Release Yourself: Techniques for Releasing Emotions, Thoughts, and Feelings
We all struggle with our emotions, thoughts, or feelings, especially on the roller coaster called life. Regardless, of who you are, learning how to release emotions, thoughts, and feelings is key to living a healthier life. Many psychologists believe that emotions start with the way we think, but there is actually more to it than that. Many people store these experiences in their bodies in the form of physical tension, tightness, and knots in the muscles. A New York best-seller, ‘The Body Keeps Score’ goes into detail about how trauma is stored in the body. Being in an extended state of emotional reactivity can change the way our body functions and can lead to pain in various parts of the body, including chronic pain conditions like headaches and back pain. By releasing your physical tension through various techniques, you can help to facilitate emotional and mental healing as well. In this article, we’ll go over some techniques that may help you to release yourself in healthy ways.
Recognize What You're Feeling
Emotions are a major part of the human experience for most of us. Everyone’s experiences of their emotions are unique based on their perspective and attachment style. However, being able to attune and self-regulate is key to not only understanding yourself better but living a more fulfilling life. . Holding on to thoughts and feelings, and letting them fester inside of you can cause dis-ease (disease) to occur within the body. The most prominent ones we experience but don't release are Anger, depression, stress, anxiety, and grief, these would be our lower vibrational emotions. Yes, all emotions are valid and should be acknowledged.
Acknowledge the Emotion or Thought
The first step to acknowledging anything is to do just that, call it out. Do periodic check-in with yourself, and question how you’re feeling and what you're holding on to. You could be unaware of an emotion or thought. That is living within your body and affecting your mood. This is completely normal and we all do this on some level. Often times we push feelings we are not willing to deal with or can not deal with into certain areas of our bodies or mind. Give a name to what you are feeling. We like to overlook emotions and thoughts but that doesn't help us release them. If you are angry, say that. If you are scared, acknowledge that. Nothing can be done until this step has been taken. Release any shame, and normalize the emotion this is a part of your experience and is meant to teach you something about yourself.
Breathe Deeply
After acknowledging your emotion or thought, take a deep breath. Sit with the feelings and breath steadily through them. Breathwork helps us bring clarity. It aligns the mind and clears away the clutter. During the deep breathing session, you want to get to the bottom of your feelings which means pinpointing the root of the problem. Pinpointing the root of the problem may not solve the issue but it allows your mind to no longer ruminate on the feeling, you can no move to finding solutions and releasing them.
Let Go of the Need to Control
People encounter a lot of problems because they want to be in control of everything. Always feel like we need to have the right answer and many are people, pleasers, as we are conditioned to be compliant citizens, which in itself is passive and nonactive. Let go of your need to be in control of the situation, your only focus is to get to the root of your feelings and work to release them. You are only responsible for yourself.
Release Yourself in a Healthy Way
Release means to expel, set free, to flow freely. That is exactly what must be done with your emotions and thoughts, to expel them from your body. Express yourself! The common ways this can be done are through journaling, drawing, coloring, and painting, these can be considered creative ways of expression and many are able to channel through their art.
For those that need to release deeper emotions, such as anger, rage, grief, and anxiety, a more physical expression is needed. Activities such as exercise, boxing, and karate are perfect and a healthy ways to express yourself physically.
A colorful way of releasing and one that is more primal is Screaming, this helps to bring the feelings buried deep up to the surface and out in a raw way. Breaking, and throwing dishes is another way but safety should be considered when doing so. Using a pillow, which can handle a multitude of actions, screaming, beating, ripping, shredding. A pillow is perfect for releasing no one is hurt and you're able to put your all into it.
Lastly, an overlooked method is simply crying. We don’t like to cry as the narrative around crying is that it shows weakness, but it’s the greatest way to release. It provides emotional intelligence and growth and for many of us heals our inner-child.
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