Repression and Conscious Emotional Economics

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It’s about being trapped in a cage with the door unlocked, but being unwilling or afraid to open the door and go out.” – George Lucas in regard to the first movie starring Robert Duvall that he and Francis Ford Coppola produced in college in 1969 called “THX 1138”. The movie is a metaphor for a society that was repressive. It is set in a dystopian underground city in which people do not have names, but alpha numeric designations and the inhabitants are made docile by medication and are under constant surveillance.

The people in this movie are unconscious to the fact that their emotions are being repressed. In real life, the unconscious mind has the responsibility of repressing memories with unresolved negative emotion. The key word here is “unresolved”. The memory will be repressed with the emotional charge still intact until it can be resolved. These repressed memories can sometimes be seen in our mental time line as dark or missing time.

Why does the unconscious mind keep these memories repressed? Because this is what the unconscious mind does. This is a short term function of the unconscious mind and over time, the unconscious mind will attempt to present the memories so that they can be cleared and released, because repressed emotions are bad for the body, mind and spirit.

When we have experiences that are painful or difficult and we are unable to cope with the pain or are afraid of it, we often dismiss the emotion by over exercising, over eating, drinking too much, working too much or just pretend that a situation has not happened. We do this so we do not feel the emotion. This is suppression, because we exclude these emotions consciously. With repression, we do this unconsciously. Some examples of buried or repressed emotions include fatigue, depression without an apparent cause, blowing up over minor incidents, difficulty accepting yourself or others, or troubled personal relationships.

When we experience trauma, and these traumatic emotionally charged experiences are repressed, our behavior and reaction to events in the present time can be reactions to past events as well as the present moment. This can have a negative effect on your current relationships because you cannot be fully present with the ones you love today until you have released your emotions from the past. Buried emotions that were too difficult and painful to deal with when they occurred have an effect on today’s events because of the hurt that remains buried in your body. This buried emotional charge remains in our muscles, tendons, ligaments, visceral organs, etc. until it can rise to the conscious mind so that we can feel the emotion and release it. Emotions that are repressed long-term can cause serious illness including cancer, arthritis, chronic fatigue and a plethora or other major health problems.

According to Jonathan Tripodi, founder of Body Memory Recall (BMR) a form of therapeutic bodywork that uniquely integrates myofascial release, cranial sacral therapy, visceral myofascial release, unwinding, energy work and therapeutic dialogue into one comprehensive approach for the treatment and transformation of body memory:

“The body can contain the energetic blueprint of an experience, whether one represses or suppresses it. The physical effect is muscular contraction, over time connective tissue restriction and hardening of the extracellular fluids. Combined, these effects create tension, limit range of movement, cause pain, minimize blood circulation and cellular health.

Chemicals such as neuropeptides, oxygen, nutrition and toxins all require a liquid medium (the extracellular fluid) to circulate between the blood capillaries and the cell membrane. This exchange is compromised when the extracellular fluid hardens and the matrix of connective tissue that passes within it thickens and binds together. Keep in mind that the circulatory system is encased in “perivascular” connective tissue and the cell membrane consists primarily of connective tissue proteins. When body memory is suppressed or repressed over time, this connective tissue and its surrounding fluids become solid, thereby compromising the exchange of the vital chemicals associated with cellular communication (neuropeptides), nutrition, hydration and detoxification.”

It takes enormous amounts of energy to suppress and repress emotions and keep them buried, therefore, robbing us of energy for other activities. Memories which have been repressed are often presented to the conscious mind to release the trapped negative emotions. This is a function that the unconscious mind performs. This is not meant to be a long term process. In some cases, the conscious mind does not allow the memories that are presented to be released and they remain repressed. If, however, at the time of the presentation of the buried emotion the conscious mind can rationalize the memory and acknowledge the lesson from the experience, the memory can be cleared of the negative emotion and we are healed.

In my experience as a touch therapist, sometimes these repressed emotions can be accessed in a physical way as a response to a stimulus that can bring these repressed emotions to the surface through compression, stretching, diagonal twisting and turning or dialoguing with the client so the negative emotion can be cleared. The exact event that caused the repressed emotion doesn’t always have to be known. It is an energetic release that is felt in the physical body, even though the emotional event itself may not be brought to the conscious memory.

When we suffer from buried emotions, we cannot be fully present in our conscious reality. You cannot shift to higher levels of consciousness when you have negative emotions buried inside of you. As caregivers to those who have been traumatized, it is important to understand the concept and the effects of buried negative emotions. If we ourselves have been traumatized, it is important to make a commitment to ourselves and those we care for to become emotionally healthy and do what is necessary to release buried emotions. This is often a very uncomfortable and difficult journey as we begin the process, but there is great joy in getting through the first few layers and the emotional releases will become much easier. We are on this planet for a very short time. For much of this journey, we travel unconsciously. Releasing buried emotions allows us to live more consciously and to live happier and fuller lives.