By Bharti Naik
Contributory Author for Spark Igniting Minds
My childhood memories flashed before my eyes like a movie. There was a burst of nostalgia when I saw the girl (child character of Alia Bhatt in DearZindagi) writing letters to her mom. As a child, I used to write letters. Unusual, but I used to write letters to myself. I grew with myself. Sharing my smallest of the desires, temptations to eat a wood apple (kothu), my aspirations to become a surgeon, my fantasies to marry a celebrity actor, even my emotions of envy for taking my friends from me, my anger towards my sibling for snatching away my mom.
Letters soon became the windows to my world; a sneak peek through the window to the dreams and desires of a teenager. The expressions by words on paper, the pictures symbolizing traces of the inner world inside you, the colors resonating with your emotions and the scribbling reflecting the confusions of the mind. Letters were like the kaleidoscope of memories. Beauty in every scribble, rage in the ink forming beautifully carved letters between the two black lines. My whole world lives in those two black lines in the form of words. My cut-outs from the newspaper, magazines, my drawings, my colors, and paints, were part of my world.
I often used to visit places close to nature. Sitting under the trees, on the green grass, admiring the beautiful intricate designs of the flowers, their shades, gazing at the bees as they calmly sit on the flower and bend to relish the nectar. Even today as I am writing this, I am gazing at the night sky, thinking about how far I've come, what all I have achieved, and the letters I wrote.
As a Transformation Coach and a Master Practitioner of NLP, when I ask my clients to pen down their thoughts, their feelings, to just scribble your story, the majority of them aren’t able to do it. They have pent up emotions deep inside. And sometimes we don’t even realize that we have such emotions deep down. These emotions resurface whenever something bad happens. These emotions are like those things that we've always had but didn't know why. When people say "I don't know why I did it but I think that's just how I am." This statement does show a hint of a suppressed emotion. People cry like babies, full of emotions, their hearts filled with immense pain to choke. Such suppressed emotions, deep feelings need a window to come out, a way of expression.
I have seen many adults and children sitting across each other having difficulty expressing themselves. This difficulty could be because of an unknown fear of rejection or simply that they don’t know how to express themselves. Or they have become so comfortable with not sharing things that they don't realize they're suppressing their emotions. Something similar to what Kaira (Alia Bhatt character) does in the movie Dear Zindagi. Emotions control your thinking, behavior, and actions. Emotions affect your physical bodies as much as your body affects your feelings and thinking. Suppressed emotions are simply emotions that you choose not to acknowledge therefore failing to act on them or expressing them in a healthy way. These suppressed emotions can cause stress, serious mental and physical illnesses, even weight gain, and gut health.
It can and often does affect your body in major ways. People, who ignore, dismiss, repress, or just ventilate their emotions, are setting themselves up for physical illnesses. There is a ton of evidence suggesting that repressed anger, hate, and resentment play a crucial role in the development of cancer.
A team of researchers at Stanford University in California found that women who repressed their emotions were more likely to show disruptions in the normal balance of the stress hormone cortisol, compared with those who did not. These pent up emotions are like volcanoes inside. There is molten hot lava flowing inside, burning the inside parts, damaging it, and is any time ready to burst. Volcanoes have tremendous energy and it needs to come out. And you need to channelize this energy in the right direction. It is important to find techniques in order to help you become more expressive for a happier and healthier life. Emotions should never be suppressed but acknowledged and dealt with by doing something about them. Let these letters be the window to emit the beautiful light out for the world and let the fresh, powerful rays fill your world inside to make you a strong, powerful, humble, pure, loving, and peaceful human being.
Write a letter today, fill it with pictures, colors, and happiness. Just let it all go.
Live a happy and stress-free life!
(Featured Image by Thought Catalog from Pixabay)
About the Author
Bharti Naik is a Relations Strategist. She has helped over 60 thousand people in transforming their lives in the last 15 years. Her mission is to transform the lives of millions by helping them identify their relationship code and reprogram it for the best life. She is a passionate NLP Coach to many professionals, sportspeople, and students and done Masters in Human Development & Family Studies.