Freeing suppressed feelings
If you want to start releasing your repressed feelings, you first have to understand what feelings and emotions actually are. How do you know what you are feeling? Feelings and emotions are simply body sensations. Every feeling has its own body sensation. Fear has a different body sensation than anger or sadness. How else could we distinguish between the individual feelings and emotions?
The liberation of suppressed emotions is precisely about learning to perceive these body sensations again, to give them space, to allow them again.
Emotions are energy in motion (e-motion) that evoke individual body sensations.
The nature of emotion is to just flow through the body within a few minutes , you've probably seen it happen with little children. One minute they are crying, the next minute they are laughing. That's how healthy feeling of emotions and feelings works.
What is the key to freeing your repressed feelings?
Freeing the suppressed feelings is about perceiving the feeling or emotion for what it is: E-motion, energy in motion. Energy in motion. Nothing more.
When you suppress a feeling, the energy (e-motion) stalls and gets stuck somewhere in your body in the tissue or an organ. Holding on to the story you tell yourself about the feeling, that's the painful part.
That is why it is important to separate the story you tell yourself about the painful situation from the feeling and to direct your attention only to the feeling, the body sensations. Then the stagnated energy of the suppressed feeling will start to move again and you can gradually free it.
You also learn again that emotions rush through your body in no time when you let go of the story about the emotion.
When you start to free your emotions, you will notice that there are emotions that are more on the surface and others that are several layers deeper, because emotions lie in layers on top of each other.
How you too can learn to let go of repressed feelings again
I was also allowed to learn to allow suppressed feelings again. Everyone can learn this, you too!
I can tell you from my own experience that with some deep feelings it took several months until I could fully allow them again.
So, be patient with yourself and get support if necessary if you want to get to deep issues.
In the beginning, the feeling may only appear for a second and then disappear immediately because you push it away again.
Keep at it, you are on the right path. The path to your home.
The most important thing if you want to learn to allow feelings again
Childlike curiosity and openness!
Be curious like a little child! If you want to learn to allow feelings again, childlike curiosity, openness and willingness are the most important qualities to explore your feelings.
Where and how do I feel emotions?
You feel feelings in your body, not with your head. Feelings are bodily sensations such as heat, pressure, tingling, everything contracts, fists clench and much more. You observe the body sensations.
- Sit down in a quiet place where you feel safe.
- close your eyes
- take a few deep breaths in and out
- go into your body to a place where you feel a tension and ask yourself:
If a feeling were to sit there, what could it be? - Observe what happens. Just observe
- Describe what you feel
Say to yourself in a curious voice, "Interesting what I'm feeling right now, interesting."
This puts you in the observer role and creates a distance to what you feel
Try it!
Your mind will try to interfere and start telling you a story.
Ignore this as much as you can.
Go back into the body again and again and observe the body sensations. Again and again.
In this way you can learn to develop awareness again and learn to allow feelings again.
What do I do when feelings arise in everyday life?
When you are in the process of learning to allow repressed feelings again, it will happen that feelings "knock", i.e. they want to be felt. Then allow this to happen. Try to let them be there, go into your body with your perception and feel.
When a repressed feeling comes knocking, you may become afraid of the emotional pain and unconsciously suppress it again very quickly.
That is fine and normal.
Don't feel bad when you have suppressed the feeling again, otherwise you give your body the signal that the suppression was not good. I.e. you have the focus on the negative.
Focus on the positive. You could feel the feeling for a few seconds!
Say to yourself, "Wow, I just felt something!" Say it out loud to yourself.
That's how it starts! With a few seconds. The next time it's a few seconds more and the next time it's even more. I started like this. You can do it too!
You will notice that over time you can allow the suppressed feelings to last longer. You will gradually lose the fear of letting the feelings out and allowing them.
Theimportant thing is that you focus on the fact that you were able to allow the feeling - no matter how long or how short - so you have a positive focus.
Are you ready to feel your feelings again?
I support you with Emotional Release sessions to help you release your repressed emotions.Â
Why is this so important?
Because that gives the body the signal that it was good that you let the feeling out. Then your body will allow it again the next time. Because your body has linked it positively.
You don't have to know what it was that you felt. In the beginning, you often can't name the feelings that belong to the body sensations, that's normal. At some point, when you have felt it more often, a word suddenly comes into your head, and then you know that the stone on your chest that you felt all the time was fear, or that the strange feeling in the stomach area was shame. At some point you just know.
