Emotional Anatomy :: Are Trapped Emotions Impeding Your Healing?
Are Trapped Emotions Keeping You From Healing?
Ancient medical traditions correlate emotions with certain organs. You’ve probably heard that “anger is stored in the liver” etc. Like everything else, emotions are energy. If not properly or thoroughly processed, as often happens with trauma and difficult experiences, that emotional energy remains trapped in the body.
These “stuck” emotions can settle in different organs and tissues. The energy of these emotions disrupts the normal energy flow in that area of the body leading to physical symptoms.
When doctors can’t explain symptoms, they dismiss patients and call it “psychosomatic.” But trapped emotions CAN cause physical symptoms, from disturbed sleep to chronic pain, digestive issues, migraines, etc. To restore proper function to that organ or system, the trapped emotional energy must be cleared.
You can try every nutritional protocol, supplement, diet, lab test…but if the root of the issue is emotional, you won’t get far. For me personally, addressing underlying emotions was the catalyst that turned the corner on my healing.
This is why clearing trapped emotions has become such an important part of my MFT work with clients.
Example: A client will test for a brain or heart supplement. Knowing their brain/heart are likely fine, I'll test to see if it’s actually an emotional issue. If so, we can clear the emotions and guess what? They no longer test for those supplements. It’s pretty incredible.
I love when clients' eyes get wide after we pinpoint the emotion and when it occurred. They’ll ask, “How did you do that??” Trust me...I'm not *doing* anything…your body is talking and we are just listening!
I wholeheartedly recommend somatic types of therapy for processing life's difficulties, but my goal is to help clients with the physical manifestation of those emotions. The client doesn’t even have to verbalize the details of the event we uncover. We are just identifying the energy in the body and helping it move along.
Did you know we can also inherit trapped emotions? The studies being done on generational trauma are fascinating and important.
Inherited Emotions and Generational Trauma
“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” – Carl Jung
My undergraduate thesis at University was based on research done with pregnant women in underserved communities who experienced excessive stress throughout pregnancy. My role was to track the neuro and physical development of their newborns over a few months to see if the increased gestational stress had an impact.
Corticotropin-releasing hormone tells the body to release stress hormones, like cortisol. Many studies have shown the impact of stress in-utero on babies, before and after birth.
Excess stress during pregnancy is one thing…but what about trauma a parent experiences before they are even expecting? Studies done on Holocaust survivors, war vets, 911 survivors, and their children have shown that the cortisol patterns of the parents are replicated in their offspring...causing the children to relive the PTSD of the previous generation, including symptoms like chronic pain and fatigue.
In addition, the study of epigenetics shows us that our environment, nutrition, stress, emotions, etc change the expression of our genes. These factors can actually switch our genes on and off! Research is beginning to show that these epigenetic tags on DNA can be passed down.
Science is finally proving the reality of generational trauma and the fact that emotions can be inherited. Crazy, right??
Here’s a mindbender: The egg that became you was formed in your mother when your grandmother was 5 months pregnant with her…and the precursor cells of sperm that became you were present when your father was in the womb. You are intrinsically connected to your ancestors.
So, the trapped emotions impacting your health may belong to you…or you may have inherited them! I have witnessed so many trapped emotions come up for clients that don’t “belong” to them but still impact them. When you make the unconscious conscious, you can clear those trapped emotions so they can no longer determine the fate of your health. Energy, emotions, nutrition…they all go hand-in-hand.
If you want to read more about the link between emotions/trauma and the body, here are a few books to check out:
It Didn’t Start With You
The Biology of Belief
The Body Keeps the Score
Waking the Tiger
Childhood Disrupted