23. How to Process Emotions for Better Emotional, Spiritual, and Physical Health

Hi, I’m Natalie Ottosen and you are listening to The Mindset School for Soulful Entrepreneurs, episode number 23.

Welcome to The Mindset School podcast, a show for spiritual entrepreneurs who are ready to stop feeling stuck, reconnect to their soul’s purpose, and create a deeply fulfilling life and business. I’m Natalie Ottosen, transformational life coach, and reconnection healing foundational practitioner, and I can help you scale and grow a six-figure business from a place of inner authority, wisdom, knowledge, and truth.

If you are a spiritual entrepreneur and you are looking to take that first step towards your dream of running your own business, this is the show for you. Ready to step into your power and move forward with clarity and purpose? Let’s go.

Hello, beautiful soul family. I wanted to talk about an interesting topic today and shame can be what comes up when we talk about this subject and shame can be something that we experience when we feel this topic. So I wanted to talk about it because I actually had an experience with this yesterday. I experienced shame, so I thought what a good topic to talk about because I know everyone’s experiencing this. I know everyone is feeling this in their own lives.

So every other week I work with a colleague, and I work with a mentor, and we perfect our skills. So it’s, we’re constantly perfecting, I work on my energy healing, and we are working together to deepen into our skill levels and our skill set of energy healing. And what’s been coming up a lot lately is working with the nervous system and being able to release patterning and programming with my clients and being able to do that in the most effective way. And what ended up coming up for me yesterday, I was on the table and my colleague was actually working on me.

And the beautiful part about this process is that even when I’m on the table, I am learning as much as if I am working on a client, so that is such a fun process. Not so much fun, but it is such a beautiful process to witness and be witnessed. So yesterday, while I was on the table, I had all sorts of emotion come up because I’ve had some circumstances happen over the last couple weeks and they have to do with family and life and business and all of the stuff. And some specific things have happened that have hurt my feelings and have triggered and brought up all sorts of emotions for me.

And so yesterday while I was on the table being worked on by my colleague, I had emotion rise to the surface that I wasn’t expecting, so I had unexpected emotion rise. And I got really emotional while I was on the table. And initially I really became overwhelmed with emotion and tears were just flowing as I was processing this information and talking about this information and working through it, I was really overcome with emotion. Tears were flowing. I was talking. I was expressing. I was emoting.

And even about maybe halfway through or even three-fourths of the way through the session I even started to feel shame. And I even was apologizing for the emotion that was coming up for me. We processed the emotion. We wrapped up my session and then I worked on my colleague. And I was feeling fine. And then when we left, I was driving home, and the shame spiral kind of hit me and I thought to myself, I’m so embarrassed that, number one, this emotion is coming up ‘again,’ because once we deal with emotion, it should be dealt with, right? Wrong.

So I had all this shame and embarrassment that this emotion was coming up, that I was having to process it, feeling embarrassed that why wasn’t I further along in my journey? Why wasn’t I stronger? My brain was going in and offering all of these different thoughts and feelings about this emotion that came up in this very sacred space being held in this very sacred space. And I kind of just sat with the emotion for a little bit and really kind of felt the shame and really kind of felt this embarrassment. And then my brain kind of shifted into something else. And I thought, what am I supposed to do? What am I supposed to be feeling?

And I realized in that moment that this is exactly the process, this is exactly what we’re supposed to go through. We are supposed to feel emotion and then we are supposed to process that emotion. So normally what I would have done is I would have felt all this shame and I would have felt all this embarrassment and I would have not allowed myself to process it. I would have either pushed it away or felt like I needed to do something with it. Or move it somewhere somehow and not even acknowledge it, but instead I allowed myself yesterday to really witness myself not only having this emotion but also just normalizing it.

How normal is it to feel shame or to feel embarrassment? And then it also made me think, what do the rest of the people on the planet do, who don’t do anything with it, who don’t allow it to be there, who are trying to push it away, who are not feeling it, who are not allowing it into their existence? And it made me actually feel a little bit sad about that because this is the process. The process is to feel all of the emotions, to let it all come into our existence. And maybe you do feel embarrassment or maybe you do feel shame about it. But the point is to feel it and process through it.

So I wanted to talk a little bit about processing emotion today. It’s so beautiful and important to be able to go through this process. When we are able to process our emotions, it really allows us to understand ourself on a deeper level. It helps us understand what we’re feeling and why we’re feeling it and it really brings us to a greater understanding of self-awareness. It also really helps us with our mental health because unprocessed emotions really does lead to more stress and anxiety and depression and other mental health issues.

Because I don’t know if you’ve ever heard the book, Feelings Buried Alive Never Die, what is left in the body manifests itself physically. And I truly do believe that. So when we’re able to work through our emotions, it really does help us alleviate some of those symptoms to help promote really overall mental wellbeing. It also helps us regulate ourself and our systems to respond better. And when we are able to respond better, we have a more balanced reaction to life’s ups and downs.

