We all have emotional “splinters” buried inside
I often think of emotional healing as pushing out deeply embedded splinters.
While they’re deep inside you can mostly ignore them, though they might make you act in all kinds of ways as you avoid the sore spots without knowing why:
- Maybe you tell yourself you’re too old for dancing, when really your memory of being shamed for dancing as a child is too painful to revisit
- Maybe you snap at your partner whenever they talk to you in a certain tone of voice, and you have no idea why
- Maybe you sacrifice your own needs for your family—telling yourself “that’s what good people do”—without recognising the hidden fears that stop you acting more assertively.
At some point a splinter might start to loosen
You become aware that there’s something stuck in there. I often experience this as becoming aware of uncomfortable sensations—a knot in my stomach, tension in my jaw, or a weight on my chest.
To me this feels different from day to day feelings that come and go. Usually if I sit down and focus on what I’m feeling, six or seven different emotions will surface. If I can only identify one emotion it’s usually a sign to me that an old emotional splinter is coming loose. There’s a stuckness to the feeling, and it can start to get painful enough that it blocks out everything else.
Now you have a choice
You can either try to bury these old feelings deeper by ignoring them. By actively pushing the sensations away and avoiding anything that might touch them. Or you can do the work to push them out.
The best way out is always through
Robert Frost
Personal experience has shown me repeatedly that emotional splinters only start to surface when I’m equipped to face them. That gives me the confidence to lean into them as they arise. I’m no longer scared I’ll drown in the raw emotion—I’ve learned that I always emerge feeling lighter.
Many times I’ve thought “I must have finished my inner work now—at least all the big stuff”. Blissfully unaware of all the firmly buried splinters that I wasn’t ready to deal with yet. Once they emerge it amazes me that I could have been so unaware of them.
Pushing them out hurts
I won’t sugar-coat this part. It might even hurt more than when you acquired them in the first place. It can feel like everything’s getting so much harder. Now you can’t ignore the pain any more. I find I get much less patient with my family during this process, and crave more time alone. All my bad habits ramp up—I’ll find myself eating whole boxes of chocolates in one go, and spending hours playing match 3 games on my phone.
But it also feels like progress—the right kind of pain. For me there are two phases of healing:
1. Exploration
What I think I’m feeling at first is rarely what I’m actually feeling. Or it might just be the first of many layers I need to work through. I use tools like journaling to discover what’s really going on. I’ve learned to trust my body’s responses here. If I read or write something about shame, and feel a sensation move through my body, then I believe that shame is part of what’s going on for me. Even when my brain is trying to tell me that logically I couldn’t possibly be feeling shame.
2. Release
Once I’ve figured out what’s actually going on, I let myself feel the feelings and work through them. I use things like music, dancing, crying, guided meditations, breathwork, tapping or watching films that touch on the same topic. For bigger emotions this might look like wallowing in it for a while as I let myself move through a grieving process. I might even design myself a ritual to give my brain and body the space to honour what needs to be honoured.
Sometimes I skip the first part and release a whole load of stuff without knowing what it is. Like the first time I learned to move emotions through my body and so much just poured out of me. More recently though, the feelings that come up are subtle, and I find they don’t move on unless I pinpoint what’s causing them.
Now the healing can really start
Eventually the splinter will be out. That area will still be tender, but now you’ve begun true healing. You can start to move and act in ways that feel more healthy. After a while you might even forget the splinter was ever there. The scar may flare up every so often, but it will become easier to take a breath and move past the echoes of the pain.
For me every time I go through this process I become a little bit more in tune with my intuition, I lose a little bit more shame and become a little bit more comfortable in my own body and brain. Over time those shifts have added up to huge changes in how I feel about myself and how I show up in the world.
Every step forward we take adds more healing to a world that desperately needs it 💖.