Weighing the Effects of Suppressed Emotions

Found this excellent article below on the suppression of emotions; there's only one thing I'd argue with and that is the assumption that being overweight necessarily means a person has emotional baggage (I know many very skinny people who have more emotional baggage than any overweight person I've met).  But then I would argue the point as I'm overweight and therefore biased.

Hope you find the article useful and please go check out Hana's other material and links.

Regards.

Carl

Weighing the Effects of Suppressed Emotions
By Hana Rubinstejnova

How do feelings become suppressed?

Feelings become suppressed when we feel restricted in some way in expressing them. To understand the full extent of our emotions is a material for a whole book. Some researchers state that: 'We are emotional beings'. There are many areas of our lives when we feel particular emotions coming up. Let's just talk about suppressing of these unwanted emotions.

Sadness, joy, happiness, frustration, anger, grief, etc. Each one of these words has a power to create a feeling in our body even as we only read them aloud in our minds.

The feeling that we feel when we are sad or grieving has a natural need to be expressed appropriately. This expression of the feeling allows its natural exit from our mind and body. Whereas when we feel threatened or embarrassed to naturally express our internal emotions they are forced to stay inside our body.

Emotional Packaging

Now, these feelings trapped in our body need to be kept under control somehow, otherwise we would be constantly feeling them. Naturally, our body is magical and very cleverly designed so this has been prearranged.

The best way to package these emotions, so they can be stored in a safe place where they will cause the least damage, could be called 'fattening'. The protecting material here is a body fat. And the best place for their storage away from life sustaining organs such as heart and lungs is around abdomen and thighs.

Sometimes there are too many suppressed emotional issues that need to be stored and kept under control. That's when the areas of fat tissues gets expanded and more places utilized for this distribution of unwanted 'emotionally charged matter', leading to further problems associated with an overweight body.

Trigger points and Letting Go

Now, with these emotions nicely 'handled' inside, a few years later, you are enjoying a relaxing massage or driving a car listening to music on the radio, when suddenly out of nowhere comes this long forgotten feeling.

What to do when they come up?

1) In the first scenario, you will be quick to push it back inside, out of your awareness and maybe later on you'll even have some nice sweet or fattening snack to make sure that unsettling feelings stay deep down in their place.

2) In the second scenario you become fully aware of the feelings that so suddenly came up in your awareness and allow yourself to 'soak in it', to feel it's full charge (if you are driving stop the car when it's safe to do so). Depending on the extent of this feeling and it's association with a past event you may feel the need to cry or to express it some other way. Now, the key is to give in to that emotion and feel it. Feeling what you were supposed to feel when the event happened will give you an opportunity to let that emotional burden go and free yourself from further issues associated with that suppressed feeling.

Signs of suppressed emotions

Are you currently overweight and can't find a reason why?

Are you having regular conflicts with people around you, trying to remember afterwards what was it all about and why did you get involved?

Are you feeling frustrated about your life and people you have to deal with?

If so, you will want to bring your awareness to these situations. Next time, when you find yourself just before such an event occurring, you will have an awareness that it is your emotional 'package' what affects your behavior in that particular situation, not necessarily the people or circumstances around you.

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