Releasing the Burden From My Body

Hey Everyone,

I hope your morning is going better than mine. I was out for my hour long walk first thing in the morning. And was surprised to run into hundreds of bats. Freaked me out! Oh my Goodness. I haven't ran in over a decade but I made it back to my condo in record time.

So I took that as a sign from God that exercise is Evil.

I'm just saying :) LOL.

Hauling myself across the parking lot to the condo got me to thinking... "Man am I fat."

Which is a little frustrating because I have made some huge changes in my life. Instead of fast food on the go, I have two routine meals. Instead of four gas station fountain drinks a day, I have one can of soda at lunch. Instead of a completely sedentary lifestyle sitting behind a desk, I walk a couple hours or more a day.

They say change your lifestyle — pretty sure they mean food. Me? I took it to mean quit your church, your job, and your entire life. Not sure how well that's worked out.

I'm still fat. (It could be all the sugar I eat (or drink). But hey we all need a little joy in life and you all need to stop judging me :) hehehe. )

Just kidding. Back to my point.

I have made some huge steps to change my life. Steps that look... well... Insane. Thus the point of this series. Am I going down the pathway of Insanity or is the Lord truly teaching me and Inspiring me to make out of the box decisions?

That remains to be seen.

In the previous two blogs I talked about buying a library and then quitting my job. I made the arguments that the first one changed my spirit and the other changed my soul (at least I think... Again I could be crazy :)..).

Given we each have a Spirit, Soul, and Body... the obvious subject for this next blog is the Body. My third crazy move happened this summer. I made the decision to move to Florida. No job, no address, no plan. It just seemed like a good idea at the time. LOL.

It may sound weird, but I almost felt like I needed a transitional space to be where I could basically buy time until I know the next move to make.

So right now, I'm living in a 5 star vacation condo for at least six months to year. And people are not feeling my pain. They have no idea how stressful it is to vacation day after day after day.

LOL. I'm Kidding.

But not really.

See, the stressful part of this entire journey is not knowing what comes next. I mean I know we all have that desire to know the future to some extent. That's not exactly what I'm referring to. What I mean is.. my life is not settled. I don't have a husband, or kids, or even an address at this point.

Honestly, this whole journey has been stressful. People stitch verses about faith onto pillows—but taking actual steps of faith? That’s harder. It’s walking into the unknown, wondering if you made the right call… and fighting the urge to go back to something safe.

Here I'm on vacation and I feel like I'm one big ball of anxiety. Which I think ties to fat. We've all heard of Cortisol.. the stress hormone that can lead to belly fat. If there is ever a runway for cortisol-belly fashion, I'd be the top pick for that particular modeling job. (#wishIwasjoking)

I know you're probably thinking.. well if you're worried about money, then go get a job. If you want an address, go buy a house or rent an apartment. Trust me, that's what I would be saying. But the thing is... I did that. I lived that my entire adult life and that ended with being told I was at stroke levels at the age of 39.

Solving my external problems didn't decrease my stress - instead my solutions created more stress. And apparently being on vacation isn't decreasing my anxiety either.

So where do I go from here?

ROOTED ASSUMPTION

Somewhere along the line, most of us were taught that feelings are mental. Stress. Anxiety. Depression. Fear. Even joy or excitement. We’ve been conditioned to think they all live in our minds — like clouds passing through our brains, interrupting our productivity, our peace, or our sleep.

So what do we do?

Well, we usually try to outthink them. We analyze, journal, over-spiritualize, or push through.

• “I’m just being irrational.”

• “This is probably just in my head.”

• “I just need to pray harder.”

• “Get it together — there’s nothing really wrong.”

  
  

Or we think they are just reactions to External Circumstances. And if we are the responsible, high-functioning adults we were all raised to be, we try to solve the external problem that we think is causing the emotion:

• I’m stressed because I don’t have a job. So I need to get one.

• I’m anxious because I don’t have a plan. So I need to make one.

• I’m lonely because I’m single. So I need to go where the people are.

• I’m discouraged because things aren’t working. So I need to push harder.

  
  

That’s how we’ve been trained: External problem → emotional response → solve the external problem → emotional response disappears.

It sounds logical. It even works… for a while.

But then...

