Trapped emotions? What’s a trapped emotion? And what does it have to do with my knee/shoulder/bladder/stomach/skin/fill in the blank here?

The short answer is “possibly everything.”

But I know the short answer doesn’t help you much. So let’s look at the longer answer. What is a trapped emotion anyway? We all have emotions. We experience them multiple times a day. They are elicited by our thoughts about the world around us and they range from the very positive, to more neutral, to the very negative. Positive emotions are uplifting, they make us feel good, bring a smile to our face and a sparkle to our eyes. Neutral emotions are just kind of there. They don’t influence us much one way or another. But negative emotions are a whole different story. Negative emotions drain us. They sap our strength. They make everything harder to deal with. They cause us to see things with much less clarity, affect our thinking, and yes, can even get trapped within our bodies. “How?” you ask. Ah, now that is where things get interesting.

When we experience an emotion, we decide what to do with it. We can either experience it and then let it go or we can choose not to really experience it and hold on to it for later. For positive and neutral emotions we choose to fully experience them and let them go. They don’t hurt us. Many times they are healing. Negative emotions on the other hand. . . they hurt. We tend to avoid things that cause pain. So rather than dealing with them, we may push them aside or bury them so that we don’t have to feel the hurt they cause right now. We’re busy and we just can’t deal with it at the moment. Or perhaps the hurt is to big to process all at once so we can only deal with small parts of it at a time. We still have to function after all, so we push the pain and hurt aside for now. But does it really go away just because we’ve chosen not to deal with it at the moment?

The answer is “no.” No, it doesn’t go away. It stays. And the how is where things get really interesting.

You see, everything in the universe vibrates. Thank you quantum physics for explaining this to us. The speed at which things vibrate is called frequency. Well emotions have a frequency too. And frequencies that match attract each other. So when we choose to hang on to an emotion, for whatever reason, it is actually attracted to a part of the body that has the same or a similar frequency. Follow me so far? Ok, so emotions are attracted by frequencies and when we hold on to them they stick around in our physical bodies. . . until we do something about them. *Ouch* Yeah, that pain you’re pretending doesn’t exist, it’s still there and it isn’t going away. In fact, it may even stick around long past you! Your kids, grandkids, or upteen-great-grandkids may be dealing with whatever emotional junk you chose to put off dealing with.

“How is that even possible?!”

Information. Our bodies are amazing at storing it. In fact, each cell in the body has an amazing capacity for storing information in its specialized library, called DNA. Now I’m not a computer person by any means, but my husband did try to explain to me just how much information a base 4 language can encode. . . let’s just say it’s A LOT. Way more than you’re going to get on any modern day computer. So do our cells have the capacity to store this emotional information and even pass it along to the next generations? Uh, yes. Yes they do. If something sticks around long enough the body is going to incorporate it into the cellular library for later. Here’s the rub though, once that information is encoded not only does it become more difficult to remove it also acts like a magnet to attract more frequencies like itself.

Are you starting to get the picture now? Fear attracts more fear. Panic attracts more panic. Anger, anxiety, bitterness, despair, helplessness, hopelessness, failure. . . insert your negative emotion here, once it’s in it will attract more of itself. That is partly why we seem to keep struggling with the same emotions over and over again. Or why certain emotions seem to be more prevalent in families. We can’t deal with them all, so they get encoded, attract more and get passed down to the next generation. Plus they gum up the works physically as well. While our DNA is capable of storing all this excess negative information, it really wasn’t designed to.

That nagging pain you’ve been dealing with for years, think back with me to when it started. What was going on in your life at the time? Was there some kind of physical, emotional, or spiritual trauma going on at the same time? You’ve tried all the things, taken everyone’s recommendations, and it still hasn’t gone away. Heck, perhaps those you’ve spoken with have you halfway convinced that it’s all in your head anyway because everything looks perfectly normal on all the scans! But what if that pain or health issue you’re dealing with has an emotional component to it? What if that emotional component has to be dealt with before it can fully resolve?

Friends, that is why it is so important to look at more than just the physical when it comes to our health. We have to look at our whole person: body, mind, and spirit. Emotions play a HUGE part in our health and releasing those trapped negative emotions allows the body to continue healing itself without all that interference. That’s why here at Chrysalis, we make sure to include at least one form of emotional release into our client consultations. Our desire is for you to truly be well and enjoy the abundant health that you were designed to enjoy.

Jessica Meades