Dealing with anger and why hitting a pillow only helps to a certain extent
It's not about acting out feelings, screaming, punching a pillow. That can be good, yes, but that is acting out and has nothing to do with freeing feelings.
It is excellent to punch a pillow but still suppress feeling the emotion.
Maybe you also jog away your anger or resentment ?
Nothing is wrong with jogging! But if you use it to suppress your feelings, you make it difficult for yourself when you want to let out and release your suppressed feelings.
It isnot about controlling your anger, as you often read. Controlling anger is suppressing anger. And when you suppress anger, you automatically suppress other feelings, even the ones you want to feel.
It is about releasing your anger through feeling. Feeling happens inside you. If you learn to feel your anger, you will no longer do any harm on the outside, neither with words nor with deeds.
The key is when you feel something rumbling inside you:
- Retreat to a quiet place
- Sit down
- Close your eyes
- Become quiet
- Feel what is going on in the body
- Observe only the body sensations
- When your head starts telling you a story, go back into your body, again and again.
This also works with anger. It can be a very intense experience, but if you learn a healthy way of dealing with anger, you will find that you can deal with situations in a much healthier way. Your environment will notice this.
Again:
Controlling anger is suppressing anger.
If you are a head person
You have to know that you were not born as a head person. Emotions are felt in the body. When at some point you started running away from your emotions and feelings, you developed avoidance strategies and survival strategies. One of countless survival strategies is to run away from the body (where emotions and feelings are perceived as body sensations) and go into the head.
That's how you became a head person. Because you were too afraid to feel certain feelings.
But you can also reverse the whole thing and go from your head back into your body - into your heart.
Not in one day, but step by step.
If you have taken refuge in your head, you have to be patient, but you can also let your suppressed feelings out again.
With head people I also work with different body exercises that come from trauma therapy, which help you to gradually get back in touch with your body.
What you need to know
Learning tofeel feelings again is not something you do in one day or two weeks, it is a project, a journey.
This journey begins with the first step.
The time is now.
How you can use triggers to release repressed feelings
Triggers can be an excellent support in freeing your repressed feelings. They are the lighthouse to your freedom.
What happens when you get triggered
- an invitation to release this suppressed feeling from your childhood and
- a perfect occasion to work on this in an emotional release session.
These challenges can arise in releasing the repressed feelings
Releasing repressed feelings can be challenging at first because you are doing something completely new, something you haven't done in years or even decades. That's why it's important to keep at it and get support if you feel that nothing is moving or you want to work on deep issues.
You are too afraid to feel certain feelings
Because in childhood you were overwhelmed by emotions in certain situations, you developed fears of feeling certain deep emotions and feelings, this was a protective mechanism you developed as a child.
Sometimes you may think you have to die when you feel what you feel. It really does feel that way. But if you have the courage - and yes, it takes courage - you will find thatthe feeling didnot kill you, you survivedit.
And this is an important realisation:
You have survived feeling the feeling! That means you now have a positive reference for the next time.
However, often the fear of feeling a certain emotion is worse than feeling the actual emotion. You may not be aware of the fear of feeling certain emotions.
In my practice I support people with various special deep inner journeys that can facilitate access to the emotions again.
The role of negative beliefs in releasing repressed feelings
If you were emotionally hurt in your childhood, you may have developed beliefs and convictions in your childhood such as
- When I feel this, I die
- I must not be sad
- I must not be angry
- What I feel is wrong
Then it may be that these beliefs prevent you from releasing the feeling. These beliefs lie like a lid over the feeling and suppress it further.
Here we transform the beliefs in my sessions so that you can access the feelings behind them.
Become aware of your avoidance strategies
This is an immensely important hint! Only when you are aware of something can you change it. You must know that in your childhood you developed countless survival strategies to survive emotionally. Unconscious action is always emotion-driven.
That is, when you act unconsciously, it is often because you unconsciously do not want to feel a feeling that is coming up. E.G.
- You are numbing yourself with food, alcohol, smoking, excessive activities such as work, sports, sex, shopping, computer games, etc.).
- Helper syndrome
- Procrastination
- Compulsive behaviour of any kind
- Netflix
- You want to please others all the time
- Pine presses
- You cannot be alone
- You can't set limits / can't say "no
- Aggression
- Perfectionism
- You are a head person
- You must always be in control
- And many more
Start observing yourself and become aware of what avoidance strategies you are using. Everyone uses avoidance strategies. Therefore, be honest with yourself.
