(Madisyn Taylor)
Throughout our lives, we may experience emotions that disturb or distress us. Often, our first reaction is to push our feelings away. We bury our emotions, deny the validity of our feelings, or distract ourselves with other concerns. But the diverse emotions you experience are neither good nor bad, they are simply a part of being human. Choosing not to experience pain, anger, or other intense feelings could cause those feelings to become buried deep into your physical body. There, they may linger unresolved and unable to emerge, even as they affect the way you experience the world. Allowing yourself to experience all your emotions rather than push the more painful ones away can help you come to terms with your feelings. Experience them and then move on.
It is possible to bring forth the old feelings you have pushed aside and experience them in a safe and enriching way. It may sound silly to set aside time to feel your old wounds that you haven't dealt with, but this can be a very beneficial healing experience. Find a safe place and pick a time when you can be alone. Make sure that you feel secure and comfortable in your surroundings. Bring to mind the circumstances that originally triggered the emotions you've been pushing away. You may need to revisit these circumstances by reading relevant entries in your journal or using visualization to relive your past. Once you have triggered your long-denied emotions, let yourself feel and try not to judge your reactions. Cry if you need to, but don't block the flow of your feelings. Allow any thoughts that are connected to your emotions to surface. As you release the feelings you have pushed inside of you, you will find yourself healing from the experience associated with these emotions.
When you deal with your feelings directly, they can move through you rather than staying stopped up in your body as emotional blocks. Acknowledging your emotions, instead of pushing them away, allows you to stay emotionally healthy and in touch with your feelings.
My Thoughts:
I run workshops dealing with just this kind of thing but channelling the issues via creative writing. This can be through a variety of ways, such as stories either written from a personal point of view or maybe considered through the eyes of someone else that was involved, or even dictated as a narrator or through a third person. It can also be done through poems, memoires, letters to various people (yourself, the perpetrator, parents, siblings etc.) or any number of ways that give the person some kind of release.
Afterwards, we look at what to do with the writing. Some choose to keep it safe to be discovered at a later date, maybe after they have passed, some want to publish, some simply want to get rid of it, like setting themselves free by destroying the memory. If this is the chosen path there are many ways to achieve it. The one I really like is to write it out on rice paper, rip it up into tiny little pieces and leave it out for the birds to eat … then again setting fire to it is very satisfying as well.
Whatever is chosen, it is often simply the process of letting go of something that has maybe been held onto for a very long time that is the release that is needed, that allows people to move on.