I’ve spoken a lot about the importance of emotional processing and how I think this plays a vital role in recovery.
The reason why I think this is because of the profound, physical alleviation of my symptoms after things like EMDR, where, after emotional releases, I have had moments of great peace and clarity.
And with time, these moments have grown ever longer and more and more peaceful.
Along with this, I have started doing a form of ‘inner child’ work.
The work of noticing what, was behind the symptom and emotion you were feeling, and finally noticing that which has been repressed for so long.
For example, I often will notice my brain fog, or tightness in my lower back, and I will then just open myself up to the sensation and the emotion that may lie behind it.
Very often I find myself seeing a frustrated and angry younger version of myself behind it, one that feels a need to express.
The reason I’m talking about this is not to talk you through what ‘inner child work’ is, but to share how it’s finally made sense to me.
When I had tried this before, I had been told to notice that inner child and then to say something nurturing or comforting to it, in an attempt to soothe and heal.
But for me this never resonated.
It felt soppy and incomplete, and most importantly, it didn’t feel natural. I felt I was forcing an overly positive visualisation onto a part of me that needed physical completion.
I have talked before a lot about the need to fully process stored emotions not by positive affirmations, but by physically completing your survival mechanism.
I’ve talked about how animals in the wild can dispel this stored fight/ flight energy by shaking, yet for some humans, we instead enter a freeze state (by repression or other means), leaving this energy nowhere to go.
Therefore, instead, when I lean into these hidden emotions, I instead feel the need to lash out, to scream, to punch, to do something rather more physical than just soothe that inner part.
Maybe this is because of my specific experience, maybe because I’m a boy, but for me, it makes a lot more sense to want to physically complete this survival mechanism and expel this energy rather than just soothe and caress.
Whether mentally or even physically, hitting a pillow or whatnot, I’ve found it immensely helpful to physically complete and to act out whatever I feel my body calls me to do in these moments.
For my opinion is this.
Healing doesn’t come from self-talk and affirmations. It comes from the very physical process of executing what could not be completed all those years before.
Stay healthy, and have a blessed day. ☘️