7 WAYS TO EXPRESS & RELEASE EMOTIONS: FOR THE EMOTIONAL WRECK IN ALL OF US!

Do you have a hard time expressing yourself? Do you feel like you’re sometimes an emotional wreck and you can’t shake it? Have you ever been asked how you’re feeling and you find that you’re at a loss for words?

If you answered yes to any of those questions, then I welcome you to this fancy club for normal people. Yes you’re normal, Hallelujah!

I have had many ups and downs when it comes to expressing myself. Up until I turned 16, I always had an outlet for my emotions, and when I stopped singing and dancing, I lost the only way that I knew how to express myself. I was never great with talking about my feelings, so movement became my place of release and my go-to way of expressing myself.

Around the age of 17, I became very depressed. This lasted almost 2 years, until I found myself in the blogging world. I had dabbled in blogging since the very early stages of its popularity online. It reminded me of one of my many daydreams where I would work for a magazine when I grew up. Either that or I would become my own version of Harriet the Spy (90’s kid reference haha). Once I committed to blogging full time, my depression began to lift. FINALLY, I had found a way that I could express myself. Again, I was never good at using my words through speech, but when I had a moment to myself, writing my feelings would come naturally to me.

The point of me telling you all this, is to help you realize that if you’re in a rut, or if you find that you have a lot of emotions that overwhelm you, it’s probably because you need to find a better way of expressing yourself or a better outlet for your emotions.

I’ve put together a list of different ways that you can express yourself and release your emotions. I hope these ideas will benefit you and help your soul find some inner peace. Emotions are natural, but by not recognizing and releasing them, you are setting yourself up for an internal war.

1. Singing & Dancing: As I mentioned above, these two activities were my go-to emotion releasers, pre-adulthood. After recognizing what they were, later on in life, I have since made a conscious effort to remind myself to do either one when I am feeling emotional. Not only has music been scientifically proven to raise your vibration and make you happy (I spoke more on this in this blog), but singing out the lyrics to your favourite song (whether you’re a good or bad singer), is surely going to make you smile after a min or so. You could also try writing a song or creating melodies to suit your emotional state. Dancing is an obvious mood releaser because like Taylor Swift so famously stated and showed us in her music video, dancing helps you ‘Shake it Off”.
2. Exercising – Any form of exercise helps you release emotions. There’s a reason why every doctor who discusses the options for treating depression, will list exercise as a top priority. Go for a walk, go to the gym, take up running, join a sports team or even just take a dance class like I mentioned above. Any form of exercise will be a great form of releasing built up anger or emotion.
3. Start a Blog or write in a Journal – When I was 18, I decided I would give my all to the blogging world, and till this day, I believe it is what saved me from my depression. I had a really hard time speaking my truth because of my ‘people pleasing’ ways; so blogging really helped me get out what I really felt. Don’t do what I did and share your blog with people that you’re not ready to be honest with. I did this a few times and I sadly caused some fights between my friends and I. I look back on those times and I have to laugh at my obliviousness haha. Do what you feel comfortable with but know that this can also be your little secret if you want it to be. I often found as I wrote out some of my venting blogs, I somehow ended up motivating myself when I had come to the end. What I didn’t realize then, was the reason I felt motivated, was because I had released the emotions. I recommend blogging to everyone.
4. Yell out your emotions – Sometimes screaming can be completely liberating. Just make sure that you pre-warn any old men near by so that you don’t give them a heart attack.
5. Find a creative activity to focus on – Painting, Colouring, Drawing, Sculpting…dive into a fun art project and see how calm you feel afterwards. There is a reason why Art Therapy is offered these days…because art also helps with expressing and releasing emotions.
6. Try a CBT Thought Log – CBT stands for Cognitive Behaviour Therapy and a ‘Thought Log’ is a fabulous way of helping you get your thoughts on paper so that you can analyze what you may or may not be over-reacting to. I could write an entire blog about this as I was actually enrolled in a CBT course 2 years ago. It changed my life and I am a big supporter of everyone trying it at least once.
7. Break out that dusty dictionary – If all else fails and you’re still having a hard time expressing/releasing your emotions, then bring out that old dictionary that you’ve been keeping in your garage since 2002. It’s time to research more feeling words so that you can at least identify the exact emotion you are feeling, and then you are able to effectively communicate it to whomever you need to. This has always been a challenge for me in particular but that’s why I, as a result, end up focusing on some of the other suggestions that were mentioned above.

I hope you have found this post useful and I hope you all have a fabulous lighthearted week. May your emotions be lifted and you hearts feel light.

Melissa ♡