What happens when we ignore our emotions…
Stuck Energy & Emotion on the physical body.
Howdy Friends - Happy Tuesday! I was sitting at my desk yesterday trying to decide what I wanted to share in this week’s blog and decided to let God lead this one. So I took some deep breaths dropped into my heart space and let the topic be dropped in.
And within 30 seconds I received it: Your Tooth. I rechecked several times…thinking “You can’t be serious”. But alas here we are - and as usual, God’s directions made me a little uncomfortable. But as I started to write this story - the lessons slowly came to the front and I understood why it needed to be shared. So here for the first time ever I am going to share a personal story from last year.
I am taking you back to Halloween 2022 in Michigan. My best friend, boyfriend at the time, and I went out for a party. Sara and I were sporting our legendary best friend costumes(that year it was Thor and Loki). We were having a great time mingling, laughing, occasionally looking at the score of the Michigan State Game that had all the guys hypnotized by the television. Someone passed out Jolly Ranchers to us (which was one of the few candies I actually liked) and after a little bit of time I did what i always did - when the Jolly Rancher was small enough I bit it (I know that’s frowned upon - hence my hesitancy to tell this story). I didn’t notice anything at first except it was a little harder to swallow the little pieces then normal and it appeared some pieces were stuck to my tooth. We continued on until I made a horrifying realization while sitting on a bench in our friend’s basement that I BROKE MY TOOTH.
I was panicking - it took so much energy for me to not sob in the middle of this party. I turned to my best friend as calmly as I was able but she gave me a suspicious look that said “what’s up” and I said “please will you come with me to the bathroom - something is wrong. And I need your help.”
After a couple minutes in the bathroom and here taking the phone flashlight to my upper molars she confirmed what I was dreading (and she’s a PA that works in Dental Surgery so it was perfect that she was there). She did the Sara Doctor (as I call it) where she was calm, cool, and had a serious tone. She explained to me “It’s a small part of (insert medical name of the tooth and other medical jargon). Because you didn’t feel it when it happened and you haven’t been in any pain - and there’s no blood - that’s a really good sign. You might just need a crown popped over it.” She looked at me gently knowing I was on the brink of a full fledged breakdown.
She continued to look at me - and I might have said “okay” but inside my head it was moving a thousand miles per minute. My inner voice was screaming and kicking at me “how could you be so stupid” and this overwhelming feeling of dread and indescribable fear overcame me. I became a zombie - rotating between crying and getting lost in my thoughts which were actively bullying me.
Flash forward - I went to the dentist and the reason my tooth had broken in that way was because there was a HUGE cavity that had overtaken most of the tooth. I remember the dentist say “ wow! Cavities don’t usually grow THIS FAST. We saw you a couple months ago? Have you been stressed?”(And of course he asked this the way all dentists do - when they are wrist deep in your mouth and you literally can’t speak.)
Now don’t worry - the issue was taken care of. But I thought alot about the situation and reflected on it frequently. The truth was I was experiencing the most intense and difficult time since Bryan passed away and had been for a year. It felt like things were constantly falling apart and no matter what I tried nothing helped. I was terrified and on edge all the time.
So much so that I had a death grip on the things in life I thought I could control - the few things I could succeed in. My identities - being the best mom and being the best girlfriend. And at the time speaking my mind didn’t help me uphold those roles. So I kept my anger, stress, fear, and sadness inside. I felt so much shame around my emotions and were constantly reeling them in.
I was dishonest with myself and tried to force things to work - especially in my relationship. But the issue with holding onto your emotions - with burying them is that it keeps it in your body and requires us to abandon a part of ourselves. When this happens - when we deny our emotions or are disconnected from them it creates a blockage, a cord, a wound that when ignored takes physical form in our body.
For me - my unspoken, unexpressed anger started to create a decay, a hole in my mouth. The thing I turned off in order to “make things work”.
Now to the meat and potatoes of this post - What does stuck energy do to the body?
As exemplified above - it can do quite a lot of damage. This isn’t to say that cavities don’t happen because of poor dental hygiene habits but more to showcase what happens when emotionally we aren’t processing or taking the time to heal or even worse we are abandoning ourselves in environments that are slowly destroying our soul’s light.
Emotions are powerful expressions of the soul. They are like the soul’s nervous system. Our bodies' nerves tell us about our environment around us, within us, and our place in the external world (like whether something is hurting us or safe). Our emotions do the same thing - it’s our soul's way of navigating what is for us or not. So when we ignore our emotions or when something major happens in our life that creates a lot of emotion it can create a block. This shows up in our energy and after a certain amount of time it will physically appear expressed through the body.
It’s expressed through the body is different for everyone. I’ve had clients suffering my severe migraines that brought them to the hospital multiple times a month. After processing and energetically clearing suppressed anger and wounds from childhood they are migraine free.
Anger is one of the big emotions I usually see stuck, ignored, and unexpressed - especially in women. Women aren’t given the same understanding or space to feel and express anger most of the times we are shamed for it. Anger on a core level is a physical emotion - it usually requires some sort of action in order to be processed. So when we hold it in - it usually turns into a physical symptom (and mental health wise usually depression).
So what happens? Let’s take me for an example. I was constantly in an environment in that relationship where I was feeling angry and unsafe. But I wanted things to work (even though I knew it wasn’t what was best for me). So I tried to reframe my way out of my emotions and logicize them (Logicize means in this case to use logic to invalidate feelings or intuition). But I still felt them - so I pushed them down or what I thought was out. When we do this it also creates a lack of safety within the body, the external world, and an imbalance within the body too. The more you ignore what’s there the more the wound will be physically expressed.
Your body, mind, and soul are always trying to communicate with you and get you in the places, path, environment, and energy that is in your highest, greatest good. That usually requires facing some really uncomfortable feelings. And when it comes to healing there is always a physical component or expression that is released. Even after the energetic healings my clients receive I always advise movement and letting physical expression of emotions come to the surface. The body, mind, and soul are not meant to separate but work together.
Anyway, the moral of this story - the divine message from spirit is that your emotions are divine and are powerful. They deserve to be felt, to be acknowledged, expressed so that you can be free and authentic and live the life you want to live. The dreams and desires you have, the healing, and love it comes through facing those emotions that we usually want to hide from. When we ignore them they will find other ways to be expressed and seen - and that’s when it moves to the physical body.
If you are interested in this topic Here are some books I highly recommend reading and also a couple people I recommend following.
Books:
The Body Keeps the Score By Bessel Van Der Kolk
Waking the Tiger By Peter A. Levine
The Emotion Code By Dr. Bradley Nelson
People (I am working on growing this list lol):
Abigail White - Medical Intuitive, Reiki Master, RN, Master Healer
There is so much to explore with this topic and so many different levels. I usually talk about energy work as it pertains to mental health because that’s my bread and butter. But the truth is that our physical health goes hand in hand with our emotional and mental health. It’s one of the first things you learn as a social worker that all systems are connected and influence one another. It’s actually the framework that makes me love social work so much and the framework I applied to every professional position I have ever held: corporate, mental health, nonprofit, community organization, 1:1s, intuitive work. You name it - it applies. The same goes for you.
In the upcoming weeks I will be talking about this topic in various ways on a couple podcasts - so if you love this topic I would love for you to give those episodes a listen. Otherwise I will see you soon.
For those of you curious about what an energetic healing would do for your physical or mental health, you can click THIS link and schedule a session or you can message me and we can schedule a call to discuss how it can make a difference for you.
See you soon, fishes! Stay Messy!
Love,
Annamarie Green, MSW
