How to Liberate Suppressed Emotions
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Even if your life appears to be a world-class sh*t show, there’s none of that to be found in the present moment, which carries nothing — and offers everything
Adapted from unGlommed, the Guerrilla Approach to Beating Depression
We all all harbor multitudes of unfelt emotions that scare the bejesus out of us. What exactly would happen if you allowed yourself to feel those nasties? Would you burst into flames? Melt into a puddle? Start to screech uncontrollably until the psych-ward medics showed up to haul you away? Would it change much of anything?
I’m putting my chips on probably not. Nor would your body undergo strange transmutations. However, tough things might happen — in the ballpark of degrees of discomfort. They may sting, but they won’t kill ya.
If you haven’t yet fallen in love with your darkest, most toxic feelings, rest assured, there’s still time. Fortunately, there are ways to rid yourself of the steaming goulash that’s in your “long bag” without causing too much of a ruckus. The following technique is one of those ways. Use it when you want to lighten your load.
Feel What’s Up in Three Steps
Step 1: Engage
The goal of this technique is to connect you with your suppressed emotions so that you can feel them fully, and then/thus exorcise them permanently. To begin, find a quiet place where you can be alone.
Hold an intention in your mind to become aware of what you’re feeling. Then assume an attitude of receptiveness. Good.
Wait. Hold on … Just a moment … What is this? Restlessness? Anxiety? Upset? The urge to tear your hair out? Absolutely. How long did that take? A few seconds? That’s OK. It’s normal and expected when we open up our long bag.
Resist the urge to get up, grab your phone, power something up, or retrieve a numbing beverage and start to guzzle it at breakneck speed. Rather, continue to allow yourself to settle further into this exercise (even if you think that you aren’t). If there’s a bit of nature out the window, look at it. If there’s a desk in front of you stacked with the detritus of years of inattention, maybe look slightly to the side of that.
Listen in to your thoughts and sense your feelings without engaging them. Simply observe. You may become aware of certain somethings bubbling up — perhaps sadness, anger, despair, rage, discomfort, or who knows, maybe joy and optimism. Fine, whatever it is. Your body might be twitching or moving. Fine, again.
You may feel yourself judging what’s floating in as good or bad or desirable or unpleasant. If so, don’t climb onto that thought-stream and ride it off into the sunset. Don’t glom onto it. Don’t become it. Simply notice it.
Your emotions may gather, they may blend, they may build, they may form into a squall, they may pummel you, they may just float away. Just keep observing.
This practice may seem to be a small, inconsequential act, but it’s not. It’s actually a big deal. If you keep traveling on the same road you’ve been on — the one of suppression and avoidance — guess what happens? Nothing. You remain mired. You continue to set the table for same ol’, same ol’. Often that means unending dollops of anxiety and depression ladled right over your head. You then win the booby prize: you get to continue to live under the ever-increasing weight of your long bag of toxicity, which sooner or later will blow open to wreak havoc or maybe even generate an illness.
Keep on sitting. Continue to note what is floating in. “I’m edgy.” “I’m upset.” “People are staring at me.” “That’s particularly disturbing since I’m here at home alone.” “Oh, no, not again.” “I’m lonely.” “I’m fat.” “I’m horny.” “I’m lonely, fat, and horny.” “Oh, God. I am so f*cked.” “No one loves me.” “I miss Mom.” “I can’t handle this.” Tough stuff, to be sure. We all have it.
Despite the difficulty of sticking with this technique, forge ahead. Continue to be open to whatever floats in. You might even speak or whisper what you’re feeling, or jot it down on a piece of paper you can throw away later.
Do this for a potentially excruciating several minutes. It’s a good first step out of mind and into present moment awareness — in other words, reality. Not the f*cked-up-you world.
It can absolutely be the beginning of breaking free of a depressive episode. Even if your life is a world-class sh*t show that appears to suck in every possible way, there’s none of that to be found in the present moment, which carries nothing, and can offer quite a lot.
Step 2: Stick with It
The thoughts and feelings that are assailing you will shift, morph, and connect with other thoughts and feelings. Your angst may build to a soaring, impressive crescendo. If you can somehow manage not to bail, don’t be surprised if your anxiety quickly peters out to nothing, to a kind of quiet spaciousness. If so, wonderful. You’ve processed an emotion. All it took was not retreating from it. Give yourself a gold star. You may feel a smidge lighter. But if not, hang in there and keep on going.
You may sense actual voices accompanying your anger, sadness, impatience, or whichever emotional boil you’ve accessed. You may become aware of the internalized voices of your spouse, sibling, parents, friends, frenemies, employers, advertisers, entertainers, celebrities, and other entities or persons who are living rent-free in your head. It can get pretty crowded in there. The voices may include any person, organization, or entity that has been critical of you or has hurt you.
Let them wail away, those motherf*ckers. Listen to all that garbage in the same way you’d listen to, say, a wailing car alarm or a noisy dishwasher. Don’t glom onto it, take it into yourself, regard it as real, or, for heaven’s sake, believe it (even if it appears to be true). If you do, guaranteed, you’ll be cruisin’ for a bruisin’ and your righteous efforts at liberation may come to naught.
You’ve been giving credence to those voices for a very long time. Though the people may be real, the voices are not. They are just mental programs chugging endlessly away, gagabytes of data moving around on your brain’s hard drive. It’s time to clear them out. Let them talk and shout and implore, but deny them the power they gain when you regard them as real. Treat them like the annoying, useless noise-makers they are
Step 3: Accept and Surrender
Engage go again with the squiggly spiritual terms, beloved by some, abhorrent to others. In this context, surrendering is the opposite of what you may be thinking. It’s an internal process. It happens in your mind. Though it can seem to mean giving up or throwing in the towel, that is definitely not it.
What it means is being OK with whatever is happening right now — even if it’s a thundering sh*t show shaking the foundation of your being. It means using whatever ideas you can find to prevent your crazy-making demon from interfering with you and contributing its unhelpful two cents. All you’re surrendering to is what-is. Simple. And powerful. Which is why it can be hard to take seriously. Take it seriously.
The act of surrendering can change your emotional state faster than the time it takes to kick a boot through a drywall or hurl a grating insult at some innocent friend or family member. Instead of wasting your energy (and being a dick), you get to keep it.
So, the next time you sense that you’re about to jam more distress into your long bag, use this technique instead. It’s not hard. It takes mere minutes. It’s certainly better than adding more goulash in there for years or decades, when toting that bag will feel like pulling a GE industrial-grade refrigerator into every relationship and situation. You don’t want to do that.
Use this 1–2–3 punch when a downward spiral is threatening. Deny precious turf to your depressive demon.
Good luck with this practice. Keep at it and you’ll see results.
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The Matrix Has You: Materialism and Depression
