Are Emotional Blocks Interfering with Your Healing?
Here at Healing Masters, we believe in unlocking the full potential of our health and well-being by focusing not just on the physical aspects of healing, but also the emotional and spiritual elements. Today, we dive into a question that might resonate deeply with many of you that feel stuck or disconnected: Are emotional blocks interfering with your healing?
Our bodies are intricate tapestries woven with threads of physical, emotional, and spiritual energies. Often, when we confront persistent health challenges—be it gut health issues, chronic fatigue, hormonal imbalances, allergies, brain fog, or anxiousness—we turn to physical components only, like diets, supplements, and natural remedies in our quest for wellness. While these are fundamental and important components of our healing, there's another layer to our wellness that is sometimes overlooked: our emotional well-being.
The Mind-Body Connection
The mind and body are not separate entities but rather parts of an interconnected system. Emotions like stress, unresolved anger, sadness, or trauma can manifest physically, affecting our immune system, hormone balance, and overall health. Have you ever noticed how stress can exacerbate your gut issues, or how anxiousness seems to drain your energy levels even further?
This is your body communicating with you, highlighting the undeniable link between your emotional health and physical symptoms. It's a reminder that sometimes, the root of our health challenges isn't just physical—it's also emotional. Emotions can act as toxins and actually throw off the balance of the body’s life-giving energy, preventing cells from functioning as they are designed. Emotions are capable of lodging themselves in the physical tissue and preventing the healing process from completing. To learn more about how cells become dysfunctional and healing becomes stuck, check out our previous blog about the cell danger response.
Identifying Emotional Blocks
Emotional blocks are often deeply rooted in our past experiences, beliefs, and societal conditioning. They can manifest as patterns of negative thinking, self-doubt, fear of failure, or even a deep-seated belief that we don't deserve to heal. Identifying these blocks is the first step towards overcoming them. It requires introspection and, sometimes, the guidance of a therapist or a health coach who specializes in emotional health.
So what are the signs of an emotional block? Simply put, it’s where old hurts, emotions and unrepressed parts are being stored in your body. Usually it is repressed, suppressed, and unexpressed emotions and old beliefs that are keeping you stuck. Emotional blocks can be conscious, but usually they are unconscious, affecting us in profound ways that we are not even aware of. You cannot see what is in front of you clearly. You can’t see that you have alternative options and choices. You may want to change, but you still stay in the same ingrained patterns. You get triggered and upset easily. You may have emotional outbursts that surprise you and others. Things you thought you were over keep surfacing. Alternatively, you may feel numb and are unsure why you feel this way, especially if you have a tendency to push feelings aside and keep moving through life as if you are unaffected.
You don’t feel like you can move forward with healing or new ways of being despite all of your efforts, or you feel like you are continually finding yourself in a spot that no longer represents who you are or what you are capable of, yet you aren’t able to break out of it easily. You feel resistance in your body and avoid dealing with uncomfortable emotions, instead having bouts of anger, irritation, or denial. You are not in tune with your intuition and look for answers outside yourself vs. healing yourself by processing the original hurt that caused the blockage.
Why Do Emotional Blocks Occur?
Emotional blockages typically form when you have strong feelings, stressors and traumas that occurred and then didn’t have the time, desire, or emotional capacity to deal with them when the event originally occurred. You instead cope through denial, avoidance, or dismissal of the reality of your life circumstances. Not living with alignment with what really is causes an accumulation of emotional energy in the body and spirt, creating a blockage. By not processing and resolving the strong feelings, stressors, and traumas, you instead get unresolved issues that stay within you and affect every aspect of your being. When this happens, you are more prone to physical stagnancy in the body, especially in the drainage pathway organs and muscles. Stuck energy interferes with the optimal function of your body.
It is also possible that you haven’t yet developed the emotional skills to deal with the situation that happened to you. When intense situations occur and you don’t have the tools to deal with them, it can create overwhelm in the body and an inability to cope with emotions in healthy ways. You are not able to process difficult emotions and handle situations with focus or clarity. Over time, this leads to a backlog of unresolved emotions which get trapped in the body, forming many emotional blockages.
Common Signs of Emotional Blocks
When you avoid working through your emotions and accumulate all of this past intense energy in the physical body, it can lead to pain, discomfort, illness, and a numb feeling. You are unable to concentrate and cope with present life. It starts to affect your work, relationships, social life, and more. This is because when you are emotionally blocked, the mind/body connection is deeply affected, manifesting emotional, behavioral, spiritual, and physical symptoms.
Physical Symptoms:
Physical aches and pains, brain fog, fatigue, gastrointestinal issues, and digestive disorders
Reactionary and inflammatory symptoms, like skin problems, asthma, colitis, immune system disorders, food sensitivities, allergies, and stomach ulcers
Increased anxiety, causing heart palpitations, sweating, shortness of breath, bloating, digestive upset, impaired sleep, and more
Emotional & Behavior Symptoms:
Increased negative emotions that feel extra intense or extreme, especially low vibrational ones like resentment, guilt, or shame
Increased stress and worry that is hard to manage or get under control, sometimes increasing in intensity from seemingly nowhere
Addiction issues (i.e. drug, alcohol and medication abuse)
Decreased self esteem
Lack of motivation to change your circumstances; feeling stuck
Feeling lost or unable to clearly make decisions that would move your life forward
Feeling unfulfilled or unsure in your relationships
Tendency to isolate oneself and avoid people or situations that would force you to feel or face certain emotions
Negatively reacting (often intensely) to people, events, and circumstances in your life
Self-destructive patterns and behaviors
Spiritual Symptoms:
Feeling disconnected from God, the earth, and your body (feeling ungrounded)
Lacking a sense of inner peace
Questioning the purpose and meaning of your life, leading to a sense of aimlessness or existential crisis
Activities and beliefs that once filled you with joy and purpose no longer resonate
Diminished intuition, making it difficult to trust your inner voice or gut feelings.
