I am honored to work with awesome people everyday in my coaching practice.

I have permission to share a story that touched my heart this week in a session with a young girl.

I was so blown away by this girl’s insight and courage. We were coaching on healthy expression of emotion and discussing how if emotions are not expressed, they are stored in the body and can create dis-ease.

My young client’s assignment had three steps:

First I asked her to draw her body. 

Next, I had her assign a color to each of the naturally occurring emotions.

Finally, I asked her to close her eyes and to find in her body where she stores each of these emotions.

What this girl created is brilliant and true for many of us. She drew what happens to the human body when emotions are rejected or dismissed.

She wanted to start with joy. She placed joy in her head and in her heart.

Fear came next, and I was astonished at where she placed it. She shaded grey fear around yellow joy, both in the head and in the heart. Fear blocks joy.

That is so true. (Did you get goosebumps? I did!)

This one little girl has changed how I coach all of my clients. This concept is a revelation to me: fear is not an emotion that can be released.

Grief, anger, joy and excitement are stuck when we’re in fear. Fear is real but it doesn’t have to stop or paralyze you. Fear is a message that there is a block.

I learned so much from my young client. I now see that there is something underneath fear all the time.

Next time when you feel fear, try these three tips:

1. Breathe.
2. Ask yourself, “What would I do if I wasn’t scared?”
3. Release your fear by taking one action step that moves you closer to hope. (Write, draw, talk to a friend or exercise.)

All emotions are important, necessary and real. They all deserve to be expressed, and have to be expressed, in order for you to have freedom. In order to be free, we all need to express and release all of our emotions and not be afraid of them.

Feel everything. Don’t be afraid of your emotions. Our emotions are the pathway to freedom.

Don’t mistake fear for an emotion. Fear is a message that you’re blocked. People mistake fear for their feelings, not realizing that it’s persecuted thinking, and not truly sadness or anger.

I teach my clients how to differentiate between the two, and the nuts and bolts of what fear is. Fear-based, self-protection mode has kept us all alive. We default back to fear but this means we stay in our past, trapped.

I encourage everyone to get a coach, therapist or mentor to support you in learning how to release your emotions in a healthy way so that freedom can be yours.

Author: Rebeccah Silence

Editor: Sara Kärpänen

Photos: Author’s own