How Do You Release an Emotion You Can’t Identify?
Working with an emotion you can’t give a name to is challenging.
As I strive to walk my chosen paths in life, I find that there are times I must confront subconscious matters.
Many of these get tied to old, outdated beliefs and values. Some are tied to habits. All of these exist in the subconscious and can only, thus, be accessed consciously with effort.
Thoughts and feelings are tenets of the present. Hence, they can only be truly known and understood, here and now.
Why? Because old thoughts and feelings, once past, leave impressions that are not the same as they themselves are. Since you can only think and feel in the moment, via conscious awareness, memory is not true thought or feeling.
Likewise, since the future is always in motion, you can’t possibly know in the now how you will think or feel going forward. Too many factors both in and out of your control are going to impact thoughts and feelings to know them now.
Trauma and other mental health matters tied to the past are connected to emotions. That can, in turn, create a sensation or emotion now based on impressions of past thoughts and feelings.
Because thoughts and feelings past can’t be felt as they were now, and only as impressions – connecting them to present emotions can be challenging. This can be especially challenging when you can’t identify the emotion here and now.
It is more than feeling
I’ve begun to formulate a new understanding of emotion versus feeling. Feeling is the product of the here and now, but emotion is what combined feelings and thoughts create. Hence, it’s the combined what and how of feeling with thought as the background.
Emotions of the past can leave behind an impression here and now. That impression resides in your subconscious.
Some of these are benign and just sit there, doing nothing. But some come out and cause difficulties.
This can result in trauma, depression, anxiety, PTSD, and lots of other mental health issues.
This is my new theory on this topic. And while I’m not a doctor nor an expert with a degree, I have a lot of practical experience I work from.
Through working with conscious reality creation, mindfulness, meditation, and therapy, I’ve adopted this new viewpoint.
Having recently started therapy again, I’ve begun to look into my past to figure out elements of my self-sabotaging behaviors, fears, procrastination, and other issues here and now that were formed along the way. Part of that has required looking for past sensations and emotions.
They won’t and can’t be exact. But their impressions can tell me a lot now. And that, in turn, should help me to identify the present background emotion that lurks in my subconscious and negatively impacts me.
And that is where I’ve hit a fascinating snag.
What if you find an emotion you can’t identify?
My therapist recommended a book to me. Dr. Joe Dispenza’s Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself. In it, he provides meditation techniques to help you break habits that are not who, what, where, how, and why you desire to be.
His overall argument in this book is that the body and its various memories and traumas can and will override the mind if you let it. The above-mentioned meditations are the process he recommends to reset your habits and mindfully reclaim control of your life (this is a very perfunctory explanation. I recommend this book if you want to learn more.)
A key element of the mediation is recognizing a past emotion you hold onto. Or, in my view, the impression of that past emotion (since you can’t feel a past emotion as it was, here and now). Then, you admit to it, declare to yourself that you desire to release said emotion, and surrender to the Universe that – with these actions – it’s done.
I love everything about this concept. But as I worked to practice it, I discovered a problem.
Even knowing the impression that it made, I can’t identify the specific emotion. And if I can’t identify it, how can I release it?
This led me to some very interesting meditation sessions. And along the way, I was able to name the impressions of multiple emotions, all seemingly in balance.
This included guilt, shame, resentment, and worthlessness.
A Google search for a word or emotion blending these all together didn’t produce for me an emotion I could identify to release. But it did lead me somewhere unexpected – toxic shame.
My therapist agrees that this is an issue for me. The question raised is this – is shame that unidentified emotion?
A concept beyond singular identity
While shame is a component, it doesn’t quite feel like the emotion I’m seeking to release. Toxic shame, the psychological issue, is comprised of all the emotions I identified – guilt, shame, resentment, worthlessness – and more.
Depression also tends to have each of these within it. But I know that’s not the emotion I need to release now (because the emotion underlies depression).
Maybe I need to invent a new emotion? Perhaps I can call it shameresentworthlessness? That’s rather inelegant and convoluted.
The best answer, likely, is to examine each in turn. It’s not like meditation is a one-and-done process. Maybe I need to look at each and choose which has made the deepest impression.
Guilt and shame are similar. And when held up to the light of the impression of the emotion I’m trying to release, shame is more closely aligned with it. Worthlessness, too, ties right to shame directly.
But resentment is an emotion all on its own. What’s more, it goes somewhere I find harder to identify.
Thus, my answer. How do you release an emotion you can’t identify? Look at the impression it made, other emotions tied to it, and choose which you feel will be most beneficial to release.
Why do I identify resentment as the emotion to release?
Since I can’t identify the emotion that made the impression so long ago, when looking at the other elements, I can choose which does me the most harm.
Resentment, like blame, casts your feelings elsewhere. Given that it’s almost literally “you made me feel this way”, it’s quite similar to blame.
Blame lacks accountability and responsibility. All it does is push emotions away, outside of the situation, and serves nobody as such.
Resentment is similar but with one key difference. Blame is a total dismissal and denial of emotion while resentment acknowledges an emotion and the impression it made.
Thus, if I release resentment, I free myself of the other emotional impressions it made. At least, in theory.
What’s more, the action of releasing this emotion via the mediation recommended might show me the emotion I can’t identify. But an emotion – or the impression of an old emotion – isn’t serving me here and now.
Releasing it from my subconscious makes room for new and better. It also ends the process of holding onto something not serving me in the here and now.
Challenging and convoluted? Yup. Worthwhile? Absolutely.
Have you ever tried to release an emotion you couldn’t identify?
This is the five hundred and ninety-third exploration of my Pathwalking philosophy. These weekly essays are my ideas for – and experiences with – using mindfulness and positivity to walk along a chosen path of life to consciously create reality.
I share this journey as part of my desire to make a difference in this world and empower as many people as I can with conscious reality creation.
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