To Hold in Emotions or to Release Them? That is the Question

It is very damaging to hold in emotions. We could liken it to holding in a bowel movement. Imagine the damage that that would do to the body. The same is true for emotions. Holding in emotions may result in physical dis-ease, depression, anxiety, over-reactivity, and uncontrollable anger, and intrusive thoughts. Holding in anger and pain could result in maladaptive coping skills as well such as addiction. So, the effects of holding in emotions is much more destructive than flowing with emotions, or as Mary Magdalene calls them, the River of Love.

Mercedes Kirkel in Mary Magdalene Beckons: Join the River of Love wrties, “Resisting pain holds it in place, while opening to pain allows it to move, complete it’s work, resolve itself, and dissolve. Some people have described the word emotion and e-motion, or energy-in-motion. Allowing our emotions, or feelings, to move, rather than holding them back and keeping them stuck, permits them to move through their natural cycle: we experience and possibly express the emotion and then let it carry us to the source of the feeling, which is ultimately the Divine” (p. 171).

If feeling our emotions, allowing them to flow and come to conscious awareness is so vital for our health and well-being, then why do we resist?

There could be many possible reasons we experience resistance. It is important to look at how you view emotions and what subconscious thoughts are keeping you from opening up your heart and body to the emotions flowing through them.

Possible reasons for suppressing emotions:

1) SOCIETY

Often in mainstream society we deem emotions as not very important. Achievement and staying tough are often more valued in our society than flowing with emotions and being vulnerable. In such a competitive capitalist society, there are a lot of subconscious fears about our survival, that expressing vulnerability is viewed as a weakness, as we hunger for safety and materialistic things. Thankfully, our views on emotions are changing! From parents being more compassionate and empathic to men learning to express emotions, we are making changes. Being vulnerable is so very powerful. Being vulnerable and flowing with our emotions opens up our hearts like a rose and allows our inner light to blossom.

2) FAMILY

How did your parents or guardians view emotions? Sometimes people view emotions as completely unnecessary to express. Did you internalize this thought and behavior? Did your parents or there parents experience abuse or trauma? If so, expressing thoughts and being vulnerable becomes much more difficult if the trauma and abuse went unhealed and unprocessed.

3) PERSONAL TRAUMA

When trauma happens our bodies go into flight or fright mode. We may be perpetually stuck flight or fright and not be able to express what happened. We need to develop calming and coping skills first before we can begin to talk about and process the trauma. Furthermore, if we experience trauma when we are young, we might not have had the support in place to process the deep emotions. So, some emotions like shame and anger might get stuck in our bodies, in our subconscious mind.

4) LACK OF BOUNDARIES OR AWARENESS AS AN EMPATH

Sometimes we hold emotions in for family members who are in pain or we just pick up emotions of people around us. So, when we hold in emotions from other people we don’t consciously realize it until we actually stop to say, ok, let me relax and be with this bodily tension so I may release it. We may have to ask ourselves or our Spirit Guides, where is this emotion coming from because it doesn’t feel like it is from me.

5) FEAR

We are afraid. Mercedes Kirkel writes, “Most of us assume, at some level, that opening to pain will increase our experience of it, perhaps even to the point of burying us in pain” (p. 171). We sometimes hold pain because we are afraid of what might happen to us if we let go. But when we let go, we are connected to our hearts, to our core, and often feel a great sense of intra-connection.

Furthermore, when a trauma first happens, the experience of it may be so overwhelming that we don’t have the mental and emotional resources to handle the emotions. If we continue to be in flight or flight mode after the trauma, then we may be still be taxed and overwhelmed from the experience. But after learning relaxation techniques, breathing techniques and coping skills, we can begin to let the emotions surface so they can be dissolved.

As you continue on your healing path, you will feel lighter in body and clearer in mind. Your mindbody and Soul will rejoice in love!!! Remember, you are infinitely loved. You are infinite love!

