to manage your emotional pain because it has built up to a level of dysfunction, here are some coping strategies that might help you.

  • The Emotional Release Technique: Here’s A Simple Method To Clear Painful Emotions

    The Emotional Release Technique: Here’s A Simple Method To Clear Painful Emotions

    Dense energies can get trapped in the body – Contaminating every part of your life experience. Holding everything in until it deteriorates into bitterness is the worst way to live. So what can you do about it?

    Learning how to release dense energies from your body can help you feel much better, and clear the emotional slate. You need to regularly flush out everything that’s not serving you if you’re looking to maintain optimal well-being.

    Therefore, whenever you feel some heavy emotions chipping away at you, try out this emotional release technique to restore yourself to an emotionally healthier state.

    What is an emotional release?

    Man experiencing an emotional release

    The emotional release technique is a method of discharging emotions – Usually in the form of crying, venting, or yelling. Look at it as a way of releasing pent-up emotions by leveraging catharsis.

    In other words, an emotional release is a purge. You’re getting rid of the emotional baggage that you’re consciously or unconsciously holding onto. To understand what I’m saying here, I suggest having a read of the article below:

    Whenever I’m feeling something painful, I’ve learned to go into the emotions, express them, and let them go. What once seemed counterintuitive has become a hugely helpful process that now works like a charm.

    This is life – Shit happens. But I’ve found a key to living a happy life is maintaining your emotional health. 

    Usually, I feel great. Sooner or later something will happen and I’ll feel some dense emotions such as shame. Instead of fighting those emotions, I sink into them and discard them. Generally after this process, I’m almost immediately back to my happy self – Filled with gratitude, joy, and all those little emotions that make life worth living.

    What I’ve learned is that we’re supposed to feel great. Feeling good is our pure state, feeling miserable is a diluted state. When you’re not feeling good, it means you’re harboring dense energies, and you need to discard that baggage.

    I suggest using the emotional release technique whenever you’re feeling dense energies in the form of shame, guilt, regret, resentment, jealousy, or anything else that doesn’t serve your growth.

    Benefits of an emotional release

    Releasing pent emotions is necessary to maintain a healthy emotional well-being.

    While releasing emotions via catharsis does provide immediate relief, you should look at it as a form of maintenance – That is to release emotions whenever you feel like crap, rather than piling them up until they form dysfunction.

    This technique should be regularly practiced, and it may take many sessions before completely healing some deep-rooted trauma.

    After performing an emotional release technique, you can expect to feel:

    • Lighter in your body, like a blanket has been lifted off you
    • Relaxed due to a release of tension and stress in your body
    • Clear in your mind. You can think straight again without being clouded by stress or worry
    • Reconnected with high-vibrational emotions such as gratitude, hope, and excitement
    • Possible euphoria and joy – Feeling like life is good all of a sudden

    Healing by releasing

    When something affects you deeply, it leaves an emotional wound. The wound can only be healed by processing it naturally. Therapists and counselors guide this process, but in most cases, they’re not necessary to heal.

    You can do it yourself.

    This is how I view healing – If dense energies are trapped in your body, you won’t be able to heal.

    Imagine trying to heal a wound while you have dirt in it. The wound needs to be cleaned before it can heal. Emotional wounds are alike.

    Instead of cleansing themselves of painful emotions to naturally heal, many people attempt to escape those emotions. Here’s an article about escapism, and why it’s so detrimental to your emotional health.

    Avoiding painful emotions only pushes them deeper into the subconscious to rot – Where they become increasingly difficult to flush out. Just because that pain isn’t in the spotlight anymore, doesn’t mean it’s not causing damage.

    This is where the emotional release technique comes in – To stir up stagnant emotions and bring them back into the spotlight where you can properly deal with them.

    To learn more about helping other people release emotions, visit the link below:

    Step 1: Resurrecting the traumatic experience

    Woman processing her painful emotions

    Suppressed emotions will resurface at times if the underlying wound has not been healed. These emotions may be triggered by certain situations, surface in the form of intrusive thoughts, or seemingly come up out of nowhere – Because those energies are still trapped within your emotional body.

    When any painful emotion arises, the first step is to bring your awareness to it. Allow that painful emotion to surface, and sit with it.

