Emotional indigestion

When we think of indigestion, do we ever think that it applies to emotions as well as food? What we don’t feel becomes congested and can lead to mental health issues such as anxiety, depression and unexplained medical symptoms, the list just goes on and on.

If any health condition becomes chronic, there is a very good chance that undigested emotions have something to do with it.

Just imagine having a piece of food stuck in your throat for years, it would be so uncomfortable and because it’s a more obvious block than stuck emotions, we try to clear it immediately. Not so with our painful emotions. If we can, we try to get away with not feeling them just because they’re so painful and if we’re children who haven’t been co-regulated by our care givers, it becomes even more difficult to learn how to feel difficult emotions.

The solution is simple but not easy, at least at the start: we need to start feeling our feelings. Not feeling your feelings looks like avoidance, addiction, dissociation; anything and everything that will transport you away from feeling what you feel is unbearable.

There are many ways you can learn to be with difficult feelings, you could try focusing, somatic experiencing, emotional freedom techniques (EFT) … Go gently and slowly until you build a bigger capacity, or window of tolerance, for feeling difficult emotions and body sensations.