Traumatic experiences, especially those from childhood or young adulthood, can have profound and lasting impacts on our emotional health and well-being. Unresolved traumas often manifest as emotional blockages later in life, preventing us from fully experiencing emotions and living authentically.
How Past Trauma Causes Emotional Blockages
Unresolved traumatic memories are a common root cause of emotional blockages. Here’s why past trauma interferes with emotional processing and expression:
1. As a protective response
During a traumatic event, our brains go into survival mode, activating the fight, flight, or freeze response. To cope with the trauma, we may unconsciously block out certain emotions that would debilitate us, like fear, sadness, or grief.
Blocking emotions serves as a protective mechanism in the moment. However, the long-term suppression causes those emotions to get stuck within the body and energy field. Even after the event passes, the emotional blocking persists, preventing full processing and release.
2. The brain associates emotions with pain
When emotions become linked to trauma, the brain begins to associate those emotions with pain, suffering, and being out of control. As a protective response, the brain suppresses any expression of vulnerable emotions to avoid the remembered pain.
For example, someone who endured emotional abuse when crying as a child may subconsciously block their sadness and grief in adulthood to avoid re-experiencing those abusive memories and painful feelings.
3. Numbing out
Trauma can overload the nervous system with intensely painful emotions. To cope, the brain will numb out and dissociate from emotions as a survival response. However, the numbing causes all emotions to become dulled and muted, not just the negative ones.
Over time, this flattening of emotions can persist even after the traumatic event has passed. Ongoing emotional numbing impedes the full experiencing and expression of emotions.
4. Avoidance coping
Avoidance coping is when trauma survivors intentionally avoid any person, place, or experience associated with the traumatic memories to protect themselves from re-triggering.
However, this avoidance can generalise to avoiding emotions linked to the trauma as well. For instance, if anger was associated with the trauma, anger may become a blocked emotion. Avoiding vulnerable emotions like sadness or grief can also become an unconscious coping mechanism.
5. Changes in emotional processing
Research shows traumatic experiences physically alter the brain’s emotional processing centres, like the amygdala and prefrontal cortex. These changes make it harder for trauma survivors to accurately identify emotions in themselves and others. Being unable to recognise and name emotions leads to greater difficulties with emotional expression.
Impacts of Emotional Blockages
Suppressing emotions may help us survive trauma in the short term, but long-term, it severely impacts mental health and prevents healing. Here are some of the many adverse effects of living with emotional blockages:
- Increased anxiety, depression, and emotional volatility.
- Difficulty coping with stress, change, or negative events.
- Feeling emotionally numb, restricted, or dissociated.
- Struggling to understand and express emotions skillfully.
- Challenges in identifying and meeting emotional needs.
- Strained personal relationships.
- Self-destructive behaviours and self-sabotage.
- Physical health problems like chronic pain, digestive issues, or insomnia.
Being able to access the full spectrum of human emotion is pivotal for psychological, relational, and even physical well-being. Working through emotional blockages should therefore not be viewed as optional, but rather as an essential priority in trauma recovery.
What You Can Do About It : Releasing Trauma-Based Emotional Blockages
Healing from past hurts takes time, courage, and the right support. Here are some of the most effective approaches for releasing old emotional restrictions:
1. Trauma-informed therapy
Working with a trauma-informed therapist is the best way to safely process and integrate traumatic memories. Therapeutic techniques like EMDR, somatic therapy, and relational approaches help dismantle blockages while also teaching emotion regulation skills.
2. Emotional release practices
Cathartic emotional release practices can help dislodge stuck emotions and energetic holdings from the body and mind. These can include things like:
- Expressive arts – using creative outlets like writing, art, dance, or music for emotional processing and expression. This helps re-integrate split-off emotions into awareness.
- Breathwork – breathing exercises and pranayama activate the parasympathetic nervous system and release trauma from the body.
- Ecstatic dance – moving the body freely to music lowers the thinking mind and loosens up energetic blockages.
- Yoga – postures, movement, and chanting clear traumatic holdings and build bodily awareness.
- Somatic and biodynamic trauma therapies – target stored emotions through touch, movement, and body awareness. Examples include Somatic Experiencing, Sensorimotor psychotherapy, and biodynamic craniosacral therapy.
3. TRE (Tension & Trauma Releasing Exercises)
TRE uses a series of gentle body exercises to initiate natural tremoring. These tremors release deep chronic tension from the body and allow blocked emotions and trauma energies to be discharged. Regular practice re-integrates the stress response so trauma no longer gets “stuck.”
4. Emotional awareness practices
Noticing and naming emotions – especially subtle or vulnerable ones – helps pull them into conscious awareness. Journaling, mindfulness meditation, and mood tracking apps can all help strengthen emotional awareness. This supports emotional fluency and expression.
5. Inner child work
Connecting to the wounded parts of yourself through inner child work can unravel old defensive patterns. Meeting your past emotional needs provides a reparative experience. It creates new neural pathways that associate vulnerability and emotional needs with safety, care, and empowerment.
6. Creating safety and community
Healing happens in the context of safety and supportive relationships. Establishing personal boundaries, therapeutic relationships, and a community of emotional validators and empathic supporters provides an antidote to the isolation of trauma. It allows for the authentic expression needed to release old emotions.
7. Anger release
Anger is often a blocked emotion following trauma and abuse. Anger work provides safe ways to uncork and physically express volatile anger through things like pillow beating, yelling, foam bats, etc. This prevents anger from looping internally.
8. Grief work
Grieving past losses and developmental trauma is pivotal in releasing frozen sadness, depression, emptiness, and self-loathing. This involves facing painful emotions instead of rejecting them and creating grieving rituals for a cathartic release.
9. Parts mediation
This uses inner communication to form a cooperative relationship between the protective, blocking parts and the vulnerable, emotional parts within oneself. Helping these polarised aspects understand each other’s roles fosters internal integration.
10. Self-inquiry and shadow work
Examining conditioned beliefs, ego defences, and subconscious patterns through deeper introspection enables you to unravel the roots of emotional blockages. This clears space for greater authenticity and emotional wholeness.
Karmic Cord Cutting: Our Professional Service and When to Seek It
One powerful method for releasing trauma-based emotional blockages is Karmic Cord Cutting. This specialized service targets the energetic connections that bind you to past traumas and negative relationships. By severing these cords, you can free yourself from old emotional patterns and make space for healing and growth.
Consider seeking Karmic Cord Cutting if you:
- Feel weighed down by unresolved emotional pain and trauma
- Struggle with recurring negative relational patterns
- Experience persistent emotional or energetic imbalances
- Wish to reclaim your personal power and autonomy
Our professional Karmic Cord Cutting sessions are designed to help you release deep-seated emotional pain, restore your emotional balance, and reclaim your personal power. Experience the profound benefits of Karmic Cord Cutting with our expert guidance.
Book an appointment today and take the first step towards a renewed, liberated self.