There are 3 things we use to avoid uncomfortable feeling:

-Repression
-Suppression
-Expression

We know that if we are…

Repressing (unconscious avoidance of trauma/hard feelings)

&

Suppressing (conscious avoidance of trauma/hard feelings) - we don’t heal.

But we don’t talk about Expression enough.

Expression in healing is taught over and over. I’ve been in so many rooms where people scream and scream, kick and fight, cry and cry…& all they get from it is…

Relief.

Relief is too often confused with release.
To someone who doesn’t know release it feels similar but there is a huge difference between relief and release.

See, expression is you finding another way to try and “do something” with your pain aka avoid feeling/being with it fully.

It’s the “get it out of me!” Approach.

You try to scream or cry it out of you.

And wonder why you still aren’t free of it.

Now please don’t misunderstand.

Expression is a useful tool just the same as repression/suppression are…yep, those are useful tools at certain times in a life when there is trauma…but like these won’t move the needle, expression will not permanently move the needle for you either.

Expression is most useful when it doesn’t come from a place of TRYING to release or get something OUT of you.

Expression works ONLY if from a place of deep feeling where the system/body will elicit a physical expression or response that feels as though it’s being DRAWN out of you. Not forced or pushed.

Like you feel a strong impulse to shake or a scream building inside you from the event that was incomplete where you stayed silent or the tears from the core of your being.

Most of these are FINAL expressive release.
FINAL. There is shaking and then it’s over, a release of tears and it’s done, one scream and it’s complete.

It doesn’t roll on and on like a cycle.

This expressive cycle is what I see people using in healing work (& facilitators encouraging it). So next time you’re in a room and they’re saying “SCREAAM FOR THAT BROKEN PART”

Don’t. Get quiet. Go inside. What’s actually there?

True healing is surrender + following the bodies inner guidance.

Not moving through force.

Force is not power.

xo