We often try to bury and suppress our feelings because we want to seem like we’re always in control of ourselves and our lives. We pretend that everything is OK to others and try to fool ourselves as well. However, to live a truly fulfilled and happy life, we must release negative emotions in our body.

It’s unhealthy for both our minds and bodies to hold onto our negative emotions because our bodies and brains store them. This can have a negative long-term effect on our mental well-being if we don’t release negative emotions from our bodies. Holding onto emotions like stress, anxiety, anger, resentment, trauma, heartache, etc can negatively impact our well-being. If suppressed and not dealt with in a healthy way, they can negatively affect our life, happiness, health, relationships and mindsets.

It’s important to allow yourself to feel your emotions as they come up and to acknowledge them and work through them in a healthy way. It’s OK to not be OK sometimes and you need to give yourself time to be with your feelings. However, eventually you will need to learn to release negative emotions from your body to be truly happy in your life.

Listen to yourself and what you need in the present moment. If you need time to yourself and to de-stress, don’t feel like a failure or lazy if you need to cancel plans. It’s crucial to take some time for self-care instead of being productive all the time. Sometimes the most productive thing you can do is take a step back and recharge yourself. Allow yourself to feel your feelings and take some time to be honest with yourself with what you need in that moment.

How to Release Negative Emotions

Ask yourself what you truly need right now and start giving that to yourself. If you need to be sad then watch a sad film. Vent to friend or think about what’s making you sad and cry. Similarly, if you need to de-stress then have a long hot bath, meditate, switch off your phone or do some yoga. If you’re feeling overwhelmed and need time to figure things out then go on a long walk alone, journal or take a trip alone. If you need to lighten your mood, see the bigger picture and uplift yourself then go to a comedy club, see friends or just do something that you truly love.

It’s not weak to release negative emotions. It makes you stronger, helps you to grow, and become more relatable to others. We are human and it’s important to remember that we are allowed to feel our emotions. We all have periods of our lives that are hard. No matter what you’re going through right now, someone else has experienced the same thing at one point in their lives. Remembering this will help you to release negative emotions and embrace your emotions around this time.

It’s important to not try and numb your feelings with alcohol or other distractions. For example, if you’re going through a breakup, and go on dating sites too early into the breakup, you could be seeking fake validation from other people. Instead, use this time to actually feel what you’re going through. Find healthy ways to release negative emotions. This could include exercising, journaling, less time on social media, starting a new project, meditating, using affirmations, reading, etc.

Why You Should Release Negative Emotions

Give yourself time and permission to go through the motions and understand your feelings. Eliminate using distractions like social media, alcohol, drugs, dating, clubbing or overeating to numb your emotions. Ultimately, these distractions are all going to make you feel worse in the long run. You need to allow yourself to sit and feel your emotions. Start embracing them and accepting them on your self-development journey.

You get to truthfully know and appreciate yourself when you actually listen to what you need. Allow yourself to say no to things that you don’t want to do deep down. Distance yourself from things that you know won’t serve you in the long run. Take some time out with just yourself to figure out what’s actually important to you. This will create clarity on how you can make yourself feel happy and fulfilled.

Don’t look to other people or external distractions to cover up the root issues or feelings you’re experiencing. Use this time to work out what you honestly want and need from yourself, your life, your relationships, your career etc.

If you continue to suppress your feelings then they’re extremely likely to come out when you least expect or want them to. When you don’t release negative emotions from your body they can come out in more intense ways in the future. You could lose your temper and say something you’ll later regret or can’t take back. Similarly, you could get over emotional when drunk and become aggressive and angry. This could lead you to lose people from your life. Furthermore, it could all end up being too much for you over time and you could have a major breakdown.

How to Feel Your Emotions

It’s time to start acknowledging, accepting and listening to your emotions. Feel them and give yourself time to work through them. Introduce new positive ways you can improve your situation. Here are some amazing techniques you can use to release negative emotions today…

1. Meditate every morning and embracing any emotions that come up
2. Journal and ask yourself how you’re actually feeling, what you want, what you need etc
3. Write a letter with everything you’re thinking/want to say
4. Visualise/envision how you want to feel, act and live as your best self. Accept that you need to be where you are now in order to learn and grow into that person
5. Practice gratitude daily to help you to remember that there are still things to be grateful for in your life. No matter how tough things seem right now you always have things to be grateful for
6. Allow yourself to think about the thing that’s upsetting you and sit with the emotions for a while. Then ask yourself if you’d rather keep these feelings or let them go
7. Limit distractions like social media or binge-watching television. Instead, go on a long walk in nature by yourself, with just your thoughts
8. Take some time out and get away by yourself somewhere
9. Open up to someone you trust and let out all of your emotions. Release everything you’ve been holding back
10. Talk to a therapist or try healing practices like reiki

Check out my post Living in Gratitude: How Appreciation Will Transform Your Life! It will help you to cultivate more positivity and release negative emotions!

Remember

Remember, it’s good to feel your feelings and emotions, if you want to cry, then cry. It’s pointless holding your emotions in. There is a reason why you feel the need to release negative emotions from your body. Everyone has ups and downs, and no matter what you’re going through, all you can do is take each day as it comes. Be true to yourself and your feelings and take the time to grow through what has happened.

Allowing yourself to feel your emotions fully and embracing them is really empowering. It shows a lot of strength in yourself. Being honest with yourself about how you’re feeling deep down will help you to see ways that you can improve your life. It will highlight ways you can enhance yourself and your happiness over time, whilst embracing the journey along the way. Allowing you to understand that in order to feel the highs in life, you need to experience the lows and come out of the other side stronger.

Open up to others about how you’re honestly feeling within yourself or a situation. This will enable you to release negative emotions and remove stress and negativity from your life.

“Sometimes you need to press pause to let everything sink in.”– Sebastian Vettel

Summary

Pretending that you’re OK all the time doesn’t serve you or anyone else. Ultimately, it will make you even more miserable in the long run. You need to start embracing all your emotions and improve the relationship that you have with yourself.

Stop being so hard on yourself and being your own worst critic. No one is perfect and nobody has it all together all the time. It’s OK if some days you just want to curl up in bed and cry watching a chick flick.

Trying to put a brave face on all the time and lying to yourself and to others will only make you feel worse. Start opening up to people and you’ll find you’ll have a lot more understanding and support than you thought. 

Allow yourself to feel your emotions and release negativity from your life. Always be there for yourself and love yourself at your best and at your worst. Remember that you will always have you for the rest of your life. Therefore, you owe it yourself to be honest with how you feel and to take care of yourself. Take a step back and some time for self-care or reflection when needed. Don’t be afraid to dive into the root causes of your emotions. That’s where all your growth and future happiness, values and standards will stem from.

“Numbing the pain for a while will make it worse when you finally feel it.”– J.K. Rowling

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