Releasing Trapped Emotions and Pain

Trapped emotions and pain are a theme for me. I either avoid, resist, allow my feelings or work to bring the buried ones into consciousness for release in various ways.. breathwork, somatic movement, sound healing, writing.. It’s what I work with myself and it’s a part of what I assist clients with using crystals and sound. So many different vibrational healing methods can be effective in soothing the emotional body and assisting re-integration and healing of trauma.

In the last couple of months I have been able to release some feelings which were buried very deep. I’d not been able to access them or feel them fully. It was a relief to be able to, as the emotions denied full expression and release are somewhat controlling forces. In being able to sit with them, I was taken back to when I felt suicidal at age 24. Experiencing them then carried such volition that it shocked me into shutting the door on them completely.

”...to heal trauma it is necessary to look straight at it, see it, feel it. To be present, witness and holds someone’s pain for as long as it takes, and not look away. We cannot heal as a people or as a nation until we are willing to be honest and truthful about the pain, hypocrisy and harm we’ve perpetrated, repressed, kept hidden, denied or distracted ourselves from for years, generations and centuries.
The anguish, pain and trauma experienced by black Americans, by indigenous and native Americans, by recent immigrants and minorities, by women… by animals, the land and soil, the planet. Trauma only surfaces when it is ready to be seen and healed — The Condor says for us to survive, we must not look away.”

Kayse Gehret on the condor animal spirit

Who’s feelings they are/were is another thing. I can identify with them as mine, but I’ve picked up the feelings of other people from a young age. What we carry can go back much further too, either on the ancestral line or beyond that. Having had no direct experiences in this life which pointed to me towards understanding why I felt like I did was a block to being able to process those feelings, as were the self-judgements of what was acceptable to feel or not along with concern for what the people around me could deal with.

The fear then was firstly, that in in allowing and accepting the feelings, they might not change and that was too overwhelming. The second fear was that it would change and that the result was out of my control. I now understand that acceptance is a surrendering to the natural flow so in itself allows movement. Nothing is static or fixed.

“One important portal into the transcendent dimension is suffering and the acceptance of suffering”

Ekhart Tolle

Through my experiences of different types of pain over the years I have come to see it as an entry point to a gateway or portal. In acknowledging and allowing the pain full expression it shifts and becomes almost immediately less painful, so what I thought was pain was more the fear and denial of that pain. I experienced pain relief through feeling pain.

Many approaches to relieve acute pain are suppression, disassociation or detachment. Although I see the benefits of these approaches in different situations I wonder where the energy goes, whatever it is that is being voiced through pain for release. I know it’s not always possible to allow pain, so I am grateful for the times when I feel able to let it run it’s course.

Being able to allow intense emotional pain through is only possible now I feel kind enough to guide myself through it. For me this has been very slow process over years releasing negative self-judgements and beliefs, but many shifts have happened easily, quickly and when any kind of shift happens internally (small or large) it ripples out and expands in the outer world indefinitely in ways that can only be positive. When we release it in ourselves we release it from the collective.

To the degree that I hadn’t consciously faced that level of emotional pain in myself, I hadn’t felt able to face it consciously in the outside world, in connection to seeing suffering and engaging with it. In truth though we are all on some level feeling the worlds pain. Scientific explorations and studies in consciousness reveal how intimately connected we are to everything around us on a cellular level.. other people, animals, plants, the earth itself. For me, the weather is an elemental expression of collective emotion.

I did a reading on the collective energy a few weeks ago to share in the facebook group, but chickened out. The messages that came through now make complete sense. They were about staying aligned during difficult times, the pain of birth/growth/change and being able to respond gently and kindly to new/old feelings surfacing and vulnerability. I’ll share the next one in case it resonates with you too.

Find a soothing ancestral healing sound bath download (for free) here.

If you are interested in exploring and releasing trapped emotions I can recommend the book ‘The Emotion Code’ by Bradley Nelson.