Recovery Journey Roadmap

I had buried (or at least brushed over or resisted) difficult emotions for my whole life, without even realising it. I wasn’t modelled any emotional intelligence growing up and as time went by, I was probably subconsciously trying to move on from difficult experiences very quickly, so that challenging emotions wouldn't have a chance to hurt as much. 

But now, when I look back, I realise I did that all the time. It was a learned behaviour, and although protective in nature it was now not helping me at all; in fact, it was making me sick.

What do you do when something happens that’s too hard to face? Bury it, right? Distract yourself, hide it as best you can, be outwardly happy even, maybe the life of the party, make stupid decisions, put up with hurtful crap, drink loads, right? It's a common life pattern for a lot of us with years of built-up difficulties we're trying to escape from. This cycle that I practised throughout my life, of not really addressing difficult situations or letting my feelings really be heard or dealt with, was rotting me from the inside and is a story I hear from literally every single person I coach now. 

As adults in society, it’s burned into us that we must upset the apple cart, we must behave in a certain way, and these behaviours are taught to us from an early age. Imagine for a moment an upset toddler with hurt feelings. They don’t turn a blind eye and bury their response, do they? They react by throwing tantrums and crying uncontrollably until they get it out. But we are taught that being angry or upset is bad, we mustn't cry or scream or fight our way through feelings, they're typically shushed or dismissed as dramatic instead of held and soothed and understood. Behaving the way that our elders or the rest of society wants us to behave is quite literally making us sick.

We can also suppress and self-abandon in other ways when we are not seen and heard effectively by our caregivers. We learn to adapt with our behaviour by people-pleasing, perfectionism, achieving, staying quiet and obedient, appeasing, saying yes when we really need to say no...the list goes on.

The premise of this kind of behaviour is that if we learn that communicating our hurt means that we're withheld compassion and understanding, and left alone with our hurt, then we learn a very valuable skill (albeit massively toxic), repression.

Repression creates massive disruption and dysregulation in the nervous system, kind of like trying to swallow the energy of a feral animal; you can only hold it in for so long before it starts to get ugly.

Emotions are vital data from your unconscious brain, constantly scanning your past experiences and environment to communicate crucial information about your safety and needs. When we suppress these messages, it’s like scrambling data from our internal GPS. Your brain, whose primary job is to detect threats in order to keep you alive, then feels profoundly unsafe because it can no longer reliably understand what’s happening. When this communication breakdown persists, it often resorts to communicating in the only other way it can – through physical sensations or symptoms. These physical manifestations are not random; they are often amplified danger signals from a system that feels unheard and overwhelmed.

When we suppress our emotions, whether consciously or subconsciously, we suppress our primal and natural responses to our experiences and label them as dangerous. This act of suppression scrambles the brain and nervous system’s internal communication, leading it to perceive an ongoing threat. This can keep us stuck in a state of perpetual survival and that ongoing activated stress energy can very commonly manifest as not only mental and emotional overwhelm, but also physically as bodily symptoms. Understanding this rationale reveals that emotions are not just feelings but essential data, and that living solely in our heads ignores the profound wisdom of the body, a system not designed to function or thrive without listening to these inner signals.

There are many ways to connect to your feelings or feel the emotions you’ve hidden. Some decide to go to therapy at this point and figure out what’s going on with the help of a professional. Somatic Experiencing, EMDR, Parts Work or Internal Family Systems (IFS) are a few of my favourite modalities for this kind of deeper work as they combine the mind and the body in their approaches. 

But the basic idea to unravel emotions we have buried and the behaviour of suppression is simply to access and fully feel your emotions. Simple, not easy.

But in order for the survival stress and impact on our physiology to become unstuck, we must feel them physically/somatically in our body. Not analyse them, not overthink them, not try to change them or fix them or get lost in the story that created them, not worry about releasing them or why you are even feeling them...JUST FULLY FEEL THEM.

It's super common and easy to overthink all of this and expect that you now have to face all your demons and fix every fight you’ve ever had, but trust me, you don't. Just feel your emotions, don't try to THINK of what you're feeling and give any logic to them.

