How held emotion works on the body

It starts in the amygdala

Fear and anger begin in a small almond-shaped structure deep in the brain. The amygdala is an alarm, and it is not interested in nuance. It scans for threat, and the moment it finds something that resembles one, it signals the body to get ready to fight, run or freeze. It does this faster than thought, which is why you are already braced before you have worked out what startled you.

The alarm becomes chemistry

The amygdala speaks to the hypothalamus, which acts as the control room. The hypothalamus engages the sympathetic nervous system, the accelerator of the body, and adrenaline and cortisol are released. Heart rate rises, breathing quickens, blood is redirected to the muscles. Superb if you need to run. Corrosive if the situation is a difficult marriage or a job you cannot leave.

When the brake stops working

The parasympathetic nervous system is the brake pedal, the part that returns you to rest and digest. Under prolonged negative emotion the accelerator stays down and the brake never gets a proper turn. The body settles into a permanently heightened state: muscles tight, digestion disrupted, sleep shallow and unrefreshing.

Fear and anger are not the problem. Fear and anger that never finish are the problem.

What the body pays

• ·Immunity drops, and small illnesses arrive more easily and stay longer.

• ·Chronic pain and inflammation build on the back of muscles that never release.

• ·Digestion suffers, because the body has decided survival matters more than lunch.

• ·Cardiovascular risk rises with years of elevated blood pressure and heart rate.

What the thinking brain pays

Held stress also works on the prefrontal cortex, the part responsible for judgement, planning and self-control. Over time its ability to steady you weakens, which means the emotion is harder to regulate precisely when regulation is what you need. That is the loop: the feeling erodes the faculty that would manage the feeling.

Breaking the cycle

Understanding the mechanism is genuinely useful, because it tells you where to intervene. Mindfulness, deliberate relaxation and hypnotherapy all work at the same point: they quieten the amygdala and give the parasympathetic system a chance to take over. The body rests, recovers and rebalances, and the thinking brain comes back online.

Emotions are not the enemy here. They are information, and they are supposed to move. The work is helping the ones that got stuck to finish, so your body can stop bracing for something that ended years ago.

Parts Therapy and releasing work are the two approaches I use most often for emotion that has been held a long time.

Angela Pereira is a certified hypnotherapist and Parts Therapy facilitator in Mulbarton, Johannesburg South, working in person and online. She came to this work through her own hypnotherapy, for a driving phobia that had quietly organised her life.