Catharsis – or emotional purging – is the process of eliminating emotions that don’t serve you, and for the purpose of this post, specifically pain, fear, pity, anger, and shame.

The purpose of emotional purging is not to end suffering – it’s about getting in touch with your deepest emotions, understanding and coming to terms with your pain, and being able to move forward in the direction you want to go. When we do this, we eventually release pent-up energy we have been burying inside, but instant gratification and pain-free it is not.

To the latter point, emotional purging (whether intentional or not) is not an instant fix.  In the west, we expect instant healing, and we believe that the only way to measure if something works is to see an immediate absence of discomfort.  With emotional purging, I have learned, it gets worse before it gets better.

It’s been a month since the Good Fest, where I stood on stage and shared my most sacred thoughts, traumas, feelings, and insecurities with an audience of 400 strangers. You can read more about my experience and emotional recap here.

It took me a month to prepare, write my speech, dig deep into my unconscious, and pull out repressed memories, thoughts, feeling, and emotions. Much of the process felt good as I ripped up old roots and began to prepare the dirt for the next stage. Telling my story and the response I got felt really good too.  The soil felt primed and ready for new crops to grow. It was cathartic, which makes sense, as it was emotional purging, even if I didn’t sign up for such a process.

But after the applause was over, I returned to just me and my open wounds.  This time, I would not reach for a Band-Aid to put over them.  With them exposed to the world, I would wait for them to heal slowly – day by day.

I was expecting a certain type of transformation, after all, my experience was so profound. Instead, life got… ugly. I started to feel like crap – muscle pain, eyelid twitching (three weeks without a break), flu-like symptoms, etc.  My mind was foggy, and my dreams were vivid, yet my sleep quality was poor. I felt constant fatigue, bad headaches, and built-up tension in my neck the form of neck and back.

I am well-versed in addressing physical ailments with food, so I made dietary choices to help alleviate the pain, such as saying farewell to caffeine, eating mostly unprocessed food, and avoiding alcohol.

It took me weeks to realize that this episode was the result of this emotional detox, not something a western doctor would diagnose.

I finally feel like I have taken a few steps into the clear, and with that, I can shed some insights into emotional purging.

So why is emotional purging so important if it is so painful? 

When we run from the truth — which most people do — we spend our lives in the dark, avoiding our truth, acting out, reacting, seeking revenge, and suffering in a far different way.   We unknowingly project our issues onto others, sometimes even repeating the trauma we went through onto someone else.

If we do not properly process our experiences, they build up over time, they become toxic, and they contaminate and ruin our relationships with ourselves and with those we love.

Many of you have been through more trauma than I have – my trauma has been purely emotional – but many of you have been through physical trauma in addition to emotional.  I can’t begin to understand what it’s like to have trauma to your temple, your sanctuary — to be out of control of something that is happening to your person.

That said, no matter what type of trauma we have endured, we have to face the realities of our lives (if we wish to live our fullest lives).  We have to plow through and confront them, live with them, and accept that they are a part of our story.

There are three things to keep in mind when emotional purging, intentional or not:

You are not your perceived negative experiences.

Your experiences are just that – experiences. They are a part of your story, they are not your entire story. Just because I have accepted my experiences and they have been shared with the public and owned them myself doesn’t mean I am those things or that they define me.

Don’t avoid emotional purging because it makes you feel like a victim.

Hear me loud and clear: IT DOES NOT MAKE YOU WEAK TO DEAL WITH YOUR EMOTIONS AND ACKNOWLEDGE PAST TRAUMAS. These events and experiences cannot be brushed off. They need time to heal, and if you begin to feel like a victim, I see a great opportunity for you to practice self-compassion here.  There is a difference between complaining about trivial things / everyday annoyances and taking time to feel deeply for yourself, considering what you have endured (or rather, survived and kept moving forward).

Don’t get stuck!

When we think about these experiences, we bring back anger, embarrassment, shame, sadness, and fear.  It’s important to feel, but it’s important to recognize these emotions are surfacing to help you heal, and we must keep moving forward.

Why is it so important to emotionally purge:

• Trauma makes us feel alone, like we have no one to talk to because no one understands what we have been through. But it’s not true.  In a world of social media, being connected to strangers all over the world has its advantage — you 100% will not only find others who will understand you, but you will find that there are plenty more people who have been through the same if not a similar thing.  The community of people who have endured what you have makes the suffering far more bearable. Find your tribe.
• You begin to change your behavior. You’re no longer on autopilot with how you treat yourself and others.  You recognize you can control your outcomes in relationships.
• You can begin to play a bigger role in creating your future.
• Gut health — yea, gut health. Emotions can trigger symptoms of your gut.
• Greater human connection.
• and more

What I learned:

• Suffering is inevitable. We get little breaks throughout life but being a human means feeling for our own pain and for others.  It’s a constant job.
• It’s continual work to keep moving forward.
• Listening to your body’s cues to slow down is so so important. When it’s screaming for some TLC (no caffeine, alcohol, etc.) — listen.  It’s easier than it sounds.
• Body wisdom is real — the body processes emotions, and it will ensure you don’t move on too quickly by any means necessary, including putting you in physical pain.

Has anyone else experienced emotional purging (intentional or not)?

Let me know if you would be interested in some tools to dive deep into your conscious!  It’s hard stuff, but I know my audience is tough, strong, and willing.

Happy Monday, everyone 🙂