Manifest in the Body

Personal history manifests in the body, there’s only one path to remove this manifestation: to resolve the latent issues.

Your mind and body are one. In the same way, your health shapes your experiences and is in turn influenced by them, your mind and body are inextricably linked. To neglect one is to neglect the other and in turn, compromise your overall health.

Our body responds to our emotional state. How you are, think, and feel, will always manifest physically.

Unresolved latent trauma will continue to affect us emotionally and therefore physically as well. Whether it be past trauma, embarrassment, shame, guilt, or anger; these feelings will resurface indefinitely unless resolved. They could be related to a particular scenario, individual, or topic that still makes you uncomfortable, causing stress. In my experience, unresolved emotional pain will find its way to cast a shadow in areas of your life that you wouldn’t think you could. They will continue to cause you stress which in turn activates your sympathetic nervous system; releasing epinephrine, and cortisol, raising blood pressure, heart rate, and body temperature, all in the name of preparing you to “fight or flight”. But there is no fight anymore, the damage is still being felt but the situation is over. Unfortunately, your body doesn’t know the difference so it will continue to react as though that negative experience is happening now. By reliving it mentally, your body is continuing to respond to it physically. Doing this will continually recruit your body’s stress response which will eventually start to break you down. You will feel weak, become more injury-prone, more lethargic, and find it that much harder to break the cycle. Keeping your body in a constant state of panic is devastating to your overall health. Studies suggest that unresolved negative emotions are linked to digestive disorders, cardiovascular disease, and hypertension among other health disorders. Simply put, it is not a sustainable option for us to continue to carry the negative parts of our past with us because they will slowly break us. In my experience, you have two options to fix your emotional state that is tied to something from your past. Both involve confronting the latent issue but slightly differently.

You need to be alone with your thoughts and understand everything about the situation that is causing you grief today.

Why?

Why did it happen to me? Why does this still bother me? Why did I do or not do what I did?

What?

What happened to me? What makes me think of it the most?

Who?

Other than me, who was involved in this? Is there an individual or group of people with who I have unresolved feelings?

How?

How is this piece of my past continuing to impact me emotionally and physically?

For me, it always starts with these questions. It might not be the easy thing to do, but if something is bothering me enough (long after it should be), there is no choice. We need to move forward and we can’t do that if we are carrying a piece of our past that is wreaking havoc on our health. Almost always, I find the best thing to do is simply to forgive. Even if it’s just to myself, I need to forgive everything about the situation. The people who may have hurt me but also myself if the issue is guilt or shame. People make mistakes and sometimes it hurts us. We don’t need to like them but we do need to forgive them. If you don’t you’re giving them, along with that situation, power over your present and over your future that will only hurt you.

A recent study from Stanford University called the “Forgiveness Project” took 260 adults and taught them about the power of forgiveness over six weeks. After the course, participants were asked how their new forgiveness skills had impacted their lives. 70% reported having decreased feelings of hurt, 13% experienced less anger, and most interestingly: 27% reported fewer physical side effects to their negative emotions. Forgiveness is a powerful thing because it gives us the ability to surrender to a  negative situation and escape its influence on our lives. By lowering our negative emotions we experience lower blood pressure, better immune function, and some studies suggest a longer lifespan! So don’t run from your negative emotions or try to block them with distractions. Seek to identify them and understand the pieces of your past are responsible for them. Only then can you forgive the situation and embrace the present. And once we embrace our present we can fully be authentic and ignite our dreams and goals.