    In some cases, the repressed trauma is begging to be acknowledged – Which means you don’t need to flesh it out, it will come to you. However, if you generally feel miserable but can’t identify any distinct feeling, you may need to poke the hidden wounds a little.

    You can manually dredge up stagnant energy by thinking back to painful events in your life. You might know exactly what’s left unresolved, and you might have no clear answer.

    Regardless, here’s what to do:

    1. Think back to certain events that hurt you in the past, and see whether you get an emotional response from them.
    2. Visualize yourself going back into those painful memories, and replay them in as vivid detail as possible – With a focus on the emotions you were feeling. 

    If there is no emotional response associated with those memories, they have likely already been processed. On the other hand, if you start feeling uncomfortable when you think about these memories, this is a good indicator that the wound has not been cleaned.

    You can tell how severe the trauma is by how painful thinking back to the memory is.

    Thinking back to an embarrassing moment might make you cringe, and there could be some dense energy you’re holding onto because of that incident – Which may manifest as shame or guilt. Being cheated on by your spouse might trigger more severe emotions of betrayal and worthlessness, which have much more severe manifestations.

    The magnitude of pain determines how much damage it is doing to you, and how important it is to heal. If you have a severe unresolved emotional wound, it may be necessary to seek support from a professional.

    To further understand the phenomenon of triggers and how they can be used to discover hidden traumas, read the article below:

    Confronting your trauma

    When you start experiencing emotional pain, dig into it.

    Think about the concomitant memories, thoughts, or associations that surface too.

    Any heaviness you feel under the surface, consciously exacerbate this feeling by digging deep into the emotionally active memories and thoughts. This may be something recent, or something from a long time ago.

    Paint as accurately a picture of the traumatic event as you can, and the pain and distress will start coming back. When those heavy feelings begin simmering to the surface, avoid the temptation to distract yourself. 

    Emotional pain can not physically harm you. It can simulate experiences and cause undesirable emotional responses, but you are safe. You have nothing to lose, despite what that pain convinces you to think.

    When you have fully embodied those painful energies – Which may cause tremoring, shaking, or other physiological responses, move on to the next step.

    Step 2: Reliving the trauma

    Man in a panic as his trauma comes to awareness

    After you have resurrected the painful emotions, allow them to manifest in your body. Don’t force them in or out, but surrender to the discomfort. Through nonresistance, the pain will reach a climax.

    How does it feel? What specific sensations arise when you’re feeling these painful emotions?

    Where is it? Is it a heaviness in your chest, butterflies in your stomach, or is it manifesting as a blockage in your throat – Resulting in the inability to express yourself?

    You don’t need to analyze it, but make the feelings as prominent as possible by locating the physical manifestations and sitting with them.

    Extracting lessons from trauma

    Within all trauma lies hidden lessons. I believe trauma is particularly hard to let go of when there is still a lesson to learn from the experience that caused it. Once you learn that lesson, the trauma has no leverage which creates an easier passage for departure.

    Now you need to learn from the painful feelings. This can take some patience, and any barrier you erect will prevent you from heeding the lessons.

    Don’t force the process (as forcing is an act of resistance), but be open to the wisdom of that pain. Be present with it and see what thoughts and feelings arise.

    You might experience sudden insights or epiphanies when you’re in a state of nonresistance with the pain. You might have sudden ‘ah ha’ moments.

    This is a good sign as the purpose of the emotional release technique is to extract everything you can out of the trauma and allow it to shrivel.

    Throughout my life journey, I’ve discovered that pain tends to linger around when there are still important lessons to be learned. Naturally, you will hold onto that pain, perhaps because that pain still has some service to you.

    Step 3: Purging the trauma

    Woman healing from her trauma

    Now that you’ve resurrected the painful feelings and extracted all the wisdom that you can from them, it’s time to let those painful feelings go. This is most effectively done by purging – A form of emotional release we touched on earlier in the article.

    The purge acts as an important part of the healing process. It’s like tweezing the splinter from the wound.

    If you seep deep enough into your painful feelings as expressed in part: 2 of the emotional release technique, naturally you will start having physiological reactions.

    This is the result of the unconscious trauma being pulled into your body – Where it can now be discarded.

