To feel to heal simply means “acquiring the skills we should have been taught in childhood.

—J.W. James and R. Friedman, The Grief Recovery Handbook.

We’ve become exceptionally skilled at understanding and addressing the physical and mental aspects of our lives—the aspects we feel we can more easily control. Through research and practice, we’ve developed systems and techniques that allow us to optimize our bodies and minds with near scientific precision. We control what and how much we eat. We discipline ourselves to go to the gym and exercise. We meditate and control our minds to think only positive thoughts. We make sure our home’s chi flows properly for optimal health and prosperity.

Of course, all these actions do help us feel healthier, more resourced, more resilient, and better able to cope with the ups and downs of life. However, when it comes to reaching a permanent state of serenity or ‘inner peace,’ exercising, meditating, eating well, and controlling our environments—in and of themselves—don’t quite cut it, do they? These actions and habits do not free us from our inner turmoil and suffering. The endless cycles of ups and downs and the dramas of our lives do still happen. Our life problems persist despite a physically healthy mind and body; despite our conscious attempts to control ourselves and our life circumstances ‘out there.’

This is because we have long neglected another fundamental aspect of ourselves: our emotions.

It’s upsetting, I know. Who wants to feel painful emotions? At the first sign of discomfort, we instinctively run in the other direction. We’ve grown so averse to pain that we do whatever it takes to avoid it. And so, we diligently push our emotions down. We spend a huge amount of energy (and money!) keeping ourselves from feeling any of our painful feelings, resisting any negative emotions that we believe could disable us.

The soda bottle analogy

If we compare our body to a soda bottle, our suppressed emotions would be equivalent to the molecules of carbon dioxide dissolved in the water it contains. The more we keep bottling up emotions (gas), the more pressure builds up inside our bottle—our body. Eventually, our body can no longer contain the pressure. Our emotions having nowhere to go, challenging life experiences recur, or health issues develop. But we keep bottling, because we fear the pain we may experience by allowing difficult emotions to be present and felt. We fear the pain from our bottomless well of suppressed emotions will overwhelm and swallow us whole and never go away. We fear our dark feelings will lead us into crying, depression, and losing control over our life. So, we keep bottling…

The only way out is through

But, unfortunately, the only way to overcome suffering is to face it head-on. If we don’t allow ourselves to fully experience and process these unresolved emotions, we’ll never discover what lies on the other side. That sense of inner peace will remain elusive, and we’ll never get to see how our life unfolds without the weight of those unprocessed emotions holding us back.

“There is no coming to consciousness without pain.”

—Carl G. Jung

Most of us, having been brought up in emotion-phobic cultures, have not learned how to befriend our emotions—especially the ‘negative’ ones—and regulate them in healthy ways. Indeed, resolving unprocessed emotions does not mean wearing the weather of our feelings on our face, expressing emotions impulsively, or having emotional outbursts. These behaviors often indicate a lack of emotional regulation rather than a mindful and healthy resolution of emotional charges. Instead, resolving unprocessed emotions involves creating a sober space where we can spend time alone to fully engage with and understand our feelings.

Let’s have a deeper look at this process:

  1. Owning our emotions: Owning our emotions means taking responsibility for them without blaming others or external circumstances. It involves acknowledging and accepting our feelings as valid parts of our experience.
  2. Using emotional triggers as opportunities: Emotional triggers–when painful suppressed emotions bubble their way up to the surface through our exposure to challenging situations and people in our lives–often signal that unresolved issues from the past are being reignited. When we encounter these triggers and the emotions they bring up, we can work on identifying the root cause of our emotional reactions, feeling the old unprocessed emotions, and integrating the lessons learned.
  3. Feeling our emotions: Taking time to be alone with our emotions means giving ourselves permission not only to truly feel what we’re experiencing in the moment, but also to follow the trail leading to the parts of ourselves that retained unprocessed feelings from our early years. This process might involve sitting compassionately with this younger version of ourselves, encouraging them to experience their emotions without judgement or distraction, so they can finally be processed out of our body.

Let me illustrate this process with a personal experience.

A personal story

I live in a triplex, and to access my apartment, I need to walk in front of my neighbor’s place. Our apartments are designed with large front windows, which means my neighbor can see me every time I enter or exit my apartment. My neighbor is very friendly and sociable, so he often takes the opportunity to greet me and my dog as we pass by. Hence, in the months after I moved in, we have developed a great friendship. What began with friendly greetings and casual interactions has grown into a meaningful connection. Our conversations have become more personal and engaging, and we have shared numerous moments of laughter and support. This evolving bond reflects the genuine camaraderie we have built through our regular encounters and mutual respect.

