Emotions are an essential part of how we respond to the events in our lives. When something happens, our body signals its reaction to us through emotion. In some cases, particularly with strong emotions such as euphoria or flight or flight, we are receiving important, often urgent messages from our body.

When we respond to these signals by acknowledging and feeling them, our body can relax. It knows that we’ve got the message and that we’ve dealt with it properly.

If we don’t acknowledge and feel our emotions, they don’t just disappear. The alarm has been rung, but no one has answered the call.

This puts our body into alert mode. Why has the emotion not been responded to? If we’re not responding, perhaps we’re in danger. Or perhaps the emotional signal wasn’t loud enough, so it needs to be sent again at higher volume.

Our body can’t be sure that we’re safe until we’ve responded to its messages, so it can’t get into a rest state.

When we put aside our emotions, we end up carrying them around as an emotional load. This forms an extra layer of ongoing stress. It’s in the back of our mind, but in the heart of our body.

To heal our body by getting out of the chronic state of stress that perpetuates our fatigue and into a rest state, we need to process our current emotions and our emotional load.