When you feel the impulse to use one of your avoidance strategies:
- Pause
- Sit down and close your eyes
- Become quiet
- Observe which feeling wants to show itself
When you can deal with feelings in a healthy way again, you will find that your avoidance strategies fall away because you no longer need them.
Do you want self-help impulses to free your feelings?
I send you impulses, support and exercises on how you can start to free your feelings and become aware of when you are suppressing feelings everywhere. There you will also find the dates for my trauma-sensitive online group coaching.Â
Are your thoughts really your own thoughts?
As small children, we absorb everything our environment says and does likea sponge, including the thoughts and statements of our environment. If your parents have limiting ideas about life, partnership, career and themselves, you have probably also absorbed this and stored it in your subconscious.
You were told:
- What all does not work
- What you cannot do
- How hard life is
- What is not possible
- What is not allowed
Therefore ask yourself: Whose thoughts are these that I am thinking?
Are these my thoughts or the thoughts of my parents, grandparents, teachers etc?
If you have negative beliefs about yourself, your life, relationships, work, money, life in general, stored in your subconscious, it is very likely that you think a lot of negative thoughts during the day. These negative thoughts in turn trigger feelings in you that you may not want to feel and then suppress.
Realign your mindset
This is not about positive affirmations, but about transforming the negative beliefs in your subconscious. If you have positive beliefs about yourself and life in your subconscious, you automatically think positively and thus create positive feelings in yourself.
Changing beliefs and convictions is the key here!
Suppressed feelings from childhood
We were often conditioned in our childhood by our parents, society, kindergarten, school, friends to suppress our feelings.
We learn as children that it is either not desirable to show certain feelings, such as anger or rage, or that it is seen as weakness by others if we show certain feelings, such as sadness or shame.
Through sentences like:
- Don't cry!
- Go to your room and only come out when you have calmed down.
- A big boy does not cry
- There is nothing wrong with that
- Don't be a chicken
we learn as a child that it is not desirable or right for us to feel and express certain feelings or that our perception is wrong. This is how conditioning begins, that we start to suppress feelings.
If you were emotionally abandoned as a child
When something happened to you as a child that overwhelmed you emotionally and no one was there for you emotionally, you needed a survival strategy. You started to suppress those scary feelings that overwhelmed you.
Many people even develop fears of feeling deep emotions. This leads us to suppress emotions more and more, over years, decades.
Experiences that were not felt in a healthy way do not simply disappear, but are stored in the body's tissues as cellular memories and ferment like a festering cooker.
The repressed feelings from your childhood are still in your body waiting for you to releasethem.
Your inner child is waiting for you to heal it, to release the repressed feelings from your childhood.
The
- Anger
- Fainting
- Sadness
- Loneliness
- Excessive demand
- Fear
waiting for liberation.
Feelings need to be resolved where they originated, at the child level.
Therefore I work with deep, powerful inner journeys with you and your inner child.
What is the inner child?
The inner child is the younger version of you that has experienced the emotional pain. We have many inner children in us at different ages.
As long as you have not released and resolved the emotional pain of your inner children, you carry this within you as an adult.
You are an emotionally wounded child in an adult body.
You carry the emotional injuries of your inner child into your everyday life, your job, your partnership, your communication and into your relationships with other people.
Releasing the feelings and emotional pain and trauma of the inner children is a core element in all my sessions.
Because the pain has to be resolved where it originated, at the child level.
How repressed feelings and depression are connected
The number of people suffering from depression and burnout is constantly increasing. How is it that depression and burnout and the consumption of antidepressants are increasing more and more in our society?
Could it be that repressed feelings can be at least partly responsible for depression and burnout?
You need to know that we cannot selectively suppress feelings. You can't suppress anger or fear and allow joy, that doesn't work. If you start to suppress one emotion, you automatically suppress all emotions. You can imagine that you are putting a kind of blanket over your emotions. You still feel them a little bit, but everything is muffled.
This blanket under which the repressed feelings are is nothing more than a protection. A protection that prevents you from having to feel painful feelings and emotions. This blanket that you use is a coping strategy that you have adopted because you were or are overwhelmed by having to feelthe emotions and feelings.
Why depression feels the way it does
If the blanket under which you hide the feelings and emotions becomes thicker and thicker, i.e. if you suppress the feelings more and more, at some point you dull completely, you feel nothing any more, everything is grey and numb.
