Healing Buried Emotions: A Thought-Provoking Approach
In her book, Feelings Buried Alive Never Die …, Karol Truman presents an interesting approach to healing buried emotions. I expected the content to be more along the lines of Bessel van Der Kolk’s ideas on somatic healing in The Body Keeps the Score. In her own way, Karol guides the reader to healing, but not through a body focus!
Instead, Truman’s premise is that feelings have a unique language; and healing buried emotions requires listening proficiency. Her definition of emotions carries a connection of feelings with thoughts. All are stored as energy in the body and act as influencers upon outcomes we live and experience.
Do Feelings Come Before Thoughts? Rethinking Cause and Effect
I have believed we can shape our feelings by directing our thoughts through disciplines like practicing gratitude, appreciation, and choosing better words. However, Ms. Truman proposes that while this approach is effective, she believes using her “tool” works more quickly and efficiently.
This raised an important question for me: do our thoughts shape our feelings, or do our feelings quietly shape the thoughts we come to believe as truth? Is there a more efficient way to achieve deeper healing?
How Buried Emotions Shape Beliefs, Identity and Outcomes
She proposes that our thoughts and belief systems are formed long before we had words to explain them. Very young, life experiences teach us to deny our feelings in favor of reasoning; and to look for the cause and effect solutions to our perceptions. These early perceptions become our hidden, but foundational guideposts for life, however faulty they may be.
The Role of Awareness in Healing Buried Emotions
The real path to healing, according to Ms. Truman, is to raise our awareness of what we are saying, thinking and feeling. As we become more practiced, our awareness deepens. As a result, we begin to make better cause and effect connections; developing the ability to listen to what our “emotions” are communicating beneath the surface.
A Tool for Emotional Healing and Single-Minded Alignment
Equipped with this increased awareness, “The Script”, can now be utilized. It is a tool she and her clients have used successfully to resolve symptoms and become more single=minded. For her, single-minded means a person’s feelings and thinking are aligned with their true self. Simply put, there are no discrepancies between what we think we believe, and what we actually feel deep down.
Self-Reflection Questions for Emotional Awareness
Since feelings and thoughts are stored energy, if they are misaligned, counterproductive symptoms persist. Most of us live with an illusion of how single-minded we are. Some self-awareness questions may help:
- Are your relationships with friends and family satisfying?
- Are your work relationships/roles enjoyable?
- Do you feel fulfilled or a deep void?
- Are you experiencing desired results or do you feel stuck?
- Are you at peace and happy most of the time?
- Do you enjoy optimum health or troubling, chronic issues?
The questions and answers are reflecting tools, giving us a glimpse into levels of peace and single-mindedness with self and others.
Signs You May Have Buried Emotions
So, what are signs or symptoms of buried emotions, of the need for more single-mindedness? And why are these “symptoms” present? What stood out to me in this list from Truman, is that these are reminders we are not broken, but sharing common humanity, walking each other home. The symptoms are common patterns that reflect attachment and early relational adaptations. We seek safety, connection, and belonging to fill a gap, or meet an unmet need.
Symptoms fall into categories.
Identity Patterns That Reveal Emotional Misalignment
Rescuer
People pleasing
Need for approval
Unable to appear weak
Need to be in control
Frequent illnesses, something always wrong
Relationship Struggles Linked to Buried Emotions
Relational conflicts: manipulation, control, chaos
Repeating unhealthy patterns
Unable to keep friends
Difficult to see past the need to sooth present pain
Chatterbox or shutdown
Unable to express feelings
Core Feelings That Signal Deeper Healing Is Needed
Helpless
Hopeless
Inferior
Unloved
Self-Sabotaging Behaviors and Emotional Disconnection
Financial instability
Pushing others away
Hibernating
Self-defeating or sabotaging
Taking advantage of friends/family
Remember, the good news is that we can develop a sense of safety and security in our lives. Healing buried emotions is part of growing in our whole-person alignment and identity maturity.
My Turning Point: Choosing Life And Beginning Emotional Healing
When I think about single-mindedness and alignment, I think about an important turning point in my healing journey. It began with a recognition that all my relationships were fear-based: fear of failure, fear of disappointing, fear of being a disappointment, fear of rejection. Years of unattended trauma was manifesting in my body with severe weight loss, dermatomyositis, an auto-immune rash covering 60% of my skin and a death wish.
At a crossroad, I was faced with a decision I knew I had to make: choose death, or choose life! Convicted as a believer in Christ’s redemptive work, I asked myself: What would choosing life look like?
Coming Into Alignment: A Healing Buried Emotions Path
Initially, it was the simple act of my will, to say, “I choose life.”
And then, to try to take hold of hope with a repentant heart in prayer.
What came next was a devotional book, Your 100 Day Prayer.
It became my guide and alignment the focus, alignment in all my relationships, with myself, God – as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, with my family, and my work.
The 100 days turned into six months, building a foundational structure I did not know I needed until further along in my healing journey.
Interestingly, alignment with myself also became an ongoing mystery discovery journey for healing in body, mind, soul, and spirit.
“The Script” tool comes in handy on a regular basis. I hope to get it posted to a Resources page soon for reader’s use, as well.
Begin Your Healing Journey
This Blog – Growth Journeys, is often about lessons I’ve learned to walk out. Each is rooted in this premise: our health and single-mindedness grows out of alignment with our true identity.
We come into alignment over time in safe connections; where love and belonging draw us into relationships that remind us who we are in our true identity. We grow by exchanging old fear-based habits for new love and connection habits.
Here, trust is restored, capacity is expanded, buried feelings are processed, and identity is strengthened.
I encourage you to start/continue your journey.
Read more: When a Trauma Story Awakens: Like a Sick Child in the Night
If you need a journeying partner, follow me here or reach out to start a conversation.