What are Emotions and How do they get stuck?

Ever since I ventured into the realm of motherhood, which coincided with my decision to swap medical school for a career as a spiritual entrepreneur, I have noticed that everything involving children seems to carry a particular charge. When our offspring is involved, we parents turn into all sorts of things and all sorts of things suddenly become important. We all do it. It’s quite a fun thing to observe in oneself. If you are into self-development and expanding your consciousness, I can really recommend having a child or two. They will bring up your issues and hold a magnifying glass in front of each of them so you cannot ignore them — as you might have done during previous times when you were well-rested and could go to the toilet by yourself.

But I digress.

What I really wanted to talk about is my new hobby-horse: emotions. While, as I observe above, having children seems to bring up all sorts of extreme emotions for parents, being in extreme emotional states seems to be completely natural for the children themselves — at least for the ones I have had the pleasure to meet. There is very little in a child’s perception of the world that is not emotionally charged in one way or another. Things are perceived as extreme. Immediate. Out of this world amazing! Out of this world painful. Necessary NOW. Horrible. Perfect! Laughter, tears, and very quick changes of the two. While I sometimes find my daughter’s extreme emotional behaviour difficult to cope with and have had to learn new strategies from a coach of how to deal with tantrums in a kind way, I myself puzzle my dear husband on a regular basis with my ability to shift quickly from an experience of deep pain and grief to a state of hilarity and laughter. Naturally, it goes without saying that children need to learn to mange extreme emotions and that pathological mood swings would require deep inner work uncovering root causes. But I am convinced that THE key to mental and physical health is for us to be in tune with and honest about our emotions: first honest towards ourselves and then towards those we interact with. Only if we first look at what is there, we can begin to truly shape our reality according to our needs. (And if you still think that recognising and fulfilling your needs has anything to do with selfishness, well, then I am really sorry you are making life so hard and unpleasant for yourself…!)

So what ARE emotions to begin with? Emotions are particular vibrational frequencies embodied by us. Each has its particular frequency: some are expansive in nature, such as love, compassion, joy, and, at the top end, enlightenment, while others contract our system, such as anger, fear, shame, and guilt. A contracted system operates from adrenal energy, a state generally known as ‘fight or flight’. In the ‘fight or flight’ state, which is the normal state nowadays more than it is the exception, the body reprioritises very important bodily functions, such as thinking, feeling, immunity, and digestion. No wonder we all have irritable bowel syndrome, intolerances, adrenal fatigue, and other stress syndromes. If WE operated from fear, shame, and guilt, the BODY has no chance to operate in a healthy way either. 

As I said, in ‘fight or flight’ our ability to engage with our emotions is de-prioritised. This makes sense when you picture running away from a bear or fighting in a war — consciously engaging with your emotions is not the best idea in those situation, in fact noticing and not repressing your fear or panic in a war-situation might very quickly lead to your death. However, for those of us who are in ‘fight or flight’ because of our passive-aggressive boss, examining our emotions holds the key to changing our life to the better. Only when we feel our frustration, pain, sadness, and low self worth in response to this kind of behaviour, we can make the conscious CHOICE to stand up for ourselves and change the situation or leave. Everything else is fear-based behaviour. 

So, what happens when we don’t acknowledge and use our emotions? They get stuck in the body. This is the fundamental assumption of the EmotionCode technique. Trapped Emotions are literally balls of energy that are stuck somewhere in the body or energy field, causing the feeling and experience of stickiness or disease through blocking the flow of energy in the physical body and in the aura. I have felt them with my hands — the funky sense of a balloon without there being a balloon — and also felt how they released as I asked for them to be cleared using ThetaHealing®. This is how real and tangible trapped emotions are! Any experience of stuckness or pattern of drama in our life is caused by emotions that were not processed or expressed by either ourselves, our ancestors, a loved one — yes, you can take on Trapped Emotions — or by our collective (community, country, humanity as a whole…). In this mindset, drama and diseases are wake-up calls for us. Even if it is hard to believe when you are in the middle of it, this is all FOR us and not just punishment, karma, etc. It is quite simply an invitation for us to change our live and upgrade our reality by deciphering the (actually not so very hidden) messages delivered in the form of our emotions.

My work with individuals and groups (and the amazing work of many many other intuitive healers practicing today) has confirmed the huge difference which the release of just a few trapped emotions can make to people’s tangible experience of life again and again. My most spectacular and fast result, perhaps, was that one friend’s severe menstrual pain — which she had always had — completely disappeared after I helped her release a few trapped emotions. This took about five minutes from a distance and I wasn’t even on the phone with her. And while it was an especially quick and miraculous healing, it just goes to show what IS possible when we — collectively speaking — stop stigmatising those who seek mental health support. To be honest, I feel the change is there already. It’s our collective task at hand. We can allow emotions to keep running havoc on the unconscious level, we can blame the outside world for all the wrongs that are happening around us. But transformation has to start on the inside and happen through each of us. And the good news is: the more individuals are clearing up their own pantry, the more easy it gets for the rest of the world the do the same. This is how collective consciousness works. You can see, I am a practical optimist.