Have you ever had a gush of emotion that comes up out of nowhere, for no reason, catching you off guard and literally brings you to tears? Well it’s been happening quite a lot lately, mainly when I’ve been working out. So I’m pondering about the connection between doing a workout and emotional release? It makes sense I suppose if you think about it…moving energy around that wants to be expressed.
I’ve started working out regularly this year to help move the often negative energy floating around my body and to get me away from myself. It wasn’t anything my therapist suggested, just something I thought I’d start doing rather than working out at home which doesn’t always work out (no pun intended), and I spend far too much time in the house – doing everything in one place gives you cabin fever and adds to your sense of become stale and crusty. Anyway I thought the movement might help with the healing process, especially with other negative shit I’ve got going on that gives my system a bashing when I least need it. When you feel like shit and sit around, the energy just goes stagnant like algae on the surface of a pond and you end up feeling even shittier. And no, I haven’t joined a gym. I loathe the gym. Gyms are dull, banal and unimaginative places, probably a bit like the people who frequent them. Sorry, just my opinion and we’re all entitled to say what we think. A friend of mine introduced me to a local independent Zumba class in a school hall. No commitment, turn up when you feel like it, my kind of thing. So I intrepidly went along and found that I really enjoyed it and it got me out of the house. So I’ve been going regularly since January and, as it goes, hunting out other similar classes dotted around, mixing and matching. I like the lightness and energised feeling I feel afterward, a release of endorphins as they say.
But I didn’t expect a sudden oh-my-gush of emotion midway through a class and well up into tears. It’s happened several times over the last few months so it’s definitely not a one off. And it’s not like I’ve gone to the class feeling overtly upset or depressed. It’s happened several times where I’m midway through the class and out of nowhere, emotion just wells up and all of a sudden, I’ll be in tears. No one notices as we’re all jigging about doing jiggy things as you do at a Zumba class. I’m wondering whether it’s suppressed emotion that’s been coming up, especially as I’m on this healing journey? Unexpressed or suppressed emotion that gets dislodged from wherever it’s dwelling in the body and comes up to tell me it wants to be released. I know I still have open internal wounds and suppressed emotion from my time with The Narc, that’s obvious especially from my unexpected outburst of tears that I spoke about in my previous post.
Often we think we’re over something only to have a rude awakening in moments like that which tell us that the feelings and grief are still very alive within us. Grief is a pain body that needs to be validated, expressed, released and witnessed. Once it has, the pain body gets smaller and the emotional charge gets discharged I suppose. I know there’s a lot of grief linked to the inner child, grief that still needs release – perhaps it’s that which is coming up for me? I feel it in the middle of my chest and my abdomen – and perhaps that’s where the grief dwells. it must have a dwelling place don’t you think? Only then can it dislodge and move around and come up when you least expect it. My therapist always asks me where I feel my feelings and emotions – she asks me where in my body do you feel it. And just like in books, e.g The Body Holds the Score (Bessel van der Kolk), he writes about how trauma lives in the body, how the body has memory and there are somatic trauma therapies aren’t there? Not that I’ve tried any. But maybe that’s what’s happening with me right now? Maybe my workouts is my accidental somatic therapy, fortuitously stripping away all the layers of stored grief built up over a lifetime and now letting itself go…?
If baring my soul to you (and the world) has moved or touched a part of you in any way, then your support would be very welcome. To help me on this healing journey, perhaps you’d like to buy me a coffee (although mines a tea) via the link below:
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