Caramel was our boisterous, sock-eating, pizza snatching dog that captured our hearts the moment we got him. I knew something was off with him for weeks, but I had been to the vet and determined it was just stress. This morning not only did he refuse to eat but he began to throw up odd non-food particles. Whatever was going on was worse, and the pit in my belly told me it wasn’t good.
I sat in the vet’s office waiting for the x-ray results to come back. Surely it would be something a pill would solve, and I could be on my way. The vet came back in, looked at me, and said, “He needs to go straight to the Emergency Hospital.”
It took me a moment to comprehend what she said. Go straight to the ER? I focused back on what she was explaining had shown up in the testing. Caramel had a large mass in his belly. A pill was not going to solve this.
While Carmel spent time in the ER getting all kinds of testing, I sat through my daughter-in-law’s graduation, smiling as I exchanged small talk with everyone. I tried hard to stop my thoughts from wandering into thoughts of concern for what the test results would show about Caramel.
In the midst of it all, our oldest son was proposing the next day and all plans were in high gear to pull off an amazing proposal. It was everyone’s highlight. Excitement was high and somehow, it didn’t feel right to express how worried I was about Caramel.
We got the call a few minutes before midnight, and we headed down to the ER to say our goodbyes. Nothing could ever have prepared me for this. I did not feel I could grieve amidst the graduation celebration and the joy of the upcoming proposal. All the emotions that my body was feeling had no outlet. They were “stuffed” inside because that is all I felt able to do.
This is one of the ways emotions get trapped in our bodies. When we are unable to process through them. It doesn’t have to be losing a pet. Any negative emotion that we feel and don’t process can get trapped. What does it mean to get trapped?
God created science. He put the rules of the universe in place at the beginning of creation. One of those rules is quantum physics. In quantum physics, everything in the universe vibrates. Every cell in your body vibrates and is essentially energy. If you take a microscope to your hands, zoom in 20,000 times, you will see billions and billions of particles “running around” and “popping”. You may appear solid but you are in fact, a constant state of movement. You are energy.
Emotions are energy that are generated inside the body. Positive emotions rarely become stuck because we usually process through them. But the others, like dread, fear, shame, and despair often do not get processed. When the emotions get stuck, they are there in the form of frequency and get stuck in various places in the body. They can be found in organs or communication pathways that connect to different parts of the body. Because negative emotions are low frequency, they can disrupt function and the communication flow. This often leads to various issues that we begin to notice in the form of symptoms. Here are some of the possible symptoms that trapped emotions can create:
- Chronic muscle tension or pain
- Frequent headaches or migraines
- Digestive problems
- Fatigue or low energy
- Unexplained mood swings or irritability
- Difficulty relaxing or sleeping
- inflammation
Here are some situations that can create trapped emotions:
- Suppression: Ignoring or pushing away emotions instead of acknowledging them.
- Unresolved Trauma: Past traumatic experiences that were never fully processed.
- Cultural or Social Conditioning: Societal norms that discourage emotional expression.
- Repetitive Stress: Ongoing stress without adequate coping mechanisms.
So, what do we do with these trapped emotions now that we know what they are? In my next blog post I will share how we can identify the trapped emotions (we call them trauma frequencies) and release them from the body.
In the meantime, may you have the space you need to process all the emotions you feel with the One who created our emotions.