Many studies have shown that pushing away or repressing unwanted feelings can do more harm than good in the long term. But did you know that denying feelings such as fear, sadness, or anxiety can actually cause the body physical pain too?
When someone experiences any form of emotional pain, the best way to overcome the experience is to acknowledge, process and release these feelings instead of just bottling them up. Ignoring emotional pain will only cause you to feel out of touch with your true self, creating internal conflict that will become more complex and harder to resolve in the future.
But when people do take the route of repressing their feelings, where do they actually go?
It is very common for unwanted feelings to cause tension within the physical body. Where this physical pain manifests can actually depend on the type of emotion you are experiencing. Psychologist, Dr. Susanne Babbel, from Psychology Today says, "Often, physical pain functions to warn a person that there is still emotional work to be done."
Below are a list of tension areas in the body and the unwanted emotion they tend to be related to:
- Headaches/migraines: Stress, burnout, or loss of control
- Neck pain: Guilt or self-recrimination
- Shoulder pain: Burdens and problems with responsibilities
- Upper back pain: Lack of emotional support
- Lower back pain: Anger or frustration, lack of financial support
- Elbow pain: Resistance to change in life
- Voice and throat problems: Oppression or challenges speaking up
- Difficulty breathing: Anxiety
- Fatigue: Resentments
- Numbness: Trauma
Psychotherapy is one of the best ways to release and overcome any bottled up feelings. When the weight of repression is lifted, people tend to feel relieved and physically freed. Taking care of these feelings will drive you to take better care of yourself and those around you.
Next time you are experiencing pain somewhere in your body for an unknown reason, try considering the possibility of psychosomatic pain being the root cause. Dig a little deeper and explore the pain, because you might find there to be subconsciously repressed emotional pain from the past.