Spirit Guide Books and Resources

One of my first ways I connected with Spirit Guides was through books that authors had channeled. I love connecting with Mary Magdalene and Yeshua (Jesus) through books. Mary Magdalene and Yeshua share such a profound feeling of unconditional love and warmth which radiates through their words and messages. Their words hold you in an eternal embrace of love and positivity.

Here are a few of my favorite books channeled from Yeshua/Jeshua and Mary Magdalene:

Heart Centered Living: Messages Inspired by Christ Consciousness by Pamela Kribbe

Books by Mercedes Kirkel:

Dialogues with Yeshua and Mary Magdalene: The Journey to Love

Mary Magdalene Beckons: Join the River of Love

But what if we don’t feel light and love? This is an essential question because this practice isn’t about assuming a Pollyanna-like disposition and acting in ways that aren’t authentic. Mary isn’t advocating suppression. She says when we’ve lost our connection to light and love, the first step is to simply notice it. Notice if the mind is full of thoughts, if the heart is closed, or if they body is tight. She then explains how to shift the body/mind state. We can engage our feelings to open the heart. We can consciously relax to open the body. And we can breathe deeply and fully to clear the mind.

When we do this, Mary tells us that we’ll notice what’s at the root of our disconnection from light and love. Our thought-filled mind, closed heart, and tight body were all blocking something, like clouds occluding the sun. When we open through feeling, relaxing, breathing, we connect with the underlying layer. There, we will usually find some kind of emotional pain: we’re either hurt or scared or sad.

The next step is critical. Once we notice and feel our pain, we can ask God to take it and direct us from there. This is what Mary calls surrender, which she says isn’t about losing or being defeated. It’s about reconnecting with God. We give up our resistance to God. We give up our shutting off, tightening down, and closing away from God. We let go of our contraction away from pain and choose instead to open to it. And through that, we open to life and God (Kirkel, p. 170).

As my experience with the Spirit Guides deepened, I came across the books channeled from the Pleiadians by Eva Marquez. Both books offer in-depth perspective about our Soul’s journey over time. Jeshua also explains our Soul journey in Heart Centered Living, and the Pleiadians explain this journey and the Soul collective’s journey in great detail in these books. The books are available only on Kindle.

The Pleiadian Code: The Great Soul Rescue and Pleiadian Code 2: Cosmic Love

Healing our Heart: The Importance of Vulnerability

In order to heal mindbody and Spirit, vulnerability is necessary. Befriending pain, feeling rage, sorrow, and grief stored in the body, frees us from the stifling of our joy, creativity and love. It might seem hard to feel pain, especially when we have a thousand and one distractions in our modern world and because the ego develops so many defense mechanisms. But, once someone sets an intention to heal, to want to heal even the resistance to healing, then the person will attract the conditions, support and resources necessary to do so. 

I remember one of the few disagreements that I had with my maternal grandmother. We were sitting in my mother’s kitchen at night while I insisted that healing was possible while she insisted healing was most definitely not possible. I was privileged and supported enough by my family to be in graduate school studying to be a therapist. I also worked as a Youth Advisor providing young adults with the support to believe in themselves. My grandmother was a woman with decades of trauma under her belt, who had been left alone in the world as a single, impoverished mother after losing her well-paying, white collar job due to misogyny.

To encapsulate just how hardened and brazen she had to be in her world, someone once put a gun to her head and she told them not to miss the first time. What else could she have done in that moment except to protect herself with a show of hardened fearlessness? Her mother died when she was a young girl and she grew up in a home with a great deal of violence. As time went on, she had to deal with family members getting imprisoned and raising her own kids in addition to her nephew after his mother had been murdered. Her confidence and self-esteem was greatly damaged after being fired and she was probably barely operating out of survival mode since she had to raise children without any family to help. Through it all though, she maintained a heart of gold, despite the truckload of trauma she carried. 

While we sat at the kitchen table, I insisted people could heal while also ignoring all of the pain she felt. As I ignored the pain I felt from her, it was no wonder she kept insisting that healing was not possible. If I had listened with a softened heart, I might have heard, “I am wound so tightly in grief, anger and trauma I can’t possibly imagine a world where I have the support to relax my heart.” But, clearly, we didn’t discuss pain, only abstract possibilities. 