    The purge usually happens naturally. Some examples of purging include:

    • Crying
    • Sweating
    • Facial flushing
    • Trembling
    • Shaking
    • Moaning
    • Yawning
    • Yelling
    • Ranting
    • Even vomiting in extreme cases

    The purge is to get it all out. People have different processes of purging, and there is no right or wrong way to do it.

    What you want to do is move that stagnant energy and get it outside your body. You’re essentially flushing these stagnant energies from your body – and creating space for genuine healing.

    Therefore express everything you feel when you are processing your pain. You don’t need to unnecessarily act it out or cause a forcing current, but if you feel like purging in some form – Do it.

    Discarding severe emotional trauma may take many sessions of this technique. If you have a mountain of dirt, each time you purge is like taking a shovel to the mound.

    Each consecutive time you do this technique, you may find the emotional response to be less severe – Until you don’t have one at all. 

    Healing the emotional body

    Immediately after purging, you will feel a sense of relief.

    When the pain starts to ease and your thoughts begin to wander again, be grateful. Replace that emptiness with high-vibrational emotions that you do want to carry with you. Read the article below to know what you want to fill your cup with.

    Reinforce to yourself that it’s okay to let go of the pain. Once it has nothing left to offer, gracefully let it go and thank it for its service.

    If there are still lessons to learn, these painful emotions will resurface again – Albeit to a lesser extent. If they do resurface, repeat the process.

    When you have completely neutralized the trauma, you will be able to think about the traumatic event, but there will be no emotional response.

    If there is still an emotional response, then it’s telling you that there is more work to be done, and use that as an opportunity to do this emotional release technique again.

    This technique should be practiced regularly, as the common person has a lot of trauma to heal. Unless you feel wonderful, there is more to process. With that said, we also experience more traumatic events in life as sometimes – Unexpected circumstances happen.

    But now that you’re equipped with a remedy, whenever something does happen, go through this technique and hit it before it hits you.

  • Simple Steps To Let Go of Emotional Baggage and Find Inner Peace

    Simple Steps To Let Go of Emotional Baggage and Find Inner Peace

    Emotions come and go, but sometimes, they linger around for a really long time. Can you remember a time when someone hurt you, and many years later you still feel resentment towards that person? What about an embarrassing incident in the past that you still cringe at today?

    If the pain of an old wound is still present, this tells you that the wound was never actually healed. As a result, you carry the emotional baggage, and all it does is weigh you down.

    Emotional baggage can be seen as the long-lasting residue of unresolved emotional wounds. it’s the painful emotions that you continue to experience, long after the event that caused it.

    Sometimes, people carry this emotional baggage their entire lives. It lives in the form of repressed trauma, and it will always be there until you release it. One minor incident can end up changing your life if you never let it go.

    But how can you do that?

    Here we’re going to look at emotional baggage in this article and explore how you can let go of those stubborn traumas that have become a part of who you are.

    What is emotional baggage?

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    Emotional baggage is trauma that you consciously, or unconsciously hold onto.

    Look at emotional baggage as repressed painful memories, thoughts, or feelings caused by unhealed wounds. What you need to understand is that trauma (or dense energy) is stored in your body.  The longer you go without healing the underlying wounds, the deeper this pain tends to inlay which makes it increasingly harder to flesh out.

    Imagine that painful energy has a physical presence. Unless you get rid of it, the pain gets trapped inside you. Over time, this stagnant energy causes more problems with your well-being, because the underlying wound has not been healed.

    You create emotional baggage when you fail to process a wound when it happens, and instead push it out of awareness. Therefore, emotional baggage is the manifestation of neglecting an emotional wound or trauma.

    How does emotional baggage harm you?

    Think of a painful emotion like a cut. If you cut yourself and decide not to treat it, the cut may get infected. When left untreated, the infection will spread, becoming more and more painful in the process.

    Your emotional body works the same way.

    Emotional baggage is like an infected wound that prevents you from healing and moving on. If left untreated, this infection spreads to other parts of you.

    You might not think that your general distrust for people was caused by an unresolved incident where you felt betrayed when you were younger. But look at how it affects your life today. The effect is much worse than the cause because the issue was never healed.

    There’s nothing wrong with experiencing painful emotions. Shit happens, it’s a normal part of being a human. Normally you will process those wounds when they occur, the pain leaves, and never comes back because the wound has been healed.

