Suppressed emotions are the cause of every problem you have

You can reverse absolutely any unwanted pattern in your life by doing this one simple (but not easy) thing.

10 years ago, my life looked very different than it does today. I had severe body image issues that caused me to be very restrictive at times, but have uncontrollable cravings at other times. I was in a myriad of toxic relationships. I went out 4 nights a week and binge drank to the point of blacking out. I couldn’t stay consistent in one damn thing in my life.

I was living life on a rollercoaster I could not get off of. I knew there was something wrong, and I knew things had to change, but I had no idea how.

Of course, I tried everything I could. I tried to cut out alcohol altogether. I tried to stay away from toxic men. I told myself it was the last time, and that I was finally done. But it never worked— inevitably, I found myself back in the same patterns over and over again. Living life like that was torture. I felt totally out of control over my own actions. I sabotaged myself constantly, unable to keep a single promise to myself. I said I’d do one thing, only to last a week and end up back at square one.

Cut to today— I have a healthy relationship with my body and food. Every single relationship in my life is healthy and adds genuine value to me. I barely go out at night, and when I do, I probably have just a drink, if at all. I keep every promise I make to myself effortlessly. I truly feel like I have my shit together— a feeling I wouldn’t trade for absolutely anything in the world. After living life with so much internal chaos, it’s absolutely blissful to be able to feel so grounded and centred within myself, but more importantly— so aligned: my values, priorities and actions all match.

So what changed?

I’m a HUGE believer in getting to the root cause of things, and truly healing it. Just coping with the symptoms makes absolutely no sense to me. For instance, with all the self-sabotage in my life a decade ago, it made no sense to tackle each one individually: stop binge drinking, stop restricting/overeating, stop entering toxic relationships. I knew that there was a common thread tying all these behaviours together, and I wanted to get to the bottom of it and heal that.

I couldn’t figure it out until I reached this fundamental truth:

All self-sabotage is the result of suppressed emotions.

Read that again. Let it sink in.

Let’s break it down. Firstly, what exactly is self-sabotage? Essentially, it’s breaking promises to yourself. Things that you said you would do, but didn’t. Things that you said you would never do again, but did. Misalignment between what you think and say you want from your life, and what you actually do. This includes ALL forms of addiction, from mild to severe. Don’t ever let anybody tell you that your behaviour is genetic or somehow outside your control. You can heal ANY pattern in your life. Let me tell you how.

We were all born whole and complete. Through our upbringing, we received programming that shaped our subconscious beliefs and self-worth. When this subconscious programming is full of lack, unworthiness and fear (in other words, when we experience childhood trauma), emotions tend to get stored in our nervous system and body, because as children our brains are unable to process complex emotions and experiences. Unfortunately, these emotions tend to stay stuck until we actively excavate and heal them.

Since most people never awaken enough to go through the process of healing, these stored emotions in the body/subconscious mind— in other words, suppressed emotions— start to wreak havoc through self-sabotage. They’re not in our conscious mind, so we don’t have access to them mentally, which is why we can sometimes end up totally confused by our own behaviour. Our conscious minds and subconscious minds are essentially at war with each other. The conscious mind wants to be disciplined and sorted, but the subconscious mind is so full of unresolved trauma and suppressed emotions that we end up being the opposite.

When I went through my healing journey, I made a conscious decision to go towards my trauma and discomfort, and not away from it. I faced things within myself that were terrifying. I cried myself to sleep many, many nights. After all, there was so much that my child-self did not get to process, and it was my responsibility as an adult to feel those emotions so that I could finally release them.

As I went through this process of feeling and releasing my suppressed emotions, I started to notice my life change. Over time, it became absolutely effortless to keep my promises to myself. If I said I’d go to the gym 5 days of the week, I was now able to do that without much effort. Anything that felt like it would be good for me was easy to implement in my life. Anything that felt like it wasn’t good for me was easy to avoid. I found myself in situations like being out at a bar and not wanting to drink more than one drink because I didn’t want to feel bad the next day.

It was no longer a struggle; it just became aligned. My conscious and subconscious mind became friends. They were finally on the same team, because my subconscious mind was no longer storing things that were decades old.

It wasn’t just self-sabotage either— my entire mental health changed. 10 years ago I had severe anxiety, a disorganised (fearful-avoidant) attachment style, extremely volatile emotions, messy relationships and was completely lost in my life. Today, I have a regulated nervous system, a secure attachment style, emotional balance, calm and true inner peace, and healthy relationships.

I was told repeatedly that I would live the rest of my life the way I lived 10 years ago—because people told me a lot of those things were either genetic or irreversible.

I’m here to tell you that’s not true. There is not a single addiction, adverse pattern or mental health issue that you cannot heal fully. All you need is the willingness, tenacity and self-belief to move towards discomfort, feel deeply painful emotions, and allow yourself to rest while your nervous system recalibrates. If you keep going, you will get there.

This post is an over-simplified explanation of my 6 year long journey. There were a lot of really hard days, really rewarding days and really mundane days. I’m going to get into it all. But if there’s one thing I want to leave you with today, it’s this:

Never EVER let anyone tell you that an addiction or pattern of behaviour you live with cannot be FULLY healed and reversed. If there is a single human being on this planet who lives with mental freedom and inner peace, then YOU deserve it too.

If I could do it, so can you. Let me show you how.

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