Is Your Emotional Baggage Holding You Back?

If you’ve ever felt like your past is holding you back, you’re not alone. Emotional baggage can have a negative impact on our lives. In this post, we’ll explore the concept of emotional baggage and discuss how to identify your emotional baggage. We’ll also provide tips for overcoming any obstacles that your emotional baggage may be causing. So, if you’re ready to move on from your past, read on!

Table of Contents

What is emotional baggage?

Emotional Baggage Definition: Emotional baggage refers to the difficult emotions and experiences we carry throughout our lives. These can be from traumatic events such as bullying or abuse, or they could be negative feelings and thoughts that we’ve formed over time.

Regardless, these memories and feelings can hold us back and prevent us from living our lives effectively. This is especially true if we don’t deal with our emotional baggage — it’s like holding onto a heavyweight!

Why do we have emotional baggage?

It’s hard for anyone to grow up without developing some kind of emotional baggage. Some children lack support at home which makes them feel insecure about themselves; others may be subjected to physical or verbal abuse; while yet others may feel like they never measure up to their parents’ high expectations. All of these and more can lead to negative emotions and low self-esteem.

When we go through traumatic events as adults, we tend to cope with them by suppressing our feelings about them. This is often the case for people who are victims of crimes such as bullying, robbery, etc.

The trauma leaves us feeling scared, vulnerable, and helpless which makes it hard to talk about what happened to us. So instead of sharing our feelings with others, many choose simply not to think about it at all. This type of behavior is known as repression. Repression usually only allows us temporary relief from our pain so it’s common for repressed memories to begin popping up unexpectedly sometimes years later.

Emotional Baggage Psychology: Problems Caused By Emotional Baggage

Emotional baggage can hold us back in our lives because it prevents us from moving forward. It becomes like a weight, dragging us down and making it difficult to accomplish anything else.

The more emotional baggage we have, the heavier that weight becomes! Our emotions can also affect our physical well-being by causing stress. This even includes stress on our cardiovascular system which can lead to health problems such as high blood pressure or heart disease.

How much emotional baggage is too much?

There’s no definite answer for this question since everyone deals with emotional baggage differently. However, when you find yourself letting your past experiences interfere with your future goals repeatedly over time, then it may be time to start addressing these issues.

How to Overcome Emotional Baggage

First things first, recognize when you’re having problems caused by your emotional baggage. If it’s affecting your relationships, causing physical stress on your body, or interfering with your career advancement then it may be time for action! Once you’ve identified the issues that emotional baggage is causing, try out these tips for starting to deal with them:

Talk about what happened honestly and openly. The more we avoid talking about our emotions surrounding traumatic events, the more power over us they can hold. Talking about past experiences can actually help reduce their negative impact on us since we share our feelings with someone else.
Change your perspective about what happened and find the lesson behind it. If we think back at particularly difficult times in our lives, we tend to feel extremely upset and angry again. But instead of rethinking those events from a negative perspective, try finding a positive light! What did you learn from this experience? How has it changed your life for the better now? Approach these events from a different angle and try to find the lessons behind them.
Find anger replacement therapy. Sometimes it’s hard to let go of our negative feelings because we haven’t yet forgiven those who hurt us. But forgiving doesn’t mean that what happened was OK or that you’re minimizing your suffering – it simply means that you’ve released yourself from the past and are ready to move on with your life! Try writing a letter about how you feel, then close it up in an envelope where you won’t have to think about it again. Finish by tearing up the paper symbolizing your release of the emotions tied with these events.

Final Thoughts:

Emotional baggage holds you back in life by slowing your progress, making it difficult to accomplish goals, and even impacting your physical health. These experiences are often never talked about which causes them to get worse over time instead of better. But by talking about what happened with others, looking at the positive side of events, and forgiving those who hurt you, you can start to release yourself from your previous emotional pain!