No More Looping! 7 Tips for Effectively Clearing Trapped Emotions

mind-body connectionemotional regulationintrospective

Dec 18

Our direct invitation to transformation.
“I am not the things that have happened to me. I am what I chose to become.” – Carl Jung

Feel it to Heal it. Easier said than done, right? Most of us have found ourselves looping (sometimes for decades or a lifetime) in the same dense emotions, stresses and fears. However, recent scientific research reveals that the lifespan of an emotion is a mere 60-90 seconds - as an active chemical reaction in the body.
Feel It for 90 Seconds: The Surprising Lifespan of Emotions - Trauma Aware America Trauma Aware America Shoot, only 60-90 seconds! When I first heard that I thought “I can handle any emotion, no matter how intense if I only have to feel it for 90 seconds.” Then why do we feel some emotions for years, or for our whole lifetime perceivably then? While the initial emotional response may be brief, the way we respond mentally to the emotion either allows it to process through (and be complete) or makes it last much longer.

If the mind’s efforts and our direct feelings don’t successfully heal our emotional wounds, then what does?
Despite our best intention and effort, it turns out our minds are not actually cut out for this particular task, as emotional healing does not happen through the mind. It happens through the body. Nor does the mind help us to understand what healing really looks or feels like at times. The mental mind is meant to help us interpret and learn from our emotional experiences, but not to resolve them for us.
So, how do we know IF healing really is happening or if we’re simply looping in old emotions?
What’s the key to processing and clearing our denser emotional patterns?
If feeling it alone doesn’t heal it, then what does?

History only repeats itself when we haven’t learned the lesson. The emotions we’re looping in have a lesson to teach us that we just haven’t quite learned yet. We haven’t passed our “evolutionary test” to know ourselves fully in that specific emotion. There is no reason whatsoever to judge this current acknowledgement, as awareness itself is the catalyst to initiating our desired change.

Separate your story from your emotions. Holding on to any story, mental idea, judgement or self-identity will only prevent the emotion from being fully processed. This is key, so I’m going to reiterate. The story is only of value to help us identify the emotional layers that story brings up within us. Beyond helping us to identify the underlying emotion(s), the story is completely useless. That right, we’re not learning from the story itself. The story only set us up to compassionately witness ourselves and to clearly show us where the emotion or trauma response that was stimulated got stuck in our body. We’re evolving from KNOWING the emotion behind or underneath the story.

It’s not about what’s happened to us. It’s about how we allow those experiences to define us, our sense of self and in relationship to the outer world. Yet most of us have wrapped ourselves into specific stories, deciding those stories are who we are, either consciously or unconsciously. When we hold stories (or judgments) against ourselves (or others) because of a past experience, then we effectively block the emotional process from being witnessed throughout the body and therefore known and fully healed to completion.

When we are in the mental body, we’re NOT allowing our emotional body to be fully expressed. The emotions are then not clearly witnessed, known or released. This is why talk therapies can be very helpful for some but can often have limitations in long term success outcomes. There’s still an underlying trigger or grab in our body, because the body itself hasn’t had the opportunity to process the emotion yet, as our mental mind has been directly interfering with our innate natural healing process.

7 Tips for Effectively Clearing Trapped Emotions
1. Claim the Gold Beneath Your Trigger
Triggers are gold. They show us exactly where our wounds are. They are a mirror of ourselves - reflecting our wounds back to us, highlighting the part of us that’s ready to be freed from our past hurts. Triggers are not about the other person, place or thing - outside of us. They are a trauma response linked to our fight-flight-freeze-or fawn system, which is designed to be our frontline self-defense mechanism WHEN we are in immediate danger. However, once the danger has passed, we are then meant to process the emotional layers attached to that experience. Then relax back into a well-balanced, healthy Central Nervous System. Fully aware, but not in a heightened or over-stimulated chronic state of hyper-arousal. Once we begin to recognize the emotional trigger as our golden ticket, our invitation to heal past the hurt, then we can be thankful for the circumstances that ultimately led to our greater freedom, self-love and inner empowerment.

