Which emotions might be dangerous or threatening for you to express?

When we think of the brain and its role in neuroplastic symptoms, we think of the threat and danger model. This model has been studied extensively and I will be presenting a 4 week course in March titled: ‘Defusing Threat and Danger with Neuroplastic Symptoms.’ You can sign up through the link here.

One area of threat and danger is emotions. This is a common one with neuroplastic symptoms. Certain emotions may have learned to be dangerous or feel too threatening to have, feel, and express in certain situations. Any emotion can seen as threatening and dangerous- common ones are anger, sadness, shame, fear, but it could honestly be any emotion, even happiness or contentment.

When certain emotions are seen to be too threatening to the brain, they are more likely to be expressed inwardly in the body through anxiety.  Threat and danger equals fear if the threat is real. But many times the threat is not real, it is perceived, so we feel anxiety. We can feel anxiety symptoms in the body when another emotion is deemed to be too dangerous to come forth. This is very common even though all emotions are Ok- that’s why we have them.

With emotions, the goal is to learn to defuse the perceived threat and danger (anxiety) by learning to have, feel, show, and express in healthy ways all emotions, and especially the ones we tend to avoid, hide, swallow, or bottle up. A starting point for any of you struggling with emotions, is to look to identify which specific emotions are dangerous and threatening to you- Which ones are hardest for you to allow, feel, and express openly?