If we had the ability then to speak with vulnerability, I would have said, I am in pain from what has happened in our lives, but I am looking at that pain and letting myself feel it, even if very slowly. And she might have said, “Chris, the roots of my emotional pain are so deep that I cannot even imagine looking at them.” And if we had said that, the walls around our hearts would have melted a bit and healing on the quantum cellular level would have begun. Just ever so slightly, we both would have opened our hearts to both the joy of connection and the pain we carried. 

But we couldn’t say that to each other yet. The bravery of vulnerability was overpowered at that time by all the unspoken, oppressive moments of fear.

To speak with vulnerability, one must feel they are worthy of love. That love gives you the gumption to speak your heart. And abuse and neglect, well, those experiences  make you think you are not worthy of expressing your needs or feelings, or they make you so very angry and explosive that others shut down in fear.   

I realize now that each day my grandmother woke up with a smile; with love in her heart; with jokes up her sleeve; with pleasure for good food, wine and hockey players, was a miracle. The small joys in life were miracles. Her motivation to give to others through donations to the Veterans Association and her volunteering at the arts center to experience the joy of music and theater, these were all miracles after all that she had been through. Her resilience was a miracle. It showed the enduring strength of her Soul. 

Nonetheless, some years after my grandmother passed I realized there was still heartbreak running within me and I needed to restore the flow of energy and love in my heart. I rewired a few memories to shift the energy in my mindbody and Spirit using Transformational Healing developed by Adalina East.

Before passing, my grandmother had suffered a heart attack and was revived, but in a deep coma. When discussing whether to take her off life support, we were shocked to learn she had stage four lung cancer. She never told anyone. Not a Soul. In fact, a few months before her death she had checked herself out of the hospital, probably after learning about her diagnosis. So, in the rewiring, I imagined my grandmother and I sitting in her studio apartment as she told me about her diagnosis and acceptance of death. As I felt us communicating in such a close, vulnerable way, the fibers of my heart energy were restored through open communication, through the flow of tears. I imagined this scenario over and over again until the energy of love and heartfelt communication felt real and powerful in my body. 

Another scenario that I reimagined was when my grandmother, mother and I picked up my uncle after he completed his prison sentence. The whole car ride was extremely painful. My uncle was the only one who talked much. He talked about the fights he had in prison using his alter ego voice, using comedy to talk about really painful things. This was an adequate coping skill I guess, but I sat there in a screaming silence wondering if anyone else realized how hard this whole experience had been for him and for all of us. Behind his laughing clown act was the sad person crying.

Everyone was crying inside. Our tears had been silenced though. The ability to get our own needs met by expressing sorrow had been squashed, crushed under the weight of abuse running through generations of our family. The victim energy, the lingering effects of trauma, abuse and neglect was literally silencing the women and destroying the men through rage and violence.

I wanted for all of us to connect with heartfelt words and experience a family energy healing, to change the energy from withdrawal and rage, to connection and love by opening the heart and supporting one another. So, in the rewiring energy healing, I imagined my grandmother giving my uncle lovingkindness and heart support. She spoke about emotions, about what he must be going through, about how she was there for him, and about how her own heart was broken. I imagined my grandmother also supporting my mother with words of emotion, and my mother supporting me with her words. I also imagined all of us hugging, each one of us feeling we were there for each other.  

All too often, when we experience violence and trauma, our ability to be vulnerable and speak from the heart shuts down in fear and anger. We get depressed, dissociate from our bodies and/or get wired for hyperarousal. We remain stuck in depressive, angry victim energy. Our anger takes over to fill the void of love and we become destructive or overly passive. We cannot be present enough with our emotions or with the emotions of others to offer support.  But we can release the negative energy stuck in our mindbody and energy fields, so we can be more present. Friends and family pick up on the energy shifts, even subconsciously and healing happens on a collective level. 

