Stuck in your head or stuck emotions?

Do you wonder why you are so tired all the time? 

Do you feel stuck in your head, with your monkey mind constantly running?

For some, lack of energy comes from neglecting their body: not sleeping enough, not eating well, not drinking enough water, and not exercising regularly.

For many who are using their brain to work, the fatigue may come from a mind that is always on and never allowed to pause.

But what if you have nailed or improve all these factors and still find yourself lacking energy, clarity, focus, and joy?

What if there is a deeper reason to why you can't calm your mind, sleep at night, and follow through on your personal goals? 

When you are tired all the time and can't find the cause of it, it is possible that you are dealing with suppressed emotions. 

Suppressed emotions is stuck energy.  

Suppressed emotions drain your energy and prevent it from flowing freely. 

Like putting a dam on the river of your life’s energy. 

Why does it matter? 

In a world where we are called to be creative and adapt to constant changes, we cannot allow our precious energy to be wasted on useless programs running in the background.

Especially if these programs act like dams building up energy behind the wall, ready to break free uncontrollably at any moment (often in the form of an illness).

What we want is work with the flow, without mental or emotional resistance. We want to have access to limitless energy flowing through us to produce our best work and be our best self.

This state makes us feel like the more we give, the more we recharge in the process. It is demanding, yet we are not grinding and hustling. We are enjoying the process, not going against the grain.

Going back to stuck emotions....

As Robin Sharma writes in The Everyday Hero Manifesto: 

"Holding on to trauma consumes a great deal of energy and natural inspiration. One of the results of ignoring what I call "accumulated scarring" is that you pretty much live in a state of limbic hijack, when the survival brain of the limbic system monopolizes your thinking and puts you into "fight, flight or freeze" mode. [...] Trauma causes a human being to dissociate from their body and run their days as an intellectual machine. [...] Frozen trauma causes a human being to shut down intimacy with their emotional aliveness and retreat inside their head.” 

We avoid our emotions out of protection.

We disconnect from our heart to avoid feeling the pain.

Then we wonder why we rarely feel joy, happiness, love and peace…

And we have all lived some level of trauma since March 2020 and many strong emotions.

We have a lot to process collectively (but that’s an entire topic by itself!).

Individually, if you find yourself triggered and you sense your mind has been highjacked with worry or stress-related emotions, you may want to pause and attend to these emotions.

If you ignore or suppress them, you are adding to your energy deficit.

Instead, try to acknowledge, feel, and release your emotions before moving on with your task or your day. 

Emotional processing is key to avoid blocking and wasting your energy.

Quite often, we are stuck in our head to avoid feeling our emotions, sensing what is going on in our body, and listening to our intuitive guidance (which tends to tell us what we don't want to hear right now because we are too busy or it is not convenient😊).

All emotions are good. They provide us with valuable information and teaching opportunities. 

Sometimes about the present situation not aligning with what we believe in, what we value or what we truly desire. 

Sometimes about past trauma or wounds that we need to face, heal and release to move on with more inner freedom. 

So here are my tips to help you process your stuck emotions into 'energy-in-motion':

1. Notice the body sensation 

Get out of your head and down into your body. What do you feel? Where do you feel it? Adopt an attitude of curiosity about what is going on inside you, without judging or wanting to change it.

2. Stay with the sensation for a moment

 Just bring your awareness to that sensation and breathe in it. What is it trying to tell you? What action are you inspired to take in response?

3. Thank your emotion and release it

Thanking your body for giving you this valuable information about your alignment or lack thereof allows you to honor the intelligence of your heart and not resist your experience. It is by accepting what is that we can then let go.

4. Release the excess energy and rest

Emotion is energy. To release it, it is sometime helpful to sweat it out and move. Liberating the stuck energy can also leave us depleted, needing to recover. Honor what you need in the moment or as soon as you can.

5. Cultivate positive emotions

If acknowledging all emotions are good, you don’t want to make the so-called bad emotions your default state of being. Find a ritual that will help you go back to and remain more often in emotions of higher vibration such as meditation, positive affirmations and gratitude practice.