You solve the “problem” — and the feeling doesn’t leave. Or the feeling leaves for a minute, but it comes right back the next time a new “problem” shows up. And a new "problem" always shows up.

You pay off the credit card, here comes a car repair you didn't plan for. You go to a group event to solve loneliness and yet you go home... alone. You finish that project that stressed you out, and here comes another. You work hard to lose all that weight, only for it to make a reappearance with a few more pounds after a year.

If emotions are mental reactions to external problems - and we can fix them by fixing the problems - then why does it feel like the pattern just keeps repeating?

RE-EXAMINED EVIDENCE

So if emotions are not just reactions to external circumstances - and they are not just intellectual problems we need to analyze our way out of - then what are they?

Science and psychology are beginning to show a rather fascinating conclusion. Feelings are real, tangible, physical energies stored in the body.

When your body experiences something overwhelming - whether it is trauma, pressure, fear, or loss - it generates a physical response. Your nervous system shifts. Your stress hormones surge. Muscles tense, breathing shortens, your gut tightens as you brace for whatever you need to face.

If that wave of emotion does not get expressed - fully processed, felt, and released - it actually gets stored. Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, author of "The Body Keeps the Score", spent years researching PTSD and trauma. He found that unprocessed emotional pain does not disappear, but instead it physically embeds itself in the body.

Dr. Peter Levine, founder of Somatic Experiencing, says that trauma is "not what happens to you - it is what gets trapped in your body when you do not complete the stress cycle". In other words, the real problem is not actually the event. It is the energy that did not get released.

There has been enough evidence to confirm that emotions are physical that Neuroscience textbooks now define emotions as neurophysiological states (not just mental events but whole-body experiences).

I know this is a weird idea, so here's a few more sources just to solidify the claim.

• Body-mapping studies (2013, PNAS) found that people consistently feel emotions in specific parts of the body — regardless of language or culture.

• Harvard Health confirms that unresolved emotional issues can become “trapped” in the body — forming the basis for therapies like somatic experiencing and trauma release.

• Nervous system research shows that when the body doesn’t feel safe, it stays in fight/flight/freeze — even when the mind says “you’re fine.”

Why does any of this matter? Basically if feelings are physical and are stored inside the body... then telling someone to "Suck it up Buttercup" probably isn't going to be a very effective solution :). If emotions are physical — stuck energy in the body — then ignoring them or trying to solve them might not be the answer.

RE-FRAMED BELIEF

It’s important to understand that emotions are physical energies — for two major reasons:

First, they can act like alarms. Sometimes a feeling is your body’s way of waving a flag: “Hey! Something’s not right.” Whether it’s physical pain, emotional pressure, or even a subtle warning you can’t explain, emotions are messengers. They're trying to get your attention.

But the second reason — the one this blog is really about — is this: Stored emotions affect both your health and your daily life.

Science and psychology inform us that our bodies cannot sustain stored emotion long term.

• Stored emotion = stored stress. When your body holds on to overwhelming feelings, it overloads your nervous system. That’s when symptoms show up: chronic fatigue, weight gain, high cortisol, inflammation, insomnia, tension, digestive issues, burnout — the list goes on.

• You don’t just feel stress — you get wired for it. If emotional energy doesn’t get released, your body adapts to live in survival mode. It literally reshapes your brain’s neural patterns and conditions your system to seek out the same emotional state over and over.

• You can become addicted to the feeling. Dr. Joe Dispenza and others have shown that the body can become chemically addicted to emotions like anxiety or sadness. Not because you enjoy them — but because they’re familiar. So your system starts seeking out situations that keep the same feelings alive.

And then there’s the spiritual side. Because what’s inside you isn’t just something you carry — it shapes the world around you. The Bible says, “As a man thinketh, so is he.” And in another passage: “If My people repent, I will heal their land.”

There’s a pattern here: God didn’t say ‘fix the land.’ He said, ‘Fix you — and I’ll heal the land. In other words: healing the world begins by healing you. That's just wild to think about but science and psychology do seem to back up what the Bible is saying.

• You don’t just respond to your world — you help create it. What’s stored in your body (fear, shame, grief, rejection) influences what you attract, tolerate, expect, and even manifest externally.

