If you really want to live a better life, your best life and make the world a better place, you’re going to have to learn how to release pent-up emotions. Pent up emotions are highly destructive to the human body, leading to the deterioration of the immune system, resulting in more susceptibility to illness and disease. Pent up emotions are the leading cause of premature death.
All that suppressed emotional energy is like a ticking time bomb just waiting to explode. The pressure builds and builds until something has to give, and it’s your physiology which is compromised as you cannibalize your own life force just to make it another day.
A healthy human being finds a way to process energy in a flowing manner allowing the life force to flow to and through the body, refreshing and nourishing in a natural wave of life-sustaining current. Pent-up negative emotions block the natural flow of life and love energy which is healing and allows you to continue to grow and expand in ways only you can.
You need to find a way to release the pressure which builds over time, or else something very bad is going to happen to you or those around you who you care about.
There are many ways to release pent-up emotions. Some are destructive, like when you strike out at someone emotionally in an over-reactive response to something that would have otherwise been innocuous. Embarrassing as this explosive event might have been, you did experience some relief from those pent-up emotions, finding a way to save you from further deterioration.
Certainly, there are more productive ways to release pent-up emotions without having to compromise your circle of influence, potentially causing damage to your social network. If you keep up this destructive method of releasing emotional pressure, it won’t be long, and your friends and family will find other places to be.
Plus, you wouldn’t want your people to think of you as a toxic influence on their life, right?
I have been blessed to discover years ago that there are effective methods to release emotional blockages and to resume healthy energy flow. My path led me first to prayer, followed by Neuro-linguistic Programming, hypnotherapy, then to Reiki, among many other modalities to find healthy ways to let go and get back into flow.
How to Release Pent-Up Emotions
You know when you’re approaching your body’s need to release pressure when you start getting edgy, feeling uncertain, anxious, stressed out, fearful, suspicious, or paranoid. Your subconscious is looking for danger signs to target for release. Any slightest indication of something appearing not to be in perfect order will trigger your (over-reactive) defensive alarm system, initiating an attack with the veracity of a kill-or-be-killed response.
These feelings of uneasiness or fear are your early warning system, notifying you that an explosive event is eminent. Knowing this, you can prepare for more healthy alternatives for releasing your pent-up emotions.
Therapy is a good method. You don’t have to seek out a paid professional, a good friend you can trust, who will allow you to express your emotions without judgment will work. Even an anonymous stranger who doesn’t know you (you don’t have to reveal your identity) can be an angel in human form, who will listen to your story, allowing you to in effect release some of your emotional pressure. You can walk away and let it go.
If you are in your body’s natural energy flow of love, memories and the emotional baggage which accompanies them is able to move about freely through your body, to and through your consciousness and out of your body without having to find places in the body to hide, where the emotional wounds fester, causing the deterioration of the immune system, body systems, and organs.
Accept
To start letting go you must accept that things are just as they are, and even though someone else’s actions or reactions feel like they are focused on you, they never are. When people act or react inappropriately, it is only an expression of their need to express and release their pent-up emotions, it has very little to do with you, except that they know no other way to release the emotional pressure which is causing them discomfort and pain.
Realize that things are just as they are and feel free to express yourself without judgment and realize that you have no need to judge anyone else who is only doing the best they can, just like you. (We’re all in this life, together.)
Allow
Allow all emotional states to be in all people as well as within yourself. Now that you know that your bad feelings are only your pent-up emotions looking for release, you can let them be, allowing yourself to fully feel the emotions and let them express themselves naturally. No need to resist or deny your feelings. If you need to cry, cry. If you need to scream, scream.
Activate
Take action to activate positive energy flow in and through your biology. Engage yourself in any activity which makes your heart sing. Resist stagnation by gently encouraging blood flow and oxygenation of your body. Do a little light exercise to increase your biological flow and your energetic flow will follow.
Absorb
Let yourself soak in the ideas surrounding the basis for your feelings, seeking to understand what it might be like to be in the other person’s shoes, to have lived their life which led to whatever is the source of your discontent. Seek to understand empathetically with compassion, not taking it personally, and let it be. For more severe feelings of angst, you can initiate a form of meditation or prayer.
Appreciate
Find a way (or ways) to use this reminder that the most powerful energy for healing is love. Do something that allows you to appreciate this life, to be grateful, and express compassion and love. When you think of this event or anything associated to it, snuggle a pet, do something nice for someone else, volunteer, or make a donation to a worthy cause.
Take action to memorialize your allowance of “what is” by expressing gratitude and appreciation.
If you feel bad, do something good, and you’ll feel better.
Absolve
Absolution sets you free. If you can understand that the source of your ill feelings really doesn’t have anything to do with you (even though it feels like it was directed at you) you can empathize with the source’s need to do, say, or initiate whatever transpired which resulted in your feeling bad. You may have only been acting as the shock absorber for this person, which helped him or her release some of their own pent-up emotions.
From this perspective of understanding, you can find the love within yourself to forgive this person without judgment or the need to feel sorry (which would be condescending) for him or her.
There is no need for the other person to apologize to you for no crime was actually committed. You do not need to communicate your forgiveness to the other person (because they may not be able to understand it) for this forgiveness is for you, from your heart, filled with love and compassion.
Also, remember to be kind and loving enough to absolve yourself from any wrongdoing, or for harboring bad thoughts or discontent about this. Sometimes feelings may be pushed down and repressed for many years, since very early childhood.
Love and forgive yourself.
And finally,
Let it Go
No need to belabor it. True forgiveness has no need to revisit or reflect on this event, except to appreciate the hidden treasure or lesson which may have been hidden within it.
You are love and you are free.