Emotions are energy-in-motion. We are supposed to feel them, take the message they’re sending us and release them. But we resist them because of the stories we attach to them.
Tightening in the chest, heat in the body or a lump in the throat are temporary physiological experiences. On their own, emotions rise, peak, and fall. But what makes emotions feel dangerous is the narrative that we attach to them – If I let myself feel this, I’ll never stop crying; If I say this hurt me, I’ll be rejected; If I feel my anger, I’ll lose control; If I show my sadness, I’ll be a burden.
These beliefs are learned, often in moments where expressing emotion had negative consequences. The nervous system remembers not just the feeling, but what it once cost us.
An emotion is a wave of energy moving through the body but a narrative is the mind trying to predict, prevent, or protect.
When we attach a narrative, the emotions become something to manage, suppress, or run away from. We don’t just feel sadness we brace against what we believe sadness will do to us. We don’t just feel anger, we fear the rejection we imagine will follow.
So we intellectualize, we distract, we minimize or we tell ourselves it’s not a big deal. Not because the emotion is too much, but because the story says it’s unsafe.
In my book, “Trust”, about my holistic healing journey following a cancer diagnosis, I describe how I used to be a master of the re-frame. The cancer diagnosis forced me onto a healing path where I recognised how vital it is, to both our emotional and physical health, to process emotions so that our energy can flow freely and our body can maintain a state of balance where it can heal. And I recognised my re-frame habit was actually a subtle, unconscious strategy to avoid feeling uncomfortable emotions.
On my healing journey I learned to trust that when we allow an emotion to be felt fully without resistance, narrative, or urgency to fix, it moves through the nervous system surprisingly quickly.
Research suggests that the physiological activation of an emotion lasts around 90 seconds when we lean into it rather than fight it. That doesn’t mean the situation is resolved in 90 seconds. It means the charge of the emotion completes its cycle.
What keeps emotions lingering isn’t the feeling itself, it’s the ongoing mental commentary; Why am I like this? This shouldn’t be happening. I need to stop this.
Each thought reactivates the body, restarting the loop.
Leaning into an emotion doesn’t mean getting stuck in it, it means allowing the body to do what it already knows how to do; naming the sensation rather than the story, noticing where the sensation is in the body, allowing tears, pressure or shaking without judgement.
When we stay with the sensation instead of the meaning, something shifts. The body discharges what it’s holding. The nervous system recalibrates. The intensity eases.
And often, the thing we were scared of never happens. We don’t cry forever or lose control and we don’t actually get abandoned for being honest as we feared we might. What we experience instead is relief.
Many of our narratives are created by emotional wounds. At some point, expressing emotion did lead to rejection, withdrawal, or shame and so the body learned that expression means danger, and it’s been protecting us ever since.
Avoiding emotions doesn’t prevent pain, it holds onto it. And the longer feelings are held back, the louder the body will shout to be heard.
Learning to feel without attaching negative meaning is a practice that builds trust in yourself. Each time you allow an emotion to rise and fall, you teach your nervous system that: I can feel this and be okay, this won’t last forever and I don’t have to abandon myself to stay safe.
Over time, the stories loosen their grip. Emotions stop feeling like threats and start feeling like information; messengers rather than enemies.
And when emotions are no longer feared, honesty becomes less risky. Expression becomes cleaner and boundaries become easier to set. Not because life stops being hard but because you stop fighting what your body is trying to do.
The freedom isn’t in never feeling deeply it’s in knowing you can.
My book, “Trust”, about my holistic healing journey is available through the following resellers.
Signed copies are available via my website
With love as always
Sarah xx
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