Side stepping emotions never works. The eruption of thought most often ends with feeling — at least for me.
Expressing emotion can be frustrating.
Recalling a traumatic time can be thought about for years. Applying emotion to that thought may never happen. When it does happen, healing occurs and that thought will begin to dissipate until you truly no longer think about it.
That’s the cycle of healing. Memory is born in your thought process. Your body may also recall the memory and bring back to you some pain. That is still not the emotional side of the memory, that is the physical part.
So, we have our mind and body engaged in this memory. How do we then apply emotion to it?
The question really is: Do I want to bring emotion to this wound?
When you answer that question truthfully, you have your answer. I can answer it with an emphatic — NO. I do not want to feel this. I can tell you about it. I can tell myself about it. I can even write about it. But, to feel it? I seems like I’m being a lunatic when I think I want to bring feeling to it.
What are emotions for, if they are not to be used?
When trauma is being recalled in your mind and in your body but you cannot feel it, it’s like running along beside the memory, almost as a bystander.
If you want to extinguish a traumatic memory — feel it.