Joylessness
Joylessness is described as one of the main symptoms of depression. If you suppress the "negative" feelings, you automatically suppress joy.
Exhaustion
Suppressing feelings and emotions takes enormous amounts of energy, another symptom of depression and burnout, boundless exhaustion.
Circles of thought
Thought circling is often described as a symptom of depression.
Your mind tells you a story about what happened to you, who did what to you, that you are a victim and everything is completely hopeless. You tell yourself this story over and over and over again. You have linked your feelings to this story, which you tell yourself again and again.
If you keep telling yourself the story of how hopeless everything is, you hold on to the feeling of hop elessness, but at the same time you don't want to feel the hopelessness and therefore suppress it. The more you tell yourself the story, the more you suppress the feeling of hopelessness.
This is how the negative whirlpool of thoughts arises, which can lead to depression.
Feelings - no matter what they are - are only painful when we associate them with a story. If we can just let the feelings flow, no negative mood stays with us.
What feelings from your childhood are you suppressing?
If you were left alone emotionally in your childhood, you were overwhelmed to cope with the strong emotions. You started to suppress everything. In my Emotional Release sessions you feel the emotional pain of your childhood in order to be able to let it go.Â
When you completely lose the connection to yourself
By suppressing your feelings, you lose the connection to yourself. You still exist, but you no longer live.
Not everyone who suppresses feelings gets depression
Butif the blanket placed over the repressed feelings becomes too thick, depression can be the result.
What has overwhelmed you so much emotionally that you suppress it?
If you are depressed - listen deeply to yourself to see if this could apply to you.
You too can learn to deal with your suppressed feelings.
Book my clarity talk now if you have the deep will to release your repressed feelings again.
What is the benefit of freeing yourself from repressed feelings?
- What you feel, you can heal
- You learn to deal with your feelings in a healthy way
- You reconnect with yourself and life
- Your life gets more depth
- You no longer need your avoidance strategies
- You feel joy, love, bliss, gratitude, contentment again.
- The energy that you needed to suppress the feelings is now available to you again.
- Complaints that were related to repressed feelings can disappear
- The circling of thoughts decreases, slows down or may stop
- You get back from your head to your heart
- You are no longer triggered so easily or often
- You can make peace with the past
- You can heal your inner child
Emotional Release Therapy for the release of repressed feelings
To access deeper feelings and emotions, emotional hurts and negative beliefs, you may need support.
If you want to go deeper, check out my Trauma Sensitive Coaching offering as a one-on-one session or online group coaching.Â
If you have experienced deep emotional wounds or trauma, I recommend that you seek counselling.
In my coaching and therapy sessions I work with different trauma therapy methods.Â
I always associate the release of repressed feelings and emotions with inner child work, because it is the feelings of your inner child that you are feeling or still repressing.
If you have the deep will to free yourself from your suppressed, long pent-up feelings, you are cordially invited to go on the journey with me. You need courage. Courage to look at the emotional injuries of your inner child. In deep, powerful inner journeys, you slowly begin - in a protected setting and at your own pace - to let the long-suppressed feelings out of your body and release them.
Your body does this at its own speed and depth. Your body knows exactly what it can let out in the specific session and what it cannot yet. This always ensures that it does not become too overwhelming for you. This is your own built-in protection mechanism.
You learn how to deal with your feelings in a healthy way.
In Emotional Release Therapy you learn to separate the story from the emotion and to perceive and feel the emotions for what they are: Energy in motion. Energy in motion. A body sensation that flows through our body. No more and no less.
The traumas stored in the tissues, old emotional wounds are released through powerful, deep inner journeys, inner child work, changes in beliefs, forgiveness and, if necessary, body therapy interventions, and peace can be made with what has been experienced.Â
Emotional Release Therapy is not a talking therapy. If you want to release your suppressed feelings and emotions, I accompany you through powerful, deep inner journeys into your innermost being.
Are you ready to release your repressed feelings?
Then book your clarity talk right now!
Stefanie Heinlein
I am an expert on narcissism, healing practitioner & mentor. My mission: emotional release & working with the subconscious mind. I supported people to free themselves from the shackles of their emotional hurts and traumas, and related repressed emotions and patterns, regardless of the cause. My particular area of heart and specialization is supporting women in releasing their narcissistic trauma so that they can once again live a self-determined life with self-love, self-worth and self-confidence.
