Are you carrying emotional dis-ease?

If you look closely, everything in nature is recycled. What is born, is either transformed, or dies. And the leftover material is used to build something new. Rain becomes rivers, and the ocean becomes rain. Living matter returns to the soil, and saplings grow once again. Even planets and stars are recycled into new heavenly bodies. There is a constant rhythm of construction and renewal. Things that do not decompose, like landfills filled with plastic and machines are like a sore thumb that neither get restored nor reabsorbed. And instead, even interfere with the surroundings to maintain and renew itself.

So what does that have to do with emotional baggage? Like everything, we are all subject to events, experiences and traumas that get emotionally buried. These emotional events are important, as they hide within itself lessons we need to master. But when it is ignored, then it stays buried, and festers.

Emotional baggage occurs when we experience a hurt within a relationship and that hurt is not resolved or dealt with. We then internalize those negative feelings and develop fears that we may or may not be aware of. When we then go onto the next relationship, these same fears and negative emotions trigger negative or irrational thoughts and behaviors within us. These behaviors then have a negative impact on the new relationship. Instead of protecting you from having the original hurtful experience repeat itself, these behaviors can actually cause that experience to recur time and time again. The fears and hurt feelings only then grow and now become justified within your own mind as correct. This creates a cycle that you then feel unable to escape from in your life.

Our adult relationships revolve primarily around the significant other, followed by the extended family and work place relationships. Psychologists have discovered that adult relationships are preprogrammed patterns. Subconscious patterns are sown when we very young: preschoolers, toddlers or even earlier. Our instinctive reactions and thoughts for our birth family members get so set that it seems like a natural occurrence. And are not perceived as a reactive force, which it actual is, crystallized at the moment of occurrence. Most of us will never even see or sense a pattern until we go determinedly looking for it. But just like a non-renewable landfill, the buried emotions do nothing to your past or future relationships. It just sits there buried and festering.

Many alternative healing systems believe that the origin of current physical diseases starts with emotional dis-ease. Homeopathy for instance, takes into account the emotional constitution of a person for effective treatment. In Traditional Chinese Medicine there is a direct relationship between the emotional life of a person and their physical health. Each organ is associated with a range of emotions. These organs dominate the expression of particular emotions and they are in turn are affected by these same emotions. The emotions exert a negative influence only when they become too intense, strong, unexpressed, excessive or when they dominate the psyche over a long period.

So what can you do to release and detox old emotional hurts, grudges and patterns? Louise L. Hay in Heal Your Body has identified the mental cause for each disorder. Anger turns into things that burn, boil, or infect the body. A pattern of criticism can turn into diseases like arthritis. It makes me wonder if my lower back pain is a result of my lifelong attitude towards money matters. She advocates positive affirmation, to the point, that even your organs start believing the affirmation. I find chanting affirmations all day infinitely, a stoical joyless task. But nonetheless, it could work better as a supplement to a belief- altering exercise. Hay’s book could be a great starting point for examining existing beliefs and thought patterns in the first place.

I have found the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) abundantly found over the internet, relieves my daughters stress just before exam time. I have also found it effective to relieve pressure from a bout of anxiety.

However, for longer lasting relief, that has included attitude change and relief from habitual negative emotional reactions to established relationships, I have found Brandon Bay’s therapeutic exercise at the end of her book in The Journey to be pretty effective. Although drained after the exercise, I felt a weight had lifted off my shoulders. A weight I did not even know existed!

According to Brandon, this exercise should be conducted regularly, so that emotions accumulated can be routinely discharged. An effective emotional cleanse requires a safe, non-judgmental environment, an inner honesty, maybe some sighing and crying. So what happens after a deep successful emotional cleanse?

First of all, you can feel emotionally drained; you will also feel lighter mentally or physically, or both. Your world (I prefer mental outlook) might seem refreshed,  like the  sun is peeping out just after a heavy burst of rain. And in the days to come you will be surprised by happy changes in your life. You might observe an unexpected change in the way you relate. There are a host of other therapies out there, such as herbal therapy, acupuncture, Asian bodywork therapy, hypnosis, yoga that help restore long-standing emotional disharmony. Some make a difference indirectly and take longer; others are more direct and immediately impacting. The good thing about emotional therapies, is that you only have to do half of the effort. The other half unfolds itself in strange and wonderous ways.

I have, through personal experience found, it to be a much superior method to mental therapies- which is basically exhanging thoughts and ideas: could be through a book, person or workshop. While in an emotional therapy- you are experiencing emotions and are in engaged in experiences such as -reliving, pain, letting go, moments of clarity, and renewal of emotions into a more healthy format.

When old emotional hurts and grudges are brought up and released, a space is created for new life patterns. A new bed, nourished with understanding and forgiveness, and watered with love results in  freedom and expansion of the spirit. I agree with Swiss philosopher, poet and critic Henri Frederic Amiel who profoundly observed, “So as long as a person is capable of self-renewal, they are a living being.”