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Let’s practice releasing stuck emotions

Stuck emotions can limit us in our lives in different ways:

1. They keep us from seeing new situations as new.

2. They keep our nervous system activated and cause stress.

3. They keep us from moving through the world with joy and ease.

In the RELATIONSHIPS Chapter of the CREATRIX School, we are talking about love and feelings in our relationships, and talking and thinking about these topics can bring up a lot of (stuck) emotions.

Few of us were lucky enough to have been taught how to actually process our emotions when we were young, and as a result, we now go through life with countless stuck emotions as adults.

But it’s never too late to start.

We start with awareness

I once took a mindfulness course with Tara Brach and Jack Cornfield, and one of the first things we learned was to name our feelings or emotions.

And I would like to invite you to start here as well.

When you go through your day, start to notice your feelings.

When do you feel joy?

When do you feel fear?

When do you feel excitement?

When do you feel turned on?

When do you feel… ?

And then name your feelings and check where you feel them in the body.

Do you clinch your fists? Is your chest tight? Do you feel lightness? Or dizzy? Or tingling? Is your heart racing?

Whatever comes up is valid. Just observe and name it. 

And of course, you can also do this the other way around.

When you notice that you are grinding your teeth or that your neck and shoulders get tight, check in with yourself and ask what is going on.

What emotion do you feel in those moments?

When we bring awareness to our emotions, we bring them from our unconscious to our conscious mind, and when our emotions become conscious, we can begin to change them.

In this first step, we really just recognize, locate and name our emotions.

If you do this for a while, you will be able to see things change as you begin to take them less personally.

When you are not overtaken by an emotion, but can say:

“Oh, I notice I feel anger now.” instead of thinking: “I’m so angry!” you can start to change things.

Or even better, say: “I feel anger coming up” or “Anger is present” – the less you identify with it, the better.

Just get curious about what’s going on with you and why, instead of letting your emotions rule you.

Understanding our Emotions

When we carry emotions that are stuck in our body, they can literally change our form, our shape, our posture, our body and how we see and react to a situation.

Once you notice certain things about yourself, like where in your body you feel fear and how your body reacts to it, or to joy or other emotions, you might also be able to recognize them in other people more easily as well.

When you start this practice, you might be able to tell if someone else is dealing with a lot of fear or insecurity by looking at their posture and the way they move.

We might also begin to notice if someone feels confident and feels at ease.

The same way we begin to notice these feelings within ourselves, we might also begin to recognize them in other people.

You can even make that a game and see if you can guess people’s emotions when you walk down a street.

The more in tune we get with these things, the easier it becomes to navigate our world consciously.

What do we react to?

Something that is so common, that we barely pay attention to it, is, that we don’t usually react to a situation, we react to everything we associate with that situation.

And when we react to something with the intensity of all the unprocessed emotions that we link to it – it’s generally not helpful or joyful in that moment.

Talking to our parents is a good example of this.

We don’t usually react to the words they say, but to all the ways we feel and have felt hurt and unseen all our lives.

If somebody else said the same thing, we most likely wouldn’t have that same reaction.

And in relationships or when we are in love with someone, these same problems might come up as well.

Now, when we are paying more attention to this, we can also begin to see what we can do to change old patterns.

So when we notice that we might not actually be reacting to what somebody is saying, but to the story in our minds – then we can begin to pause and investigate what brought us here.

Often the moment when something happens doesn’t allow for it, but we can still do it later when we do have the time to investigate why something upset us so much.

Every feeling and every emotion have a message for us, and it’s only when we hear them out, that we can let them go.

When we are sad, we (have) to say goodbye to something, when we are upset, we’re not treated right, when we are angry, our boundaries have been crossed and so on.

Every feeling is valid and can help us to come into more alignment with our true wishes, desires and self.

A personal example

In the RELATIONSHIPS chapter of the CREATRIX School, I use the example of somebody asking me how I was and me not reacting to that question, but to how they reacted to my answer the last time they asked me that question (and as it turns out much more).

That previous time, I had told them about something I’m working on and their response, though somewhat sweet and probably trying to be helpful, caused me to feel like they think I’m an idiot.

So now that they were asking me again, I didn’t know how to respond in a way that was honest, but would also not cause them to think that I needed their help in any way, to solve what was going on with me.