    But if you hold onto that pain, it turns into emotional baggage. That emotional baggage takes a toll over time and causes more issues in your life whether they’re in the form of trauma, mindsets, perceptions, or belief systems.

    The role of emotional baggage for behavioral problems

    Emotional baggage is heavy. You’re forced to feel reoccurring painful emotions until the root cause has been healed. Of course, holding onto painful emotions just doesn’t feel good, but they can also cause more severe issues in your life.

    This study suggests that there is a link between emotional baggage, and the inability to change. People believe that they get stuck in old patterns because they’re still holding onto the trauma from the past.

    This means that holding onto past situations do prevent you from moving forward with your life to better things. So it’s necessary to drop the baggage and allow yourself to heal the past.

    the role of emotional baggage for physical health

    Emotional baggage can take a toll on your physical health too because your physical health is thoroughly connected to your emotional health. In this sense, issues with your physical health can manifest from emotional problems – such as emotional baggage.

    According to HealthLine, emotional baggage can lead to physical issues such as:

    • Stress
    • Fear
    • Self-worth issues
    • Burnout
    • Contempt and dissatisfaction with life
    • Self-sabotage

    Examples of painful emotions turning into emotional baggage

    Imagine that you were never really given much attention when you were a kid. You thought it was unfair, and grew up thinking that your parents didn’t care about you. As you grow older, you continue to feed those thoughts, which manifest into other issues in your life.

    You begin to feel like the world is unfair, that nobody cares about you, or that you’re worthless which consequently affects your life in other ways. These painful manifestations start influencing your perception of reality, and turn it into an unfair world.

    Here are some examples of how a wound turns into emotional baggage if not healed.

    • Lucy was bullied during her adolescence and now has severe self-worth issues. She struggles to accept her appearance and gets embarrassed very easily.
    • Jake who was walked over and treated poorly most of his life can’t see the good in humanity anymore. He thinks humanity is a lost cause, and there’s not much hope for us.
    • Nancy felt betrayed by her ex-partner and has wished that bad things would happen to him for years now. She regularly checks his social media to see if something happened and feels disappointed when it doesn’t.
    • Michael was publicly made fun of while giving a presentation in school. In adulthood, he is still ashamed of that day and avoids putting himself in front of people out of fear that something similar might happen
    • Megan felt like she was never good enough for her parents. She now doesn’t think anyone can love her and refuses to look for love.
    • Jenny has general trust issues after being harassed many years ago and now hates meeting new people. Because of this, she doesn’t have many friends, and often battles with loneliness.

    Identifying emotional baggage

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    When you allow painful emotions to run their course, they will leave when their service is up. Pain is a messenger, and if you’re avoiding the lesson, the associated emotion is going to stay around, becoming more toxic the longer it’s left unresolved.

    In this sense, I call emotional baggage toxic emotions. Not that any emotion is necessarily toxic, after all, they all serve a purpose. But painful emotions can become toxic if they hang around for long enough.

    Common emotions that I would consider toxic are:

    • Resentment can linger around for a very long time, and it takes a heavy toll.
    • Guilt is commonly experienced as a toxic emotion because it can last a very long time, and degrades your peace of mind.
    • Shame can last a long time while causing further problems and limitations in your life.

    Back in the day, I worked at a restaurant where I was owed a lot of money in tips before leaving. After finishing up and moving to Vietnam to teach English, the owner decided to withhold my money which he promised to send before I left. Every time I contacted him, he would be polite, and agree to send it, but the cash would never arrive.

    Over six months passed after contacting him many times, and he eventually stopped responding. There wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it. I felt cheated.

    For a long time, I resented this man. The money was one thing, but the resentment I felt consumed me. I drank poison, hoping he would drop dead from it. But he didn’t. He got on with his happy life, while I was left to deal with these hostile emotions I was feeling.

    By holding onto this resentment, he still had power over me, and I didn’t want that. It took me a long time to finally forgive him and let it go. One of the lessons I learned from this situation is that sometimes the emotional baggage causes us much more suffering than the actual event.

     In this case, I felt betrayed. It was more than missing out on the money I was owed, what got to me was the feeling that I was taken advantage of, and helpless to do anything about it.

    Be aware of the painful emotions that you’re holding onto, and how they affect your life. Identify where those emotions came from, and what the underlying wound is that is causing you to feel that way.