One day, after 18 months of living in my apartment, I noticed for the first time that curtains were blocking the front windows of my neighbor’s apartment as I passed by. No need to say that this sight was shocking and triggered a deep feeling of rejection within me. The pain I felt was so intense that I could hardly control my emotions. I wondered if I had done something to cause him to shut me out, or if he had reached a point where he no longer wanted to have anything to do with me but couldn’t bring himself to tell me.

Had I let this emotional overwhelm take control, I could have easily lost my composure. I might have found myself knocking on his door in a panic, reacting with anger, and insisting on an explanation. Or, I could have withdrawn entirely, avoiding my neighbor from that moment on out of fear and hurt. I might have shut down emotionally, isolating myself and ruminating obsessively over what I had done wrong, creating distance without ever seeking the truth of the situation.

Instead, I took responsibility for my feelings and allowed myself to let the tears flow. As I sat with the pain, fully embracing it, I began to trace the emotion back to earlier moments in my life when I had felt this same feeling of rejection. I asked myself: When had I felt this way before? With each memory that surfaced, I went deeper, traveling down memory lane until I reached the earliest instance I could recall—the moment when the sexual abuse had abruptly stopped.

As unbelievable as it may sound, when the sexual abuse abruptly stopped—despite how harmful it was and how every part of me was screaming for it to end—I felt deeply rejected as a child. Indeed, children who experience sexual abuse often develop complex emotional responses to the situation, including confusion around the attention they receive from the abuser. So, even though the attention was negative and abusive, I still interpreted it as a form of connection or validation in my childlike mind, especially since other forms of care or affection were lacking in my life. The abuse, as harmful as it was, had been a source of attention, and when it ended, it felt as though the attention—negative as it was–was ripped away. The sudden absence left me feeling empty and rejected, as if I was no longer worthy of being seen or acknowledged, even in such a toxic way.

My neighbor is not an abuser, of course! But his sudden, drastic change in behavior, without any warning, brought me back to that emotionally charged moment from my childhood, as if it were happening all over again. And as painful as this experience was, it offered me a wonderful opportunity to sit with this younger version of myself, to fully feel her sadness, fear, anger, and confusion, and to provide her with compassionate, loving presence and care until these emotions were fully acknowledged, felt, and processed.

With this newfound awareness and feeling much lighter, I was able to approach my neighbor calmly the next time we saw each other to ask about the reasons for the curtains blocking his windows. As it turned out, the reason why he blocked the windows was temporary and had nothing to do with me. However, he was understanding of how it had affected me and compassionately promised to give me a heads-up if he needed to pull the curtains in the future. By working through and resolving these unprocessed emotions, I was able to achieve a positive outcome in this situation. Furthermore, with these emotional charges no longer present, my inner peace has increased, and I find that I no longer take similar situations personally.

Our body is the tool

Healing our emotional body to reach a state of inner peace—both individually and collectively—is what our world needs most right now. Carl R. Rogers describe this healing journey as ‘becoming a fully functioning person’ (Rogers, 1995), which involves resolving our internal conflicts and unprocessed emotions. According to Rogers, “the process of resolving our issues one by one is our road to happiness” (Sato, 2003). While addressing these issues individually may seem daunting, it is more manageable than it might initially appear. All it requires is commitment, open-mindedness, courage, and presence. Fundamentally, healing is about “acquiring the skills we should have been taught in childhood” (James, 2009). These skills enable us to respond (as opposed to react) to emotional pain—whether from the past or present—to navigate through it, and achieve resolution. Our body, with its innate capacity to feel and process, is the primary (if not the only) tool we need for this journey of healing.

“Our body, with its innate capacity to feel and process, is the primary (if not the only) tool we need for this journey of healing.”


References

James, J.W. and Friedman, R. (2009). The Grief Recovery Handbook, 20th Anniversary Expanded Edition: The Action Program for Moving Beyond Death, Divorce, and Other Losses Including Health, Career, and Faith. Harper Collins.

Rogers, C.R. (1995). On Becoming A Person: A Therapist’s View of Psychotherapy. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Sato, T. (2003). The Ever-Transcending Spirit: The Psychology of Human Relationships, Consciousness, and Development. iUniverse.


Helpful resources

RAIN method (Radical Compassion by Tara Brach)

Focusing method (Radical Acceptance of Everything by Ann Weiser Cornell)

Shamanic Journeying with a qualified practitioner (especially helpful when the root cause of the emotional pain is unconscious, ancestral, or spiritual)