It’s a funny world we live in, really.

Of course, I know that all I can do is to answer honestly, and let them have whichever reaction they need to have.

But I was too triggered to do that in that moment and so the story unfolded… (you can read more about it in the REALTIONSHIPS Chapter)

A bit later, after I had calmed down, I did, however, use this situation, to ask myself what was actually going on with me, and what I was really reacting to, as everything that was coming up with me, was clearly not an appropriate response to the question: “How are you?” 🤓

And I don’t want to make this into a long personal story, but them thinking that I needed their help to sort out my things and reacting in a way that basically said: help yourself – triggered me.

First of all, it triggered me because I hadn’t asked for their help, and didn’t want their help with this, I just wanted to let them know how I am, and maybe get some comfort and find somebody who understands what I’m going through.

But it also triggered me because I’ve heard variations of this all my life:

“You have a problem? Don’t annoy me with it, I have no capacities, go figure it out on your own. Go soothe yourself.” – that was the reaction I got to everything growing up.

As a result, I have always done everything for myself, by myself, there’s not one single thing, I feel, I cannot figure out by myself.

But because of my story, I really don’t want to do that any more, as it’s also really exhausting. I want to be around people who have capacity to listen and compassion.

So, what I noticed was a story repeating and my reaction was not to hearing it that one time, but to all the times I had heard this before.

It meant that I was out of alignment. And that I had a choice to make.

And I knew that I want to begin to live in a different story: one with people in it who have compassion, capacities and boundaries and don’t think that when I share something about myself, I want something from them, that they can’t give me and therefore push me away.

But that’s their story, not mine, and this situation helped me to realize that.

They didn’t mean to hurt me, and I didn’t want to feel hurt. They showed me where they are at and, the situation showed me where I am at, and I can decide accordingly from here.

Some people just don’t work well together, even if there’s attraction. Or maybe there is attraction, because we trigger old wounds in each other that need healing.

And we can just recognize this and go our separate ways, and do something new, or we can blame ourselves or them and repeat stories that are familiar to us.

It would have been so easy to think:

“People always misunderstand me, why do people think I’m helpless? Why am I always attracted to people who don’t treat me right?”

And so on. But that wouldn’t change a thing.

If I take responsibility for the situation, however, and check in with myself, notice that I know that I’m not at all helpless, and that that particular person is projecting, or that my words triggered something in them as well, and that I feel drawn to them and the situation because I’m so used to this way of being, and expecting it in a way too and therefore creating it.

I won’t change anything for the better by trying to change that person, or explaining myself, or the situation – I can only change things, by stepping out of that conversation, deciding how I wish to be treated, and what my priorities are, and moving in that direction.

And for that, I need to see that my reaction and being upset is completely valid, not to them, but to the fact, that this kind of reaction and interaction is not what I wish for any more.

This is so important.

Don’t ever blame yourself, or feel bad about yourself for overreacting – because you’re not. Objectively you might be, but according to what you’ve been through you’re not – and the reaction is absolutely valid.

But you need to see that first and bring up compassion, to change it and to allow yourself to have something better from now on.

From here, then, you and I can step back into our power and change things.

And it is our responsibility to change things, so that we can experience more of what we would like to have, and not to continue to repeat what doesn’t serve us.

I can do that by finding other people who have the capacity to react compassionately. And you can decide what it is that you’d like from now on.
And this is all we practice in the RELATIONSHIPS chapter of the CREATRIX School.

Done & Solved.

And now it’s your turn. You can go through this kind of investigation, whenever a conflict comes up in your family setting as well.

Just ask yourself what you are reacting to: The actual situation or your story about it. And then unwrap your story and decide from there.

You might not want to step away from your family, as I decided to do from someone I had just met, but the more you learn to see where things are coming from, and see your part in co-creating a situation that way, the more you can decide how you would like to react in the future, and then practice that.

Because when you change your reaction to something, the whole situation changes.

This can actually be quite hard work, and it does take time, honesty, kindness and patience. And it takes practice.

But every time we feel unsettled and remove things where they originate, instead of reacting to the stories in our heads, they won’t have power over us any more, and they won’t upset us in the future.

So I think it’s well worth taking this up as a new practice.