In my last two posts, “11 Ways You Are Sabotaging Your Life and How to Stop” and “One More Way You Are Sabotaging Your Life: Procrastination,” I told you that releasing emotions from the past is the answer.
In this post, I am going to go deeper into why emotions from the past are causing you so many problems. I will explain how your past is sabotaging your life.
I will show you how releasing the past can heal your life, even if everything you have tried has failed.
How painful events from childhood affect your life
As a child, when you had a traumatic or just upsetting experience, you did not leave that event behind. The emotions you experienced in that moment became stuck in your body.
If you have been reading my posts, you know that you feel your emotions in your body. Antonio Damasio (The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness, 1999) calls the body the theater of the mind. Candace Pert (Molecules of Emotion: The Science Behind Mind-Body Medicine, 1997) explains that emotional information is carried by chemicals called neuropeptides. Neuropeptides are produced by the brain. Virtually every cell in your body has receptor sites for the neuropeptides. Neuropeptides tell your body what to feel.
During painful childhood events neuropeptides become stuck in the receptor sites.
Why are stuck emotions such a problem?
Stuck neuropeptides are not dormant. They can be easily triggered by external events or even your own self-talk. That’s right. You can talk yourself into a painful emotion.
Anytime you feel a similar emotion in the present moment, new neuropeptides are added to the backlog in your cells. For example, if you felt fear as a young child, any new experiences of fear are added to your cells and create an emotional backlog of pain. You are feeling all of the fears from your childhood plus any new fears. This can start to add up making your emotions unmanageable.
How stuck emotions sabotage your life
People generally fall into two categories. One group of people feel all their emotional backlog and act on it. The second group stuffed their emotions and are out of touch with their emotions.
The people who feel all their emotions sabotage their lives by acting out based on emotions from the past. These people are living in the past. They react to real or imagined slights and incidents, such as being abandoned, betrayed, or disrespected. They are often hurt, angry, or upset. They create chaos with their emotions.
Friends and family are often confused and hurt. The real reason for the upset – emotions from the past – is not obvious to anyone.
You might be thinking that the other option, being out of touch with your emotions, is better. I don’t think so. Being out of touch with your emotions leads you to sabotage your life in many ways.
People who are out of touch with their emotions, stuffed their painful emotions from childhood as a way to cope. When you stuffed your painful emotions you also stuffed positive emotions. Eventually you don’t know how you feel. You struggle in relationships because you can’t feel close to others. You struggle with decisions because you don’t know which outcome feels best. You don’t even know how to feel good enough about yourself.
You can end up feeling that life has no meaning.
Just because you stuffed your feelings doesn’t mean that the neuropeptides have turned off. They are still working day in and day out. When you become stressed you might find yourself blowing up with rage over a minor incident or you feel so down in the dumps you can’t function and you don’t know why. These events may seem out of character, but they are symptoms of stuffed emotions.
Do you see how your emotions from the past are sabotaging your life?
Now what can you do to heal your life?
Maybe you are waiting until your life gets better or you have more time before you decide to release the past. Until you release the neuropeptides that are stuck in your cells you will continue to sabotage your life. I know what you are thinking. You don’t know how to release the past or you have tried and failed.
The poetry of emotion process is a different way to release the past. You will be releasing your emotions without reliving painful events. And more importantly, you will be reclaiming your true emotions. These are the emotions that got lost along the way. You can become the person you were meant to be.
To read more about the poetry of emotion process, click on “Are you new to the site?”
In my next post I will be going into more detail about exactly how to release the emotions that are sabotaging your life.
In the meantime, leave me a comment. How are you sabotaging your life?
(Image: L’Orso Sul Monoclclo @ Flickr)