Second-guessing yourself, indecision, and an inability to make choices aligned with your true self
Withdrawing from spiritual communities
Struggling with forgiveness
Lack of joy or feeling empty when engaging in spiritual practices that previously filled you up
Hard time acting in faith, with feelings of cynicism and doubt
Healing Emotional Blocks: A Pathway to Wellness
Awareness: The journey begins with becoming aware of your emotional states and their impact on your health. Mindfulness practices, journaling, or meditation can be invaluable tools in developing this awareness.
Acknowledgement: Acknowledge the traumatic or difficult experience and all of the feelings it caused you to feel. You may need to schedule time to process and feel what happened.
Acceptance: Accept the traumatic or difficult experience as something that happened and cannot change and is something you will need to process, feel, and deal with so you can let go of the energy surrounding the event.
Expression: Giving voice to your emotions, whether through talking with a trusted friend or a professional, writing, or creative expression, helps in processing these feelings. If you don’t have the language to express your emotions, it is hard to fully communicate them. Most adults only use 8-10 words to express their emotional experiences. Leveraging tools like Feelings Wheels can help you identify the more nuanced feelings and emotions that you’ve been carrying, so you can properly convey the difference between something like “sad” and “betrayed.”
Seek Support: Whether it's a support group, a health coach, or a therapist, finding someone who understands and can guide you through your emotional healing is vital. At Healing Masters, we believe in the power of community and empathetic support in the healing journey.
Uncover the Life Lesson: How can you view what happened to you through a different perspective? Is there a version where the difficult situation or event happened for your benefit? What lessons has this taught you? How has it developed your character or helped you grow in a way that could not have happened if you had not experienced the hardship? Every experience, especially the challenging ones, holds valuable lessons. Reinterpret your past by focusing on the strength, wisdom, and resilience you gained through your experiences.
Forgiveness: This includes forgiveness of others and, crucially, forgiveness of oneself. Holding onto anger or guilt can be like drinking poison and expecting the other person to suffer the effects, when really it’s you that suffers. Learning to let go is essential for emotional and physical healing.
Rewrite Your Story: The stories we tell ourselves about who we are, our past experiences, and what we are capable of achieving have a profound impact on our emotional and spiritual well-being. Often, we become trapped in narratives that limit our growth and happiness, especially when these stories stem from unresolved emotional blocks or past traumas. Rewriting your story involves a conscious decision to view your past, present, and future from a new, more empowering perspective. Identify the stories you tell yourself about your life. Pay attention to themes of victimhood, powerlessness, or blame that may be holding you back. Imagine a narrative that empowers and supports your well-being and growth. This rewritten story should recognize your inner strength, your ability to overcome, and your worthiness of love and happiness. Use positive affirmations that align with your new story. Regularly affirming your strength, resilience, and worth can help solidify this new narrative in your mind and spirit. Start making choices and taking actions that reflect your new narrative. It's not just about thinking differently; it's about living in a way that embodies the change you wish to see in yourself.
Integration: Integration means making emotional healing a consistent and integral part of your daily life, much like eating well or exercising. This approach acknowledges that emotional health is just as crucial to overall wellness as physical health, and it benefits from regular, dedicated attention. The key to integration is consistency. Emotional blocks didn't form overnight; similarly, releasing them and reprogramming ingrained habits is a process that requires time, patience, and regular practice. Integrating emotional healing into your wellness routine can amplify your healing. Practices such as yoga, Tai Chi, Qi Gong, and mindfulness meditation, not only improve physical health but also promote emotional release and balance.
Embracing Emotional Healing
Embracing emotional healing is not about achieving perfection or never feeling negative emotions again. It's about recognizing these emotions as signals, guiding us towards areas of our lives that need attention and care. It's about moving through the world with an open heart, ready to face our challenges and celebrate our successes with grace and compassion.
Integrating emotional healing into your wellness routine doesn't just address the symptoms of emotional blocks; it transforms the very fabric of your being, leading to profound shifts in how you relate to yourself and the world. This holistic approach to wellness acknowledges that true healing encompasses body, mind, and spirit, all moving in harmony towards a state of balance and health.
Remember, healing is not a linear journey. There will be ups and downs, successes and setbacks. But every step forward, no matter how small, is a step towards a healthier, more fulfilled you. At Healing Masters, we are here to support you every step of the way, with wisdom, understanding, and the collective strength of a community that believes in the power of natural and holistic healing.
In the quest for optimal health, don't overlook the role of emotional well-being. It might just be the key to unlocking the door to a healthier, happier you. It is the secret behind accelerated healing, especially if you feel stuck. You can overcome the emotional blocks that stand in your way and embrace vibrant health.
Overcome Your Chronic Symptoms & Heal Holistically
Are you looking to get to the root cause of your symptoms? We can help you.
We use holistic approaches and functional medicine lab testing to investigate what is triggering your chronic symptoms so you can address them at their source and start to feel better faster. Our health coaches are masters at guiding the healing of multiple root causes in a personalized order that gets you wellness results that last. We also help you maintain good health and minimize your disease risks.
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by sarah southerton
Certified Integrative Health Practitioner (IHP2) & Functional Medicine Health Coach
I specialize in helping people heal chronic illnesses and achieve optimal health. After my own battle with Ehlers Danlos Syndrome (EDS), Lyme disease, Mast Cell Activation Syndrome (MCAS) and Post Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS), I was thrust into the world of alternative medicine, herbal healing, and low-tox/low-stress living. I have since restored my health and no longer suffer with debilitating symptoms and I’m passionate about help other people who are suffering, so they can feel better a lot faster than I did.
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