2. Get Curious
Go beyond the surface trigger held in the mental body. Ask, why am I so upset by X? How does this make me feel? Why don’t I want to acknowledge or recognize this feeling? Keep asking questions with open and intentional curiosity. Try not to lean into self judgement, judgment towards others or the circumstance. Staying curious, offering a more neutral stance for yourself (like a good scientist) will greatly assist you in healing beyond those dense emotions. Keep asking, What’s below that?

3. Become the Emotion
Surrender your mind and story and instead go into the emotion. Go into the feelings coming up in your body. Allow your emotional body Its’ full expression. Commit to setting aside time to allow yourself the safety and space to open up and feel your emotional body fully. Feel the feels in the body. The mental mind will drop its defenses and the emotion will overwhelm your senses and physical body. You may sob, shake, scream, cry, rock - any number of responses - but you will not be controlling it. It will be freed, to be fully expressed (revealed) through you before the heighten feelings of it subside. Once the emotion is cleared completely, you’ll feel neutral and have no grab or heightened response left in your body. This may require multiple emotional release sessions before it is fully complete. Keep in mind, it will be intense, but the bulk of those intense emotional processes will only last 60-90 seconds, once you get the hang of it.

4. Hold Compassionate Witness for Yourself
Do your best to stay neutral. Try to not go into any story and simply stay with the raw emotion. Yes, it will be intense. Your ego will try to protect you in the ways it’s accustomed to - through the mind. Hold an observer intention for yourself. Practice separating your emotions from the story and mental constructs. Don’t analyze it. Don’t rationalize it. Just witness it. Almost as though you are watching a movie of someone else’s life, rather than having a direct personal experience.

5. Be Patient
This isn’t a one and done process. There can be several layers of our emotions. Sometimes an emotion or trauma can be cleared completely in one compassionate self-care moment. Other times we may need a few weeks or months to go deeper, to feel the layers below the surface that were protected, or to release the scarring above the core hurt.
There is no wrong way to love yourself more and you are never behind in your healing journey. Be patient, trust you are making progress (even when it doesn’t feel like it) and lean into more self-love all along the way.

6. Seek Support
If you struggle with being a neutral witness and showing compassion for yourself. It would be a great idea to seek someone who can hold a neutral space for you, on your behalf, at least until you can begin to do so for yourself more effectively. This can be a through a professional health care provider or through a safe and sacred friendship. We can benefit greatly from connecting with others and having the experience of others holding us in compassionate witness, especially while we’re still learning and practicing how to do so for ourselves.

7. Recognize Your Rebirth
Feeling those tightly corked emotions will be intense. It will feel like you’re going to die. All your survival instincts will be lit up! You’ll think holy cow; I can’t do this. I can’t feel the fullness of this heartbreak, this trauma. It’s too much. Surrender to allow your rebirth. You’ll know you’ve cleared an emotion completely when you no longer have a reaction in your body. Especially when you find yourself in the same situation as before, yet your reaction is completely different. Your trigger is gone. You are no longer reliving the trauma. You’re no longer bringing it with you into the present and into the future. The emotional weight has been released. You’re freer and lighter overall! Recognize your bravery and celebrate your healing. Now, hold deep gratitude for yourself and reflect on how far you’ve come.

Conclusion
It may not be easy or pretty at first. You may have snot pouring out and be sobbing uncontrollably on the floor for a few minutes. So much may pour out of you emotionally you can’t even give language to what you were feeling or processing. You may feel so overwhelmed with emotion it feels like you’re going to die. You may have to be so present and compassionate with yourself in ways you didn’t know you could muster. Tending to yourself as a loving parent would for a heartbroken young child. But through that rough ride, on the other side of that intensity of presence, you’ll be freer, more joyful, more empowered - more expressly You than ever before. You’ll begin to know just how powerful you are. You’ll know you are capable of healing yourself on core levels some wouldn’t even dare dream of. You’ll begin to gain a sense of just how potent, unique and sacred you truly are - far beyond the heavy wounds and limiting stories that were carried before. You’ll find yourself shining brightly - inspiring others to shine brighter with you.