• Old emotions repeat old patterns. Your body will subconsciously recreate scenarios that match its dominant emotional frequency — just to keep the feeling alive. New job, same stress. New relationship, same loneliness. New season, same anxiety. Different chapter, same story.

• You’re feeding something. Scripture talks about “the spirit of fear,” “the spirit of heaviness,” “the spirit of jealousy” — not as metaphors, but as real spiritual forces. And the more you host it, the more it stays. The more you feed the frequency, the more it feeds your life.

Apparently, what you do not feel, you cannot heal. And what you do not release, you will repeat. Unprocessed emotion doesn't just weigh you down - it shapes your patterns, your relationships, your health, and your future.

So how does a person Release the Burden from the Body? Seriously? Considering I'm overweight, I would really like to know that answer. But I know that "burdens" probably manifest in people differently. The research says emotions need permission to move — but what does that actually mean?

REFLECTIVE INVITATION

Well… this blog has certainly taken an interesting turn.

I originally started this Insane or Inspired series because I was taking yet another uncharted pathway — wondering the entire time if I was making the right move, or if I’d officially gone off the deep end.

The previous three blogs were about events in the past — and even though they were hard to write, at least I had some hindsight. (Not sure how clear that hindsight is, but hey — they say it's 20/20. I’m thinking mine might be more like 60/40. LOL.)

This blog, though…This one has been the hardest. Because it’s not about the past. It’s about right now.

I literally just moved to Florida. No plan. No job. No idea if this will be a six-month vacation or a new life. And I’m still holding my breath, wondering how this chapter will end.

But if I’ve learned anything, it’s this: This part of the journey — this strange in-between space — is about the body.

I’ve been overweight most of my life. And I’ve also been a walking mass of anxiety for just as long. Coincidence? Given all the research we just walked through… probably not.

So now comes the obvious question: If I’m carrying this anxiety in my body — this burden — what do I do about it?

Because I can tell you right now… the answer is clearly not more sugar.(Trust me. I’ve tried. Extensively. 😂)

The research offers a bit of hope here:

The body has a natural ability to heal — but it needs permission to feel, to process, and to let go.

Here are just a few of the ways scientists, psychologists, and trauma specialists say we can help the body release what it's been holding:

• Movement — walking, stretching, dance, shaking — all stimulate the nervous system to complete unprocessed stress cycles.

• Breathwork — long, slow exhales signal safety to the brain and help down-regulate the body’s stress response.

• Crying or vocal expression — sounds strange, but actually helps move emotion up and out of the nervous system.

• Touch & safety cues — weighted blankets, warm baths, hugs, grounding objects. These tell your body: “You’re safe now.”

• Stillness — yep, sometimes doing nothing is the most healing thing you can do. Your body will speak if you give it space.

  
  

It doesn’t have to be big. It doesn’t have to be loud. But it does need to be intentional.

For the record, I am just now doing the research on this subject and learned these techniques. But maybe God is leading me after all because let me tell you... I am rocking out these physical suggestions in Florida. That was the first thing I did here... create a Schedule.

Yes I am that big of a nerd that I go on vacation and create a schedule. My day starts with 30 minutes of being still and deep breathing. I'm doing a stretching workout in the morning and walking at Disney in the evening. I left my weighted blanket back in Illinois (such a bummer) but I do sit on the beach with my feet in the sand which is kind of a grounding thing, right?

The only one I would say that is not on my schedule... Crying.

Because that would make me look weird. ("Sorry mom, I can't talk right now... It's time to go cry. But I can call you in 30." I may be Insane... but I'm not a psycho :) LOL.)

But anyway... maybe this entire Florida Trip is really about taking care of my body, releasing anxiety that I've pretty much lived by my entire life.

I can tell you one thing... it seems like all the worrying in my life has just led to more things to worry about. Maybe that's why God says not to worry. Though in my defense... a lot of my anxiety in the past ten years has been related to unusual steps of faith. I don't care what anyone says... it's freaking hard to take a step in a direction no one else is going when everything in your entire existence tells you to play it safe.

But then again... maybe everyone else is right and I just blew my life up for no reason.

I guess I'll find out on the flip side whether this was a leap of faith or a leap into crazy town :).

I hope you all have a great day...

Jacqueline Marie