How we express our emotions are tied to our beliefs and our past conditioning.
Were you taught to feel and learn from your feelings, or were you taught to not let your emotions get in the way or ever told to 'harden up'?
If you're not feeling your emotions because they're painful or difficult or even just because you're too busy and don't have the time for that, then you're hoarding your emotions and are most likely completely unaware they're being stored in your body contributing to your physical and mental pains.
The ultimate cost to you is that you're not living your life optimally and purposefully, but if you are at the early stages of the learning process, then you have not yet recognised that this is the cost to you!
Getting stuck in your emotions because of emotional hoarding has an impact on your physical body. This can include reduced physical performance associated with getting stuck in the emotions of worry and sadness; increased muscle tension associated with getting stuck in the emotions of fear and anxiety, and broken heart syndrome associated with getting stuck in the emotion of grief, where you may experience sudden, sharp chest pain, shortness of breath, fainting, arrhythmias and shock (when the heart can’t pump enough blood to meet the body’s needs), low blood pressure, and heart failure.
Now that this is in your consciousness, it is time to become consciously aware of the limiting belief systems that are keeping you functioning sub-optimally.
Learn the ultimate technique to release hoarded emotions here.
When you think of an emotion, such as worry, grief, fear, anger, sadness or joy, I will first assume that you need to marry it up to a past event where you have experienced one of these emotions, or project yourself into the future, picturing yourself becoming emotional in your present moment at something that has not occurred yet.
Let's use the emotion Anger as an example here.
To feel the emotion of anger, you can recall a past event in your life where anger was the dominant emotion, or you could picture someone violating a belief system you hold to be true in the future which would also trigger your emotion of anger. Either way, you begin to feel the emotion of anger in your present moment. You may refer to yourself as ‘I am angry’. In doing this, you reinforce the point that you are emotionally hoarding and reacting.
Why? Because you associated yourself with the anger. The reality is that you cannot be the emotion. You can, however, feel the emotion of anger, and when you feel any emotion just by thinking about something that occurred in the past, or has not yet occurred, in your present moment, you are hoarding and reacting to your emotions! There is, however, more to it than this.
Emotions are an entanglement of your past experiences and belief systems, as well as your brain chemistry and the associations you make with your physical body during your periods of emotional reaction.
Let’s continue with using anger as an example.
Anger is often considered to be a response to a perceived threat to oneself or to another. The key words in the previous sentence are ‘perceived threat’. You need to already have an established belief system that what you perceive is a threat for you to feel the emotion of anger. If you do not perceive it as a threat, then anger would not occur.
Continuing with the above example of anger, assuming you already have an established belief system about something that you perceive as a threat, for you to experience anger, you also need an intact nervous system.
Why?
Because researchers have identified the neural systems involved in mediating the basic response to threat, which is the amygdala-hypothalamus-periaqueductal gray neural systems. These neural systems are regulated by several regions of the frontal cortex your brain — orbital, medial and ventrolateral frontal cortex. If these neural systems and regions were not functioning with the appropriate release of neurotransmitters, then irrespective of your belief systems regarding what you perceive as a threat, anger would not become your reality!
Hoarding and reacting to your emotions would not occur. Keeping with the anger example, let’s presume now that you have a belief system about something that you perceive as a threat and your neural systems and neurotransmitters are functioning efficiently. For anger to be fully experienced by you, you now need to have your physical body meet your belief systems about what it is to show anger physically in relation to your perceived threat.
Stop for a moment now and think about your physical reactions when you are feeling anger. You may clench your fists, raise your voice, tense your body, go red in the face, have an increased heart rate or blood pressure and so on! Whatever your physical reactions are that demonstrate reactive aggression, they are matching your belief systems and your brain chemistry reactions so that you can identify yourself as angry.
We refer to you as getting ‘stuck in your emotion’ of anger because your physical reactions to anger involve reactive aggression, that is, unplanned, enraged attacks on the object or person you perceived to be the source of your threat. Reactive aggression is usually initiated without regard for any potential rational goal.
You may accept this information, or you may reject it. Either way, this is reinforced by studies on animals, in particular mammals. Reactive aggression is believed to be part of the mammalian gradated reaction to threat. For example, low levels of danger from distant threats induce freezing. Higher levels of danger from closer threats induce attempts to escape the immediate environment. Higher levels of danger still, when the threat is very close and escape is impossible, initiate reactive aggression.
When you stop to consider your own reactive aggressive behaviour to your perceived threats, you will notice that, like other mammals (and recall, humans are members of this species), you too would have a graded reaction based on what you perceive to be low or high levels of threat. and set yourself free, live optimally and live purposefully.
You can substitute any emotion into the above explanation and a similar outcome would be experienced. That is, your past experiences, belief systems, brain chemistry and associated physical reactions for any emotion result in you getting stuck in that emotion. As it is for anger and reactive aggression, all emotions would also be associated with a graded response based on what you perceived to be a low- or high-level reaction associated with the emotion.
Begin to declutter your emotions, feel them, acknowledge them, then process them with Universal Emotional Freedom Technique and stop being 'stuck in your emotions'. This quick and simple technique can be used anywhere, any time. The course runs for less than 2 hours, and the technique, once learnt take a minute to perform.
Universal Emotional Freedom Technique (UEFT) for Improving Emotional Issues
UEFT can be learned by almost anyone. Everything you need to successfully find emotional freedom is professionally presented for you online. With the assistance of the UEFT manual and one-page summary you will quickly become proficient in UEFT.
After discussions with experienced EFT (Emotional Freedom technique) practitioner, George Dellas, he shares that once he started using UEFT instead, he never looked back. The ex-EFT user likens his decision to change over to UEFT as being like updating your old 386 computer for a Pentium processer-driven one. It’s possible that your old PC (EFT) will still do some basic functions, but unlike the new, updated, faster and safer Pentium processer (UEFT), it falls behind. In George’s mind it’s a ‘no brainer’ as to which one you would choose! To read more about UEFT and its positive effects, you can click here to begin your course.
