Emotional pain that was created earlier in our lives (from beliefs, thoughts, emotions, and social situations) often ends up in the body, causing mental health issues, physical pain, and even illness (Van Der Kolk, 2003).

Luckily, compelling evidence shows that expressing this pain through journaling can halt and possibly even reverse these issues (e.g., Pennebaker, 1997; Schubiner & Betzold, 2010). This type of journaling is not about recording your day or setting goals but about expressing your deepest thoughts and feelings.​

Emotional Pain and the Path to Well-Being

As we reach the later stages on our path to well-being, we are able to observe more and more subtle experiences. For example, it’s easy to observe the physical pain of breaking your arm, regardless of which stage you're in. But as we move into later stages, maybe we start to notice that we get anxious when we are around certain people. Eventually, we’ll be able to observe extremely subtle experiences such as efforting, resistance, wanting, and attachment.​It is through observing each of our experiences that we can see them clearly, and seeing them clearly is what allows us to zoom out beyond them (e.g., Cook-Grueter, 2014). But to get to a point where we can observe the subtle aspects of experience, we first need to observe the big, loud stuff. The loud stuff is usually our emotional pain and it represents a giant wall standing between us and the well-being we seek.

Emotional Pain Must Be Seen to Be Released

Making the transition to transcendent stages often requires that we face the aspects of ourselves and our experience that we have spent our entire lives avoiding. These are the parts we really don’t want to see. For example, we may be required to bring awareness to childhood abuse, neglect, and/or mistreatment, so a good therapist is often needed. You can also do certain exercises that help you release and move past this pain.

Warning: Facing Emotional Pain Is Painful

Warning: This pain must be fully experienced in order to release it (e.g., Schubiner & Betzold, 2010). In other words, you actually have to feel your sadness, anger, disappointment, loneliness, etc., without resistance or avoidance. The pain that remains with us has never been fully experienced—often, we were too young or too overwhelmed to face it in the past but as we move through later stages of development, we become more prepared.

If you are ready, let’s dive in and begin to release some of the pain that you carry with you.

Emotional Pain Exercise: Physical Release of Psychological Pain

Although many emotions can be released through journaling, we often hold emotions that cannot be expressed well in words. So it can be helpful to do physical release exercises. Releasing pain can feel uncomfortable because it requires we actually feel the pain, both physical and emotional, but when it has been released, we generally feel lighter, freer, and more capable of managing our daily lives.For this exercise, set aside 20 minutes and find some space where you can be alone. Think of a small pain or trauma that you still hold onto. For example, maybe you’re still mad at a childhood friend for something they did decades ago. Once you have an experience in mind, execute the following steps.

Get into your body. Start by squeezing the muscles in your hands, then squeeze the muscles in your arms, then squeeze the muscles in your legs, then give yourself a big hug, squeezing your entire body. Take a few deep breaths while you continue to hug yourself.

Think of the situation which upset you in the past. Bring to mind the experience, how it felt in your body, and what emotions you felt. Allow these emotions to come up in your body and feel them with all of your senses, as much as you can.

Scan your body to observe as many sensations as you can. Perhaps you feel tingling, heat, clenching, pressure, vibrations, or other sensations. Scan your entire body and note every sensation you find, naming it as you notice it.

Let your body experience whatever it wants to experience. If it wants to hit a pillow, scream, or cry, let it. It’s trying to experience the emotion so that it can move out of the body, and we often stop it from doing so. Allow the emotions to move and release in a safe way; for example, hit a pillow instead of yourself or others.

Express love to yourself for being brave enough to experience these emotions. For each difficult emotion, send your love to it while accepting its existence so that it can finally move on.

Listen to your body to see if you can gain any deeper wisdom from the emotions. Are your emotions trying to tell you to take better care of yourself or accept yourself more? If these emotions were to speak, what would they say? Quiet your mind and see if any insights emerge that can help and support you.

Visualize the space the emotions were taking up in your body becoming empty. Perhaps you see the emotions flowing out of your feet like water into the ground. Or perhaps you see them as wisps of smoke zooming out of your chest into the air. Try to imagine some sort of visual representation of the emotions leaving your body.

After you complete this exercise, you may notice tingling sensations, muscle twitching or shaking, or even stiff hands. It may be disconcerting if your body or limbs start to twitch, but this is actually a sign that your body is releasing trauma. For example, in breathwork, the experience of tetany (or muscle cramps) is well noted (Ginzburg, n.d.). Shaking, twitching, and tingling are also common when releasing trauma through psychotherapeutic techniques such as somatic therapy (Levine, 2008). Animals also experience intense shaking immediately after undergoing trauma to release it from their bodies.

Another version of this post appears on berkeleywellbeing.com

Cook-Greuter, S. (2014). Ego development: A full-spectrum theory of vertical growth and meaning-making. mimeo, Wayland.

Ginzburg, T. Methodology of Psychic Integration in Modern Breathing Techniques, 2019.

Levine, P. (2008). Healing Trauma. Sounds True.

Pennebaker, J. W. (1997). Writing about emotional experiences as a therapeutic process. Psychological science, 8(3), 162-166.​

Schubiner, H., & Betzold, M. (2010). Unlearn your pain. Pleasant Ridge, MI: Mind Body Publishing.

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