For instance, I worked with my Spirit Guides to release energy I was holding onto from my grandmother. Often times, people will hold onto the energy of family members in order to support them, as a show of loyalty and love. But holding onto painful energy doesn’t help anyone. I felt a knot of pain in my back and couldn’t figure out where it was coming from. When I tapped into my Spirit Guides they let me know I was holding onto a pain that came from my grandmother. I asked Source Energy to release this pain from all levels of my being, and it was cleared from my mindbody and energy field.

Being able to express our emotions, empathy and the love we feel is one of our most powerful tools to change destructive situations. I am reminded of a story that a friend told me. She had been living in Argentina and there was an attempted robbery on her clothing shop. Instead of freaking out, she talked to the man who was robbing her. She showed him love and empathy and had a conversation with him about what he was doing with his life. The man walked out of that store a changed person because she had literally disarmed him with love. For sure, she had felt fear, but she had the ability to stay in her heart and deal with the situation from a place of love. This showed me that the power of love is the most powerful force. 

After I had restored the heart connection between my grandmother and I within my own energy field, she connected with me while I was in meditation and thanked me for the work I had been doing to heal our family energy. I was very grateful to her for her gratitude. Our heart and spiritual connection is very strong and I continue to connect with her now that she is in pure Spirit form. Lastly, as I did healing work, I felt safer and calmer in my body and I could feel more love emanating from inside of me. 🙂

Releasing Inherited Family Trauma and Remembering Our Loved Ones as Sources of Unconditional Love

We can feel the well of infinite divine love so readily between ourselves and grandparents. The connection between a grandparent and grandchild can be inspiring and life altering. Such was the relationship I had and have with my maternal grandmother. My grandmother inspired me with her bravery, resilience, intelligence, humanitarianism, intuitive wisdom and Soul presence. 

And, yet, there was also a lot of dark energy in our family line. The family energy was heavy with the pain of abuse and violence, incarceration, murders, misogyny and more. My grandmother came to bring her light to the situation. She had experienced deep pain and destruction in a past life as a Cherokee and came again to a dark situation to bring her own light presence to the situation to heal the family energy line and to heal her Soul wounds from the past life.

She was like glue holding the family love energy together, but she suffered greatly and had many energy blocks and traumas carried in her body and energy field. Her children and grandchildren also came to heal the family line and also suffered from the family energy. Family pain affects us on a deep energetic level – making our hearts and the rest of our body heavy with pain. 

In inherited family trauma, we often unconsciously carry the pain of our family members because energy mimics energy. We also feel an unconscious loyalty to our family members even if this means carrying negative energy. This may look like someone having a mentality that they do not deserve financial abundance because other family members are not wealthy or suffered from poverty. It may look like sabotaging relationship because family members suffered in close personal relationships. In order to heal our unconscious loyalties, we can first look at the negative patterns in our lives and set an intention to understand why and what is at the root cause of these negative patterns. We can work with our Spirit Guides to understand our mental and emotional blocks and the root cause of patterns we would like to change.

Sometimes we also need to change the image of family members in our mind, because when we remember them we see and/or feel their negative energy blocks. For instance, I had done a lot of energy healing work with energy I carried from my grandmother. In the latest healing, I had felt knots of pain in my back that felt like a dagger and I had trouble figuring out what was causing the stuck emotions. After asking my Spirit Guides about the origin of the pain, they said I was holding onto an emotion that was my grandmothers. I had attempted to help her by holding onto that pain point of hers, but I wasn’t helping myself or her by doing that. So, I asked Source to release the pain which was my grandmother’s, and the pain knot was released. 

Afterward, I continued to scan my memory of my grandmother’s energy field when she was on Earth. But at that point I was just retransmitting her energy blocks into my mind’s eye and energy field. I tuned into my grandmother’s Soul and she said some very powerful words. She told me to remember and connect with her as she is now, pure Soul energy. So, instead of replaying the image of her energy blocks, place the image of her Soul presence in my mind and see her as the bright, loving Soul that she is. 

By doing this, I can release her old blocks from my mind and connect with a presence of unconditional love.