To begin, consider these questions:

1. What areas of your life are currently causing you distress/unhappiness?
2. How do these circumstances make you feel?
3. Identify the specific emotions that arise – grief, shame, helplessness, anger, vulnerability, embarrassment, disappointment, frustration, fear, or perhaps others.
4. Reflect on any concurrent life events or underlying stressors.
5. Have you experienced similar feelings at earlier points in your life, particularly during childhood or adolescence?
6. What traits or behaviours get in your way in your adult life?

Check out my Journal Prompts for emotional release here, or my detailed page highlighting my favourite topics and theme ideas for self-reflection practice here.

What would you change if you could? What would you honestly feel if you allowed yourself to feel without fear? If there was no consequence of having that feeling, what would it be?

It's important not to judge yourself for feeling resistant emotions; it might feel uncomfortable to address them if you've hidden them for so long. Just remember that your brain has kept them from you in order to protect you, but they are supposed to be experienced; they are important messengers, so try to allow them just as they are.

Fearing your own feelings is incredibly common. There's a worry that if you open that door, a flood will rush in and you won't be able to handle it.

The most powerful thing you can do is honour that fear. Don't fight it. Instead, go slowly. Think of it as dipping your toes in the water, not diving in headfirst. Start small by exploring a minor, recent feeling—one that isn't too intense. Your initial goal is just to practice sitting with an emotion. If you feel numb or blocked at first, that’s okay! It just means your brain is doing an excellent job of protecting you.

This isn't about "unleashing the beast." This is about extending a tender invitation. Imagine you are gently asking your inner child to sit with you, helping that sweet, innocent part of you learn to trust you again. For trust to build, it must be slow, soft, and safe. Ask yourself the same gentle questions you would ask a child: "How are you doing? How did that make you feel?"

Emotions are not dangerous—they are just information. But to a nervous system stuck in survival mode, they can feel dangerous. The discomfort of feeling something new isn't harming you; it’s just an unfamiliar sensation. Your body already knows how to process emotion. Your only job is to go slowly enough that your mind gets out of the way and lets your body do its work.

And remember, this is not a journey you have to take alone. Therapists and trauma-informed coaches are skilled guides trained to hold space for this exact process, helping you safely reconnect with all parts of yourself at a pace that doesn't derail you.

Journaling, EMDR and somatics taught me how to feel emotions in my body, rather than think them in my head, which was critical to releasing the tense survival energy that the repressed emotion causes. Almost like a download of energy for the nervous system, feeling our emotions physically is an important step that allows the pent-up energy of all the blocked feelings to flow freely in our bodies, just the way nature intended.

It helps to sit with emotions as and when they happen in the heat of the moment to teach yourself and practice what it feels like to feel them whenever they're triggered. Someone piss you off? Notice what happens to your body in that moment and allow it to be there with you without running away or numbing. Try it right now, take yourself to a moment where you were last really upset by something or someone, what happens inside you? It might be subtle, you might be really disconnected from this kind of awareness, that's absolutely normal, just start to tune in and notice in these moments as the sensations will typically be showing up.

How to get fluent in the language of your body

Find out how to practice emotional exploration in your body with my free guide - How to feel your feelings and why it matters in recovery. Or if you need more help with this, check out my 12-part Emotional Embodiment series, part of my Mind-Body Mastery Membership.

This was a pivotal moment in my life for sure. After reading Sarno's books and Googling the mind-body connection I found information about JournalSpeak, a type of expressive writing therapy, taught by Psychotherapist Nicole Sachs LCSW.

It completely changed my self-perception, helped me understand and reflect on my story and my experiences, and completely turned my life around. I’ve created a separate section dedicated to JournalSpeak because of its importance and the number of resources associated with it.

The way I teach this part of the recovery work differs somewhat now, as the more I learned and experienced the profound impact of somatics and where emotions are expressed in the body, I found that somatically connecting to feelings to be a much swifter way to process emotions than simply writing about them.

Essentially, my adapted version of the emotional work completes the stress cycle that exists within the body due to suppressed emotions by teaching you how to effectively access, express and discharge emotional energy from the body. This benefits us in two ways: so that our body can process what has been buried, and so that it learns how to naturally default to expression and not to suppression again in the future.

I have a 12-part masterclass series called Emotional Embodiment that guides you though this exact work if you need more help navigating this. It can be found in my signature offering, my Mind-Body Mastery Membership.

Following your self-inquiry sessions, it's natural for emotions to be heightened, potentially with intensity depending on your writing experience. Therefore, the next section is crucial – please do not skip it!