Trapped Emotions from Old Break Ups? Yes, they exist and can still effect you today.

So you really thought you were totally over it! And the truth is, as far as you can tell you really are. You haven’t thought about that person in ages, and besides, you’ve moved on. Maybe you’ve moved on a couple times and you’re with who you’re with now. So why would anything be trapped from some person you dated forever ago.

The reason I feel inclined to bring this up, is because the more I work with clients on emotional release, the more I’m seeing this come up. It actually really throws people off. In the midst of their recovery work, some past emotion arises linked to “that person or persons from the past”. That person who abandoned them, who broke their heart, who cheated, lied, left them for someone else, or the two of you just couldn’t get on the same page enough to make it last. You cried. You grieved. You spent days in jams jams eating pizza and watching movies. You finally got to the point that you were ready for friends to take you out for some fun and eventually, you were able to move on. You met someone new, you’re living your life now and so…

Why, oh why did this person come up again? The truth is, while grieving, and self-care and fun with friends are all part of helping us move on, there’s much more to it. Emotions are complex! Emotions are actually a huge part of what make us human. They speak the truth of our value and importance. They call us to pay attention so we can learn from the past to have better outcomes in the future. When we allow our emotions to speak, we start to embark on a life meant to be lived , better, better and better. This is very hard though, when it comes to romance. Specifically because the bonding chemicals that flow in our bodies with romantic feelings have a very deep and powerful effect. That is why break ups can be so painful and hard to know how to recover from. Unfortunately, our culture really hasn’t taught us how to take time to hone in and fully feel to heal. While we may take time to be sad, that does not mean we are allowing all the things that lead to a break up to surface, and teach us what we were meant to learn. At best we take time to be sad and then move on to try to feel good. This only works in the short term, and sets us up for hardships moving forward. So what’s missing?

What I tend to find when working with people on emotions from break ups is one of two things. Either a very difficult unprocessed emotion that is just plain no fun to feel, or the person is aware of the emotion but just has not taken time to process its lesson. Not taking time to process is usually the biggest hiccup with trapped emotions. Mostly because we are busy people and don’t really think or know to carve out time for it. If you think about “days of yore” when people wrote in their diary or journal daily, this is exactly what they were doing. Carving out time each day to release, process, learn and make decisions. People in history that we admire and learn from like George Washington, Benjamin Franklin and Anne Frank kept daily diaries and journals.

Our society has moved from normalizing a good end-of-the day “release and think”, to an end-of-the-day crash. And we can’t blame it on being stressed and busy, because the above mentioned people were certainly stressed and busy and still made time to process all the feels of the day. Like I said before, emotions are meant to get our attention and teach us something. They create chemical responses that should eventually make their way into our consciousness (literally, our prefrontal cortex) and begin to create an “ah-ha” that leads to beneficial personal growth and decision making. Unless we are intentional to do this, the emotion just sits there waiting for you to do your part. Over time, this can unconsciously weigh you down and get buried by all the other highs and lows of life, but it’s still there… waiting for you to care enough about yourself and the world for it to be discovered, processed and released.

So what are the consequences for not doing this when it comes to romance. There are 3 big ones to consider:

You Choose Another Toxic Relationship

Unless we use the emotion to focus inward with both self-compassion and awareness, we don’t gain the benefit of its trying to grab our attention. We don’t get specific about what we liked and didn’t like about the way we were treated. We don’t learn to look for red flags and honor truth about things we need to change within ourselves or rethink what type of person we truly want to be with. When we don’t consciously process this and reset what it is we’re looking for, our behavior defaults to a subconscious pattern. Your brain and nervous system will look to repeat the same kind of good feelings you enjoyed before, while normalizing the things that lead to hurt and pain. Ultimately this leads to another unhealthy partnership and often another painful break up.

You Stay Too Long In Another Toxic Relationship

For the same reasons mentioned above, by not bringing your feelings and experiences to consciousness, you can begin to normalize unhealthy relationships in the long term. Anything not brought to consciousness, defaults to your subconscious patterns, and you begin to settle for someone who really is not good for you. This is where we begin to make excuses for poor behavior or generalize the sexes. We say things like, “Well I guess relationships are just hard” and, “There’s no perfect relationship,” or, “All men like to look at other women”, or “All women nag and complain.” We settle for poor connection and wounds to companionship believing it can’t be better. We hunger for seasons or little fleeting moments of joy that too often flow in and then vanish again. We are willing to settle for whatever little breadcrumbs our partner will occasionally give. But that’s not lasting connection or unconditional love. It’s conditional, unpredictable, confusing and draining! It’s not healthy. And we start to set the bar low as a society when we mix negligence, manipulation and unresolved wounds with “being in love”. Hear me clearly! That’s not love. It’s an old dumpy pattern and humanity deserves better!

You May Bring Unnecessary Hurt To A Good Partner

In some cases, you learn enough from the past to choose someone different or a blessing gets dropped on your path to teach you what love really is. The old pattern has been interrupted and you’re finally with someone who likes you, loves you and wants to do the work to make it work. However, if there are still residual trapped emotions from the past, they eventually surface in some form or another. The danger in this, is if you don’t resolve it, it can really hurt your partner. This usually shows itself in the form of false assumptions about your partner’s behavior and intentions. An example might be something like running late. While your partner might be running late because they got held up at work, running late might have meant something different in the past. Perhaps running late meant your previous partner was lying about where they were. Again, if it’s not resolved and fully processed, your nervous system will default to old patterns. The emotions of feeling deceived or betrayed rise up even though the truth is, your partner just got held up at work. You are at risk of emotionally putting the faults of others on someone who actually has done nothing wrong. This situation may only require some tweaking on communication, but your emotions are relaying it as deep betrayal and hurt.

So how do you know you’ve moved past trapped break up emotions and are healthy enough for romance?

Well the answer isn’t one-size- fits all. But in general some signs that you are healed enough to move on is when all previous partners or situations no longer stimulate a reaction from you. When something reminds you of them, are you able to just let the thought pass by? Are you able to wish that person well and hope they are experiencing healing in their life too? Are you thankful for the lesson that relationship taught you? On the flip side, if you feel your body tense up, if you push the thought away quickly, cringe, say, “yuck”, get upset, wonder “what things would have been like if”, or refer to them as “that jerk” or “that bitch”, you’ve got work to do! Chances are even though you are over wanting to be with them, you are still really not healed from the pain they put you through. Unless you heal, you are at risk of transferring the energy of that pain from one relationship to the next, expecting your new partner to fix it.

What we are really going for is making sure we are healed enough to give the next relationship a genuine fresh start and fair clean slate. That we are able to recognize this is a new completely different person who is not held responsible for anything anyone before did to cause hurt. Each person is honored for the truth of who they are as separate individuals. Past partners, present partner and yourself.

So what can you do to be sure that your old stuffed emotions don’t steer your love life off track?

Thankfully we are living in a time where there is an abundance of therapies, techniques, books, courses, coaches and therapists willing to offer tools to help you move those emotions through and out of your system. It can feel overwhelming at times to know exactly where to start, but my advice would be to just start somewhere. There is not one method, counselor or modality that will singlehandedly hit the nail on the head. Healing from any past pains or trauma take time and usually multiple mentors and techniques to fully heal, learn and grow from the past.

So if you’ve been thinking of reading that book or seeing that coach your friend told you about, do it! If you’ve already started your healing journey, keep going! The more you dive into the healing work day by day, the better you are preparing yourself to be ready for the person who’s right for you.