The science behind emotional baggage

What is emotional baggage, and what causes it?

🙏🏽 Ever say things like: “This conversation made me lose my appetite.” Or “They are such a pain in the neck!”

🙏🏽 Ever feel your heart pounding in anticipation of an exciting or daunting event? Or experience digestive distress when you’re nervous?

🙏🏽 Or do you have mysterious aches, pains, ailments, or fatigue that you can’t quite explain or find a physical cause for?

When big feelings rise up in us, we often find creative ways to avoid fully experiencing or processing them. We repress, suppress, numb, avoid, or deny them. We use intoxicants like drink, drugs, or sex; we turn to social media, gossip, busy work, or even sleep to try and avoid feeling our feelings and the difficult memories or stories in our minds that are related to those feelings.

But by pushing these emotions down and locking them inside, they become baggage — a residue of the stress, challenges, and traumas that brought about those feelings in the first place.

This baggage wreaks havoc on our nervous systems as our bodies try to make sense of the additional tension within. By denying our feelings, we perpetuate a state of internal conflict in ourselves.

This isn’t just woo-woo philosophy. Science backs this up!

1. Lower Back: Anger

Frustration and anger translate into lower back symptoms like pain and tension.

2. Stomach & Intestines: Fear

We tend to tense our stomach and intestines when we are afraid or extremely nervous. Phrases like, “I’m sick to my stomach,” usually reference a physical response to conflict. The more we deny or repress our fears, the more physical reactions we’re likely to manifest.

3. Heart & Chest: Hurt

The phrase “heartache” exists for a reason. There’s even a medical diagnosis called “Broken Heart Syndrome” for certain physical manifestations of grief, heartbreak, and sorrow. It’s why we clutch our chests when we’re shocked or deeply saddened. So it makes sense that, when we’re hurt, we experience ache, pains, or heaviness in the chest.

4. Headache: Loss of Control

The more we struggle against things we cannot control, it’s like punching a brick wall and wondering why it doesn’t move. So the more we try to exert control over our lives and circumstances, or the lives and circumstances of others, often the more headaches and tension in/around our brains can manifest.

5. Neck and Shoulder Tension: Burdens and Responsibilities

Trying to carry too many responsibilities is a literal pain in the neck. The more we try to shoulder our burdens, the more tension builds around this region.

6. Fatigue: Resentments

Resentment puts strain on our entire body and zaps our energy. Focusing on blame, victimization, or ruminating over what happened are “the empty calories of self-expression” — leaving us exhausted, unfulfilled, and endlessly hungry for true satisfaction.

7. Numbness: Trauma

We often numb ourselves in response to being overwhelmed by an event, which is our psyche’s way of disassociating from overpowering pain or danger. No matter if the trauma was imagined, minor, or severe — over time, if left unprocessed, the memory of those emotions gets lodged in the body. So in response, we cut off our feelings when we feel vulnerable, we struggle to trust ourselves and others, and we lose out on opportunities for connection and intimacy with others. In short, we live a half-life, as if we’re watching the world through a window, but not fully participating in it.

8. Breathing Difficulties: Anxiety

We’ve all experienced the quickened breath rate, or even trouble breathing, that comes from anxiety. It’s why we describe anxiety as suffocating, and why people breathe into paper bags during panic attacks. Often, we even hold our breath to avoid an emotional outburst. The tension this causes builds up inside us, and can feel like a weight on our lungs, or we may breathe extremely shallowly because our body is stuck in fight/flight/freeze mode.

9. Voice & Throat Problems: Oppression

If you grew up in an oppressive atmosphere, speaking your mind or expressing your needs may have felt dangerous. When we have the impulse to speak up, we might silence ourselves and repress our voices from the conditioning we received as oppressed children. This fight between the desire to speak and the impulse to withhold can lead to excessive tension and often manifests in physical throat and voice manifestations.

10. Insomnia: Loss of Self

When we feel disconnected from ourselves, during a big transition, stressful moment, or during moments of personal growth, we often suffer from sleeplessness. Whether it’s trouble getting to sleep or staying asleep, insomnia is most often a physical manifestation of inner turmoil that can be helped by confronting and processing whatever feelings we’re holding inside.

And this is just the tip of the iceberg! Emotional baggage can present itself physically, in more ways than we even realize.

The solution?

SOMATIC ACTIVATED HEALING is the antidote

Somatics are a therapeutic tool that focuses on the mind-body connection and the ways in which emotional and psychological issues can manifest in physical symptoms. Somatic therapy can help people process and heal from past traumas, which obviously has a profound impact on our emotional and mental wellbeing.

Somatics help us become more aware of our body sensations and emotions, which can improve our ability to regulate our emotions and reduce stress. It can also help us develop healthier coping mechanisms and improve overall physical health.

Somatic Activated Healing combines 4 powerful body-based therapies to help you process your emotional baggage without the stress of re-engaging with the painful memories, stories, or narratives that brought those feelings about in the first place.

💙 Through movement, we free ourselves from tension, open the energy channels of the body, and find safety within.
💙 Through meditation, we stay focused in the present moment — not carried away in our minds, but rooted in our bodies.
💙 Through breathwork, we process out stagnated emotions and tone our vagus nerves for improved and lasting resilience.
💙 Through affirmation, we orient ourselves toward a new vocabulary and rewire our brains toward growth.

Try Somatic Activated Healing today, for free, here! And learn more about how you can use this method to help others heal, here.