It also helps us enhance our relationship not only with ourselves, but the people in our lives, the people around us, and that can be our family or our friends or even the people we work with, our colleagues. It also helps with healing and growing when we’re able to truly process emotion, which I have done so much of this over the last six months, eight months, oh, my gosh, we’re in August. The last eight months we’re really able to bring those deep traumas to the surface, to process through them to help recognize, release, acknowledge them and then release them and let them go.

That helps us be able to move past our pains and to be able to grow as a person. It also helps with our physical overall wellbeing. So again, unprocessed pain, I really do believe this, unprocessed emotion can lead to physical pain and ailments in the body. So being able to deal with emotion, heavy emotion can really help eliminate and alleviate some of those symptoms.

It also connects us to ourself spiritually on such a deeper level, because so much of the shame or embarrassment or fear or the judgment when we’re able to really go in and process and realize that we’re human. Instead of believing that there’s something wrong with us, we’re able to open ourselves up on a deeper level and expand ourselves in magnificent ways. It also helps us really understand how to make decisions better and helps us with our problem solving. Because when we’re making decisions based on fear or shame or judgment, we’re making it based on trauma responses or unprocessed emotions.

When we’re able to start dealing with and processing that emotion, number one, if we’re operating out of fear, we can say, “There’s fear, I recognize you and you can come along for the ride.” I don’t have to break down or shut down or close off because you’ve presented yourself to me. Same with judgment and same with shame. Shame is such a dream killer and so is fear and so is judgment. And when we’re able to go in and process those emotions, we’re able to open ourselves up, we’re able to problem solve in new ways.

We’re able to make decisions based on different rationale and different reasoning that helps us move forward in such amazing ways. So before I talk about how to process heavy emotion, I want to talk about what does it even mean to process heavy emotion? Processing heavy emotion really does refer to acknowledging, understanding and really being able to deal with these intense and challenging feelings that arise inside of us.

So we can do that by acknowledging first and foremost the presence of the emotion. This really involves being honest with ourselves about what we’re feeling specifically without judging or suppressing that feeling. It really is about understanding the source. Where is this coming from? So really being able to explore the root cause of the emotion. And sometimes the first emotion that comes up, there’s another emotion behind that and maybe another one even behind that. So really tracking back to past experiences or triggers or unresolved issues that contribute to the intensity of that emotion.

So understanding it, it’s also about allowing and accepting that emotion. I really want to encourage you to allow yourself to fully feel emotion without having to try to avoid it or suppress it or do anything with it. Acceptance of emotion, I would love for you to accept your emotion as just a natural part of the human experience, which is one of the most crucial parts about learning how to process heavy emotion. Observing it, really learning how to put yourself in an observer situation where you’re seeing the emotion but you’re not being consumed by the emotion.

And sometimes that’s a process of first getting consumed and then being able to move yourself into that observer self but being able to do this really helps us from automatically reacting or responding. It’s also about being able to express our emotions, especially in healthy ways. So this can be talking about our feelings, writing in our journals, creating art, or engaging in any sort of physical activity. It’s also about release. So this pent up energy, these pent up emotions, being able to finally release them and let them go, it can be through breath work or meditation or energy healing or even movement.

I remember when a couple years ago when I was doing yoga and especially moving into doing hip openers, I had so much release. I had so much emotion held in my hips and when I started doing hip openers, I remember one day I was laying on the mat and I just started sobbing. I had no idea where the emotion was coming from. I had no idea what was coming up, but it was this overwhelming grief hit me like a ton of bricks and I just sobbed, and it was so beautiful.

And it was such a beautiful process of releasing and letting go of some of that pent up energy that had been stuck because women we carry a lot in our hip area, in our psoas area. And being able to release that and let that go was such a beautiful part of my healing and growth journey. So really being able to release. It’s also about gaining perspective, so really being able to look at our emotion from different perspectives or different angles and what the lesson or what this emotion might be offering us. And being able to identify these different patterns that are showing up in our lives.

It’s also about self-compassion. How beautiful is our body and our mind that it has created whatever it’s needed to create in order to keep us safe, in order to keep us functioning, in order to keep us moving and operating and all of the things. So being able to go in and offer that self-compassion, that kindness, that understanding. And giving ourselves that grace to be able to help us move forward. And we can also look at that now and say, “That is so beautiful that my body created that judgment to keep me safe and do I still need it?” It is also part of the transformative work.

So being able to transform the energy of emotion, we can do this with affirmations and visualization and different energy healing practices in order to shift that emotion into a more positive and even constructive state. So again, how beautiful was that shame or how beautiful was that judgment? And do I still need that? Also letting it be there, again, that allowance, that acceptance, letting it be part of that human experience and letting it just come for the ride of yes, you’re here, yes, I see you, yes, I allow you. And I can still move forward and do everything that I need to do in my life.

