Most people don’t realize the strong connection between mind and body. Our emotions are felt in every cell of our bodies and can have a massive impact on our physical wellbeing. This mind-body connection has been investigated and documented for decades in the field of study called Psychoneuroimmunology. The findings show a clear connection between our emotional state, nervous system function, and our immune system.
In our modern, western world, we have created a perceived division between mind and body. When we struggle with pain or symptoms in our body, our culture assumes the answer lies in the body. However, when we take a more holistic approach to our wellness, it’s clear that our emotional state plays a role in our physical health.
Unresolved emotions have a profound impact on our physical health and can show up as various bodily symptoms and discomforts. When we hold onto feelings like sadness, anger, or anxiety without addressing them, our bodies can bear the weight of these emotions.
For instance, ongoing stress might tighten our muscles and lead to tension headaches, while unprocessed grief could weigh on our hearts and manifest as fatigue or chest discomfort. These emotional burdens also weaken our immune system, leaving us more vulnerable to illnesses and disease.
What is Unresolved Emotion?
Unresolved emotions are emotions such as anger, anxiety, sadness or shame that have not been processed. When emotions feel too overwhelming, or when we don’t have the tools to express our emotions in a healthy way, we suppress them either consciously or unconsciously. These suppressed emotions don’t go away, however, they remain in our subconscious and can resurface in different ways.
Especially as children, we are unable to process big emotions on our own, we need the guidance of our caregivers to show us how to process and release those emotions. If our parents or caregivers denied our emotions, or made us feel bad for having them, we may learn to suppress our feelings instead of processing them.
For example, you might be more likely to suppress your emotions if your caregivers
- Didn’t express their emotions in a healthy way
- Punished or shamed you for expressing your emotions
- Denied your emotions or made you feel bad for having them
This becomes a pattern we continue as adults where we suppress our emotions instead of expressing and processing them.
Unprocessed emotions cause a sense of danger inside and can put our body into a chronic state of stress, functioning in a sympathetic nervous system response. Overtime that chronic stress negatively impacts our body’s ability to function in a healthy way.
The following are 4 ways unprocessed emotions manifest in the body as physical pain and symptoms.
4 Ways Unprocessed Emotion Can Manifest in the Body
1. Tense Muscles & Stiffness
Unresolved emotions cause stress on the mind and body. Think about what happens to your body when you’re in a stressful experience. Often our first instinctual response is to tense our muscles. This is our primal response to threat as our body moves into fight or flight.
However, when that stress is lingering in our subconscious, our body gets stuck in a perpetually bracing for the threat, even though it may no longer be present.
During sessions with a client, we resolved much of the trapped emotions from previous stressful experiences. She reported that along with feeling a much greater sense of peace within, she also noticed an eye twitch she’s had for years vanish, and a huge decrease in backpain that had her at the chiropractor each week. As her body released the unresolved emotion, the tension in her muscles melted away.
2. Insomnia & Nightmares
When you fall asleep, you slip deep into your subconscious and whatever your mind had pushed away or suppressed comes to the forefront. That’s why often our dreams are a metaphor for what’s on our minds or what we are struggling to process.
If you have unresolved emotions from past experiences or trauma, they may come out during sleep in the form of nightmares or cause you to have great difficulty sleeping at all.
In several client sessions, exploring the cause of the sleepless nights brought up unresolved emotions from the past. Emotions like shame or fear cause a feeling of danger, which can manifest as nightmares or simply cause your body to come out of a restful sleep feeling wide awake.
3. Migraines & Headaches
Unresolved emotions cause stress in the body and can produce symptoms and pain to manifest. Migraines and headaches are a common psychosomatic symptom which is cause by emotional stress.
This unresolved stress causes a sense of danger in the mind and body, which can result in the mind misinterpreting sensations in the body as dangerous. When the mind senses danger, it alerts you with the sensation of pain. However, when you resolve the unprocessed emotion, the mind no longer feels threatened and can interpret neutral sensations in the body properly.
Many clients have been able to reverse migraines at the first sign by simply creating safety in the mind and body. Other clients have been able to virtually eliminate migraines all together by releasing the unresolved emotion that was causing the migraines. One client in particular who was experiencing a migraine daily resolved the trapped emotion and now rarely experiences migraines at all.
4. IBS & Gut Issues
The expression ‘sick to my stomach’ takes on a whole new meaning when you acknowledge the mind-body connection. Feelings of shame, guilt, or even fear are felt right in the gut and stomach. When your subconscious has stored unresolved emotions, your gut health could take a toll.
IBS is a common symptom of unresolved emotions manifesting in the body. When your mind and body are experiencing stress from those unprocessed emotions, you may experience poor digestion, a thinning of intestinal lining, or even stomach ulcers.
Resolving the trapped emotions can create a sense of safety inside, allowing your body to return to a stable, parasympathetic state where healing and proper gut function can occur.
How to Release Unresolved Emotion
Hypnotherapy and other somatic practices are effective ways to release unresolved emotions from the body. In Hypnotherapy we can connect directly with the subconscious mind to uncover the emotions connected to the physical symptoms in the body.
When you enter a trance state, you are more easily able to release trapped emotions and reframe previous experiences in a way that allows you to move forward. My Chronic Pain Protocol was designed to help those with pain and symptoms use a mind-body approach to healing. By releasing the unprocessed emotion and creating a sense of safety within, you are able to heal physical pain and discomfort in your body.
Conclusion
Your mind and body are completely intertwined together. When you suppress emotion, your subconscious mind and body continue to experience the stress of those emotions and can lead to physical pain and symptoms. You can release those trapped emotions and learn healthy ways to express your emotions, and in doing so release pain and symptoms from your body.
Learn more about healing physical pain with a mind-based approach in this post, or read more on Hypnotherapy here. If you’re ready to heal the physical pain and symptoms in your body, feel free to book a Free Consultation to chat with me directly and start your healing journey.
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