    Probe your memories

    First, you need to bring your emotional baggage to awareness by triggering the emotions and flushing them out of your subconscious mind.

    You can do this by recalling the specific memories of the event that caused the pain, mentally putting yourself back into that situation, and feeling all the sensations by replaying the event in your mind.

    If you manage to resurrect some of the painful emotions, this is a positive sign as you’re bringing these toxic emotions to the surface where they’re easier to work with. If there is no emotional pain associated with the memory, then this is a good sign that you have healed the wound.

    You can tell whether something is unresolved depending on the frequency and magnitude of reemergence. If you have emotional baggage, the painful emotions will be triggered at times, and you will feel them. But these moments are probably short-lived because you push them back under every time they show up.

    If a painful sensation keeps resurfacing, then it has not been resolved. It’s goading you to fix it by bringing your awareness to it.

    Self-awareness is key here. You will not be able to get rid of these toxic emotions that you carry around with you until you look into them. Once you’re aware of the emotions that no longer serve you, you can take productive steps toward letting them go.

    Pinpoint the wound

    If you have emotional baggage, sometimes you will get seemingly random bursts of guilt, shame, regret, or whatever emotion is associated with the wound.

    This used to happen to me quite a lot, over incidences that seemed insignificant. Sometimes I would think back to something I did in a previous relationship, or perhaps a mistake I made in a job, or something I did that hurt someone else, and suddenly I would feel a sharp sting.

    Usually, I pushed that painful memory away. After a few seconds, I would be feeling normal again, and that was that. But then on a later date, that same emotion would pop up again.

    After realizing that this was an unhealed wound, I identified the memory that was associated with the wound.  So I would look into:

    • The memory: What is the specific memory that causes the pain?
    • The pain: What sort of pain is it? In my case, it’s usually shame that I feel
    • The situation: What specifically happened that made you feel this way?

    By looking into the memory, the pain, and the pain point, you have identified the wound, and now you know what needs healing. Identifying the wound becomes an act of noticing reoccurring patterns because if a pain keeps showing up, it means the wound is still active.

    How to let go of emotional baggage

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    Letting go of emotional baggage is a process of acknowledging your wounds, resurrecting the concomitant feelings, and consciously releasing them from your body. The process of letting go looks different from person to person, but often it requires you to consciously surrender to your feelings to heal the wound.

    Dig into your wounds

    To let go of emotional baggage, you’ll need to do some shadow work. That is to introspect, look deep into the issue, and hopefully come to some good insights and realizations about the nature of these wounds.

    You need to deeply feel those painful emotions undisrupted to learn what they’re trying to teach you. Given that you do this every time they show up, you are releasing a little bit of that dense energy from your body every time you do.

    If something triggers an insecurity, emotion is trying to draw your attention towards the core issue of your insecurity. If you feel resentment towards someone that you can’t seem to let go of, the emotional pain is turning your attention to the wound, not to discover what caused the wound, but why you feel so deeply hurt.

    Emotional pain is a messenger, telling you that there’s an issue with your emotional body that needs attention. By calibrating with your emotional body, the emotional pain will lead you to the root issue.

    Be present with the pain

    When you have brought up the underlying emotional pain, don’t judge, analyze, or label it. Just experience it fully, express yourself, and let it go in its own time. Do not rush this process. Make a habit of removing all distractions such as the TV, music, noise, people, or anything that could distract you from the experience.

    Sit with the emotions when they arise and don’t try to block them up. Mindfulness is crucial here. Your ability to be present and feel the emotions fully is paramount in processing those toxic emotions and letting them go.

    This is likely to take many sessions, not just one, so make a habit of processing and healing these emotions every time they come up. The more you build the habit of sitting with your painful emotions, the more effective you will become at this practice.

    To learn more about sitting with painful emotions instead of escaping them, here are a couple of articles that go much deeper into the topic.

    Leverage catharsis

    When you’ve resurrected those painful emotions, you need to purge those energies. Remember, those painful energies are stored in your body, and what we understand as catharsis is a way of getting them out.

    So when you feel the discomfort, allow yourself to go through the motions. Cry, tremble, yell, pray. Do whatever you need to expel that uncomfortable energy that’s blocked inside your body.

    You might not get it all out in a single go. But if those feelings come back up again, do what you can to get rid of them via catharsis. You can learn more about that here: