After I read Sarno's book, I realized that my emotions were all frozen. I did not feel any of them. It took me a long time of observing myself to figure out that emotions are a rush of hormones through my body and if I pay close attention I can catch that split-second moment when I feel the emotion before repressing it. (By the way, suppressing and repressing are different. Suppression is a conscious act of ignoring an emotion, while repression is when suppression becomes automatic). It then took me another long time to not take my attention from the unpleasant feeling of emotion when it came. You need to start being very mindful about your reactions in life situations.
TG, this is SO helpful! I have only really caught myself at the exact moment of suppression one time. All the rest of the times, I’ve looked at a situation a couple of days later and said, “Is that really how you feel about that? You’re fine?” Then I’ve journaled and realized I suppressed a big feeling. At least it wasn’t years or even decades later! I’m going to work hard at being “mindful of my life situations.”After I read Sarno's book, I realized that my emotions were all frozen. I did not feel any of them. It took me a long time of observing myself to figure out that emotions are a rush of hormones through my body and if I pay close attention I can catch that split-second moment when I feel the emotion before repressing it. (By the way, suppressing and repressing are different. Suppression is a conscious act of ignoring an emotion, while repression is when suppression becomes automatic). It then took me another long time to not take my attention from the unpleasant feeling of emotion when it came. You need to start being very mindful about your reactions in life situations.
It takes some time to figure out how each emotion feels physiologically. My anxiety manifests itself as a rush of unpleasant sensations in the upper back and shaky feeling in the stomach. But when I force myself to let it be and to acknowledge its existence, it eventually goes away. That's exactly what we are looking for: let the emotion be, don't dwell on it and be free of it in 20 minutes!TG, this is SO helpful! I have only really caught myself at the exact moment of suppression one time. All the rest of the times, I’ve looked at a situation a couple of days later and said, “Is that really how you feel about that? You’re fine?” Then I’ve journaled and realized I suppressed a big feeling. At least it wasn’t years or even decades later! I’m going to work hard at being “mindful of my life situations.”