And it’s also about integration. So really integrating these lessons and these insights, of being able to process the emotion for our personal growth, for our journey to help us evolve and develop greater emotional resilience in our own life. So how do we process heavy emotion? I’m going to give you a few tips and tricks that you can use for yourself. Take what works for you, leave the rest. And I want to offer you the opportunity to maybe try some things that you haven’t already because I use all of these tools and they have been transformative and completely changed my life and they’ve changed my clients’ lives as well.

So I want you to, and it may be something that comes up for you, maybe you’re finding some resistance about it. And I just want to offer that resistance is an indicator of rich material that needs to be addressed. So if you’re finding any resistance around a specific area, I want to offer you the opportunity to look at that as an opportunity for you to explore that a little bit further.

So number one is mindfulness and meditation. I talk about this all the time. I will continue to talk about this, probably in every single episode because it is such a beautiful process to help you process. I want to offer and encourage you to start your own mindfulness and meditation practice if you haven’t already because these techniques really help you learn to observe emotion without judgment. It allows you to acknowledge and eventually release what is coming up for you.

Number two is energy healing, which is a beautiful process of not only identifying but helping release blocked energy in the body. It can be reiki, it can be bioenergetic healing, it can be reconnective healing, it can be chakra balancing, it can be a medical intuitive. It is such a beautiful process in helping release that energy through the body.

So number three is journaling. When I was talking about that resistance piece, so many of my clients have had so much resistance around journaling. And I just want to offer that journaling can be one of the most healing and transformative processes that you can go through when you’re learning to process emotion. So I want to just offer you and encourage you to write freely about your feelings, your thoughts, your experience, allow anything and everything to come up and get it out and down on paper.

I also want to offer if you’re afraid to write something out that somebody may read it, you can always write whatever it is that you want to write and then burn it after, you do not have to keep it around. However, I do think it is beautiful to be able to go back and look at what you’ve processed and how you’ve processed it. So this really does allow you to gain some insight and perspective to help you move forward.

So number four is astrology in human design. There are so many insights on the energetic influences that are in your chart or that are in your human design that could be affecting your emotions, how you show up, the life lessons that you have in your life, how you process that. So some of the low roads for you and the high roads. And being able to understand this as an individual can really give you some greater context into your own experiences and what you’re going through in this life.

Number five is breathwork. Breathwork is a beautiful technique to be able to help guide you through the process of not only calming the nervous system but also regulating your emotions as well. Breathing exercises can help you release all sorts of tension and promote calm, peace, serenity.

Number six is doing inner child work. This really can help you connect with the inner child and help you address some of these unresolved emotions from your past. And this can really help lead to the healing and the emotional release of whatever emotions are coming up for you. I really do recommend that this is done with somebody who can help you through this process until you can maybe get more familiar with it and be able to process it. But working with an individual through this process is super beneficial.

And number seven is self-compassion. It is so important that through this journey of processing emotion that you are giving yourself the compassion and the grace and the kindness and the love that you need going through it. Because emotions, especially shame and fear and judgment, they have been there to keep you safe from whatever it is that happened in your past. And as you’re learning to process these emotions, you’re going to have all sorts of stuff come up for you, all sorts of things are going to be triggered.

So allowing yourself to know that what you’re experiencing right here and right now, it’s normal and it’s kept you safe. And how brilliant for your body to do everything that it’s been doing to help you through that process.

To wrap all of this up, in our conversation today we explored the importance of processing emotion for personal, spiritual, and overall wellbeing and development. As spiritual entrepreneurs, it is so important to learn how to process your emotions, which involves you acknowledging and understanding and releasing these intense emotions that are coming up for you. Because when we’re able to do this, this leads us to more self-awareness and resilience, improved relationships, emotional healing, and inner peace.

And on the other hand, when we don’t process our emotions, we have that stuck energy, we are dealing with more emotional distress, our relationships can be strained. And we really do miss out on the growth and opportunities that are available to us. So with tools like meditation and energy healing and even diving into your own chart and journaling we can have a more balanced and fulfilled life.

So if you’re wanting more help through this process, if you want to dive into your own astrology chart, if you are looking for some energy healing sessions, I can facilitate with those. Reach out to me @soulsistercoaching on Instagram or you can book a direct energy healing session. I’ll put the link in the show notes. Or if you’re wanting to work with me on a deeper level, you can book a shortcut to enlightenment call, and we can chat.

So again, I hope this was helpful for you today. Keep feeling and processing your emotion because it is so necessary. It is the thing we need to do, you guys. The only way out is through. I say that all the time, the only way out is through. So I will see you next week. All my love.

Thank you for joining me for this week’s episode of The Mindset School. Ready to dive deeper into finding your purpose and create a deeply fulfilling life? Visit soulsistercoaching.com for more guidance and resources. See you next week.