If you’ve followed me for long or taken any of my programs, you know that I often share how learning to process my emotions has improved my health more than anything else! The reason for this is that repressed emotions contribute to chronic fight or flight, or a sympathetic dominant nervous system state, leading to nervous system dysregulation. When trying to heal, many focus on lowering the stress in their lives to improve health and happiness. However, what affects our health more than the stress we’re aware of (conscious stress) is the stress we’re not aware of (unconscious stress), which includes our repressed emotions. And from years of experience, I can tell you that most of us have a lifetime of repressed emotions lurking right under the surface, contributing to a chronic state of fight or flight.
Research shows that processing our emotions effectively moves the body out of fight or flight. One of the main obstacles to this is a lack of self-compassion. If we cannot acknowledge and meet our suffering with love, we will not be able to process our emotions and move the body out of fight or flight.
Imagine a lack of self-compassion as a tight lid keeping all those repressed emotions trapped below the surface. Self-compassion acts as the key, unlocking that lid and allowing all our emotional pain to rise up where it can be acknowledged, processed, and embraced with love and kindness.
The entire premise around self-compassion is caring enough about ourselves to want to ease our suffering. So, when we cannot acknowledge our suffering and meet it with self-compassion, we cannot tend to it or heal it.
Another crucial reason why self-compassion plays a pivotal role in processing emotions is that if we harbor a harsh inner critic (and let’s be honest, most of us do), our emotions will never feel safe enough to surface. Creating a safe environment is imperative for healing. Repressed emotions need to transition from being buried deep in the unconscious mind to the conscious mind, and this transition won’t occur without the right supportive environment.
I vividly remember the day I made the decision to start being kinder to myself—it was truly life-changing! Finally, I realized the importance of this work and actively began to observe and become aware of how much I was tearing myself down with that constant inner voice of criticism, and the immense stress and suffering it was causing me. It was a huge wake-up call to see how my own inner critic was contributing to my stress levels and overall unhappiness. It felt incredibly empowering to identify the root cause of so much of my stress and suffering and to know that I had the power to replace criticism with kindness, to become my own support system. And let me tell you, this shift has contributed more to my healing than ANYTHING else!
Our cells are listening to every word we say, and even though many of us are not even aware of how toxic our inner dialogue is, our body knows and FEELS IT ALL! And once we acknowledge it, it’s as if the storm inside us can finally start to calm, the body finally feels safe, and this is when we’re able to process a lifetime of repressed emotions, meeting each one with a kind and loving presence, acknowledging our pain and tending to it.
When we offer ourselves the love that we give others, the love that we deserve, we can finally feel like we’re enough. From my experience, the majority of the people I work with never feel like they’re enough, so they’re constantly generating and repressing shame, the most corrosive emotion one can experience. Self-compassion is the antidote to shame. However, simply telling ourselves that we are enough, especially when we don’t feel like it, doesn’t do much to improve how we feel about ourselves, but SHOWING ourselves that we are enough—by actively being kind and loving toward ourselves—changes everything and is the most healing work you can ever do!
Friends, it’s simple: A lack of self-compassion sends a constant danger signal to the brain and nervous system, triggering the stress response. In contrast, offering ourselves self-compassion activates the opposite and sends messages of safety, balancing the nervous system. This is why there are few things more important than this when it comes to healing from chronic symptoms, preventing further health issues, and just being happy and content in our lives. In fact, it’s so important that I don’t believe we can heal or be truly happy without this work.
