‘You have to feel it, to heal it.’
The information on this page is informed by the work of several trauma therapy experts, whose guidance has much in common with the principles and techniques applied in sound healing. Notably Roland Bal, trauma therapist, and Hilary Jacobs-Hendel, trauma psychotherapist and specialist in emotional education.
Emotions are an essential part of healing work. Experiencing and ‘being with’ emotions, is necessary in order to feel fully well. But our culture teaches us not to lean into our emotions, or that negative emotions make us weak and should be overcome. And while, certainly, humans are wired for resilience – we have an inborn ability to cope with emotional pain – we can lose that ability if we’re facing serious health challenges, such as chronic pain, life threatening illness, or trauma-related issues.
Fundamentally, emotions are about who we are. When we allow them to move freely through us, we feel alive. But they’re not under our conscious control. They’re a physiological response to stimuli, generated in the middle brain and travelling via the nervous system to the heart, lungs, stomach and muscles. We feel them as physical sensations, e.g. ‘butterflies in the stomach’.
‘Core’ emotions have ‘big energy’. Some can feel so bad, that we feel we have to move away from them. We can block their energy, with a ‘coping’ emotion, e.g. anxiety. When we do this we are literally holding in the core emotion. Core emotions can eventually become buried, masked, or distorted.
This isn’t a good thing because as humans, we are wired for authentic connection. We need to have our feelings ‘witnessed’, either by another person, or by being our own witness. Trauma happens when we have too much ‘aloneness’ with overwhelming emotions, or emotions that go unseen or invalidated for too long.
If emotions are buried for long enough, this damages your ability to adapt to your environment / experiences. You can develop problem symptoms, or new illnesses, e.g.
- chronic pain, joint pain, inflammation, digestive problems, chronic fatigue, anxiety, depression, addiction, destructive behaviours, or personality changes.
In sound healing, we respect the fact that it is human nature to struggle with emotions and that we can be extremely afraid of them, or cut off from them completely. Healing work also understands that we can’t think our way out of emotions; we have to feel our way through them.
Awareness
In working with emotions the first step is becoming curious about where in your body you tend to hold ‘core’ emotions. It is possible to notice the sensations that they create; to listen and stay with those sensations until we ‘hear’ an impulse for what action is called for – either a release, or to ‘be with’ the energy that is created by the emotion.
Core Emotions
- These are felt as physical sensations and they give us important information about our immediate environment. They are: sadness, fear, anger, joy, excitement.
Inhibitory / Coping emotions
- These act to block core emotions when they are conflict with what pleases other people who we rely on, or when core emotions are overwhelming. They are: anxiety, guilt, and shame.
Defenses
Defences are behaviours we use to avoid feeling our emotions. They vary widely from mild to extreme, and include:
- Joking, sarcasm, smiling, laughing ; changing the subject
- Avoiding eye contact; mumbling
- Frequent apologizing
- Not talking; not listening; zoning out
- Criticizing & perfectionism
- Procrastination & preoccupation
- Prejudice; Grandiosity
- Misogyny
- Misguided aggression, e.g. getting angry at your partner when you’re really angry at your boss
- Obsessions & Addictions – e.g. alchohol, drugs, sex, food, work, shopping
- Freeze / shutdown / depression / helplessness
- Self-harm / suicidal ideation.
What to do about blocked emotions
When our energies are blocked, the solution is to go back into the body, with awareness, find the source of blocked emotions and learn how to let them safely come up and out, like a wave.
Anger
There are techniques to safely discharge anger. These work by our tolerating the impulses created by the emotion, until the energy is discharged.
Anxiety / Shame / Guilt
Anxiety’s purpose is to suppress physiological & emotional energy. It can go into the muscles, increasing heart rate & breathing.
You need to get to the underlying core emotion – which is quite often Rage, along with Guilt for experiencing the rage – which can deepen into Shame. A toxic cocktail!
Focusing
When you focus on a physical sensation, this triggers activity between nerve cells in the brain. If you then slow down your attention and wait, with a sense of curiosity, and kindness, the sensation or associated energy, will change. Memories or feelings may arise.
If you stay with this, you might then feel another sensation. If it gets overwhelming, you can stop, ground yourself, imagine yourself in a safe place.
NOTE. If emotional difficulties are the result of many years of trauma or emotional avoidance, it can be necessary to find a trained psychotherapist to help you do the necessary work on processing and understanding the many layers of coping/inhibitory emotions / defences that may have built up. AEDP (Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy) can be helpful here. In AEDP the therapist builds a temporary relationship with the client so they feel less alone, gain confidence and become more able to explore their own emotions.
Find your core emotions: an exercise you can try.
Core emotions are wavelike, they arise then ebb away.
First, notice which defense you may be engaging in.
Then, shift your attention to your body. Do a body scan.
Feel the sensations, e.g. butterflies in stomach, tightness in chest.
Take slow deep breaths, focus on the physical feeling, bring compassion & curiosity to it.
Try to name the core emotions that come up. If you can’t, then “try on” different emotions until you find the one that feels right.