The thoughts you think and the words you speak create your experiences.

How do you feel when you read those words? What thoughts do you have running through your head on constant repeat? What emotions have you buried so deep that you don't even know what lies in the depths within you?

Your thoughts and words are like seeds that are planted and grow the more they are fed. Are your thoughts positive or negative? What story are you constantly telling yourself? Your mind is incredibly powerful and can affect the cell structures in your body by what you think and feel. How do you feel when you are happy and are feeling good? Probably strong, expansive, vibrant, inspired and creative. Now think about how you feel when you feel angry or hurt or sad. You may feel like your energy shrinks, a heaviness consumes you and you may feel rundown, tired, unmotivated and flat.

Emotional pain is just as real as physical pain but we don't often realise that what we are feeling in our physical body as a symptom or illness, is linked to us not expressing our emotions. You may feel shame or guilt over something you did in the past, or resentment and anger experienced in childhood that you haven't been able to let go of. What about feeling unworthy and not good enough, full of fear and worry, lacking confidence in yourself. When we don't allow ourselves to fully feel our emotions and process them properly, they get pushed down and eventually result in us disconnecting from ourselves and what we need.......love.

We all need to feel loved. Studies have shown that children who don't receive enough love through touch and being interacted with on a regular basis, stop growing. The body needs love and emotional security otherwise it shuts down. Feeling supported and loved by others helps us cope and be more resilient and improves our self worth. We are social beings. We need to be loved, touched, wanted and cared for just as we need to do the same for others. This is a survival need.

I think it is safe to say that the majority of us haven't grown up in an environment that was loving and supportive of us freely expressing our feelings. Most of us if not all of us will have suppressed feelings to conform or be accepted within the family. Unfortunately those feelings don't just go away. They may stay hidden for a while but they invariably get triggered or find a way out often through illness.

The more we hold onto our repressed emotions and bury them, the weaker our energy gets. They can become toxic to us. Think about a difficult experience you may have had where you felt hurt, angry or even embarassed. Did you allow yourself to feel the emotion or did you swallow it and pretend everything was fine? A lifetime of doing this can build up a lot of toxic sludge that needs to be released.

Emotions like Rage is common to be repressed as it usually isn't comfortable to express when you feel it, so we tend to swallow it. When Rage is repressed it can lead to denial and self blame. It also gives rise to irrational fear, bitterness and hate, which will affect your health. You may deny anything is wrong mentally, but your body knows it is there hiding in your cells.

Grief is another big emotion that gets suppressed as most of us don't grieve properly allowing ourselves to feel the pain of the loss. We think we have to 'pull ourselves together' and carry on but if grief isn't felt and expressed, it stays in the body and can affect the lungs, heart and immune system.

Ignored and denied emotions can erupt and wreak havoc through other emotions and behaviour. They can be triggered leaving you feeling confused as you have no idea where they have come from. Think how you feel when someone ignores you, it doesn't feel good and you want to find a way to be heard. Your emotions are the same. You can bury them for a long time but at some point, they will find their way to the surface to find expression.

So how do you deal with the emotions you may have stored deep within you? You start by paying attention to what your body is trying to tell you. What symptoms are you experiencing? How do they make you feel? You can also do a map of your life and take note of any traumas or difficult experiences and emotions you may have experienced. We often forget how certain experiences have affected us but when you map out symptoms with major events or traumas in your life, you start to see a pattern emerge. You can then start a dialogue with yourself through journaling to uncover what needs to be expressed so that you can release the emotion and move forward. The emotion needs to be felt and expressed in order to be released. Next time you are alone in your car, trying screaming as loud as you can or punch some pillows until you feel the emotion shift. Watch a sad movie and let yourself cry. Throw stones into a river, choose whatever physical act that resonates that will help you to feel the emotion so you can release it.

What emotions do you need to release?

I would love to hear from you about what you do to help release stored emotions and if you try any of the suggestions, let me know how it felt.

With love,