That feeling of heaviness and emptiness, and emotions so overwhelming that they choke you are not foreign to most of us. Conflicts, loneliness, and emotional wounds often make us feel that a boulder is pressing down us, threatening to flatten our existence. These emotional knots rob you of your happiness, freedom, energy and diminish your capacity for growth in life. The existential issues and emotional baggage you carry around aren’t only causing you pain and impacting your body and soul. To free yourself from these knots, you will have to use psychological skills to assist your healing journey. You will need to become mindful of your body, soul, and mental conditions. Scan your state, and deal with these emotional knots in the following manner.
1. Recognize What Is Happening
It is easy to say “It’s all fine” and shrug off concerned queries from peers and family. But to truly untangle your mind’s knots, you have to become aware of your inner self. You must recognize the emotions, feelings, thoughts, and behavior that affect you and dictate your mental state. For long, we have neglected our emotional states under the pretense of being brave. But bravery is to recognize your suffering and discomfort. To address the issue and turn off the trance that makes us blind to our mental and emotional state.
To help people in this pursuit, many holistic physicians have established programs and guides to help people achieve emotional wellness. Among the most notable works for this cause stands the book the Emotion Code, written by a renowned holistic physician to help people achieve wellness. The book helps people identify their trapped emotions and release them into the world in a healthy manner. The Emotion Code and similar books that focus on mental and emotional wellness are helping many people recognize their inner conflicts.
2. Allow Life To Be Just As It Is
Allowing life here means recognizing the sensations, emotions, thoughts, and feelings surrounding you. It doesn’t mean that you have to accept or reject any of these thoughts and beliefs. The point is to simply acknowledge their existence and their impact, no matter how strongly you feel against holding up such emotions. But pushing away or burying it down only causes more resistance, and the resistance, in turn, creates a jumble of tangles that tighten with every passing day.
However, by allowing life to be just as it is, you allow yourself to think and feel emotions without having the constant desire to bury them deep inside you or fix them. Instead, accepting the reality of their existence softens the edges around these emotions. Scrapping off the sharp edges allows you to be easy on yourself instead of poking about in your heart and suffering internally. However, it also includes realizing the temporariness of these emotions.
3. Investigate With Kindness
Recognizing our emotions and allowing them to exist without judgment or rejection can give you some sense of relief. It will connect you with yourself, making you more mindful of your state. But investigating these emotions with a clear head, specially when you are feeling overwhelmed, is extremely necessary for your personal growth. So let the anxious grip around your mind slip a little, and ask yourself, what are your priorities? What matters need your attention right away? What do I hope to achieve from these emotions and feelings?
While such questions are truly torturous to dwell upon, they are also necessary so that you can show yourself a little kindness. Instead of instantly believing yourself to be a victim of time and situations, busy yourself with figuring out what the base of your emotions dictate.
4. Nurture Yourself
Investigating your state of emotions allows you to determine what your body and mind need to release the knots building up inside. To do so, reach deep down into your hurt and frightened self, and ask that part of your mind what it needs the most. Once you recognize what you need, offer yourself some kindness so that the process of recognition doesn’t leave you with more emotional wounds than before. After you reassure yourself, offer your mind, body, and soul some companionship, understanding, forgiveness, and reassurance.
Talk to yourself like you would talk to a friend, with kindness and compassion, carefully choosing each word to make the pain disappear. This process in itself is known as nurturing. It will also help you separate your identity from your emotions and mental states.
Untying your emotional knots is not child’s play. It takes a lot of self-awareness, courage to accept even your darkest parts, and a lot of kindness and patience to achieve the results. But once these knots start to loosen, you no longer have to practice these techniques to achieve results. Once these knots loosen, you will be able to protect yourself from the harshness and bitterness of the world even more. It will give you the chance to be your friend.
