Why emotional suppression and leaving the body creates suffering and how coming back to the body heals
I’m not sure you’re going to believe me, or even be able to take this in yet, but in your body there is something alive. A life force. An energy. Which also can be described as emotions, or feelings, or sensation — and that energy, when met, has potential for profound alchemical changes in your life and in the lives of others around you.
When you were young, you learned to repress this. You learned to make it wrong.
And this wasn’t your fault.
Your parents had their own repressed feelings and energy, often through no fault of their own, because their parents had the same and taught them the same, and this went on through the lineage. And on top of that, things happened in their lives that caused them to contract and repress that energy even more, because they didn’t know how to release it, they were never shown how. In fact, they were encouraged to suppress it and deny it in themselves.
As a result, they didn’t have the capacity to help you with what you were feeling. They couldn’t mirror back to you how natural and healthy emotions are. They didn’t know, and so they couldn’t show you, that feelings aren’t the problem, that emotions aren’t dangerous.
They couldn’t show you that when emotions are allowed, they release what has been held, help you stay connected to your heart and your intuition, and deeply ground you, so you’re more resourced and better able to meet the difficult moments of life.
They also couldn’t show you that when emotions are supported, so they can flow and move through your body without resistance, something else develops alongside the feeling. You find yourself with more agency. With clearer boundaries. You’re better able to know what is ok and what is not ok. You’re able to use your voice. To stand up for yourself. And because of that, you’re less susceptible to being overridden, dominated, or harmed. Feeling doesn’t make you weaker; it gives you agency, protection, resilience and boundaries.
When there isn’t an adult who has learned how to be with their own feelings, and so as a result is not able to be present with their child’s big feelings either, the safest and most adaptive thing for a child to do is to unconsciously shut those feelings down, or split off from them.
You learn to leave your body and live predominantly in your head. You learn to manage life through thought.
As you became an adult, you tried to help yourself because you didn’t want to suffer. You educated yourself in order to heal from the suffering. And much of what you learnt meant focusing on the mind — changing your thinking, trying to think positively, trying to let thoughts go or trying not to have thoughts at all, trying to be more loving or more spiritual.
And more spiritual meant transcend the body, go higher, not lower.
And more loving meant just put up with what is happening and smile and say it’s ok.
And you really thought this was different. But underneath, it was the same thing in another form. A resistance to many of the feelings that were there. A rejection of parts of yourself that reinforced something already very painful; the sense that you weren’t acceptable as you were, and that you had to keep fixing yourself in order to belong, and that if you just kept trying to change something within yourself you might one day feel okay.
How you were shaped was not just about your family upbringing. It’s bigger than that. You were born into this. It’s all around you — in the culture and the psyche.
What we call normal is a dis-ease. A disconnection from our bodies, and a mass unconscious agreement and conditioning to identify predominantly with our minds. Over generations, repeated trauma; wars, violence, slavery, loss, oppression, and large-scale suffering that couldn’t be processed, shaped the way our bodies and minds learned to survive. It became safer to focus. It became safer to live in the mind and away from the body. Dissociation became a way of living.
Not because anyone decides it, but as a long-term adaptation to what was too painful, too overwhelming, or too dangerous to feel at the time.
What happened was that a natural life force, something intelligent and alive, was interrupted, paused, or frozen and pushed out of awareness, or numbed out of awareness, because it wasn’t safe or possible to feel it then. Not all of that life force is suppressed. Often, the parts of life that feel easier, more fluid, or where there is a sense of flow are the places where that energy is still moving. And the areas of life that feel difficult, painful, stuck, or that we call suffering are often signs of where that energy has been suppressed.
So how do we come back to that? How do we allow the flow of that life force again?
We do this by gently redirecting our attention away from the thinking mind and towards what we are actually feeling and sensing in our bodies. We start to get to know the landscape that lives within us. This can include emotions, sensations, tension, contraction, pressure, heaviness, numbness, tiredness, pain, holding.
At first, we may not notice much at all. Or we may notice certain sensations or emotions very strongly and repeatedly. And that’s okay. The more we give this space, and the more regularly we do this, the more we begin to notice. Over time, we start to realise just how vast and varied this inner world is, and there is always more revealing itself to us.
When you begin to feel your emotions, and you no longer resist them, what has been held for so long starts to move and release. And as it moves, there is often relief.
The more you feel, the more you are able to be with yourself, and to feel more content in yourself. You find yourself happier with little things you may not have noticed in the past. You notice that the things that used to scare you, terrify you, or upset you don’t affect you in the same way.
The more you feel, the more you take yourself seriously and learn to trust your intuition, and through that, you begin to know what is ok and what is not ok. You begin to realise that your sensitivity helps you navigate life, and that it is a truth, not a pathology.
And the more you are able to feel, the more you are able to be with others without having to fix them or get away when they are in distress, because you’re no longer afraid of the feelings. As a result, you make it easier for others around you to feel.
The more you are able to feel, the more you start to realise that magic can happen. You find, in time, that you change. That new parts of yourself come to the surface. That people change around you. That life changes.
You start to trust that when you are having a difficult experience, you can turn towards yourself and meet what you are with in your body, because you remember the times before when you did this and were surprised, and even in awe, of the alchemy that took place as a result.
You begin to welcome, and even enjoy, it when the tears come, knowing that this is a place of letting go, of opening, and of deep relief.
The actual act of coming back to the body helps you start to embrace yourself more, and in doing so, embrace the emotions and the messages that they bring for you. This, in turn, helps you experience life more fully.
You find that you don’t have to fight yourself like you used to.
You don’t have to try so hard.
Life begins to feel easier, with more flow.
Sometimes, as you begin to feel more, it can feel uncomfortable at first. Sensation returns. Things you’ve avoided or numbed can start to come into your awareness. That doesn’t mean something has gone wrong. It means your capacity to feel is growing. This is good news. You are actually becoming more whole. The orphaned parts of you are coming home.
This can feel like coming in from the cold into the warmth, as your body warms up, it can ache and feel uncomfortable as sensation returns.
And as you become more comfortable with feeling, you build the capacity to feel more. And with that capacity, you become able to host more; not just what is happening in your own life, but what lives in your lineage, and in the world around you.
So here’s the thing: feeling your emotions isn’t selfish. It’s the opposite. It’s an enormous service to yourself, to the future, to others around you, and to the generations in our past.
The work becomes much bigger than personal healing as more and more of us are willing to feel, and as we build the capacity to hold what was once too much. In doing so, we release what has been frozen in the past and allow it to complete, making space for profoundly new ways of living, relating, and responding, both individually and collectively.
So this is what I want you to hear: this life force in you was never the problem. The emotions you have are not negative. That energy makes you wise, responsive, authentic, connected, resilient, more inclusive of the world and powerful. Coming back to it isn’t about becoming less or being broken it’s about becoming whole.
© Lizzie Bryher, 2026