Do you ever feel like bad experiences, relationships, fears, or anger from your past are welling up inside you, affecting your ability to deal with the present? Maybe you feel helpless, like your emotions are out of your control. It’s no wonder that this emotional baggage is often referred to as demons — it can be downright scary. Everyone has emotional baggage of some kind, but the real trouble may come when it begins to define you.
5 Ways to Free Yourself of Demons and Release Your Emotional Baggage
If you struggle with emotional baggage and don’t know how to get rid of demons that rule you, there is a way! Depending on your situation, you might need assistance from someone trained to help you overcome bad experiences, traumas, or abuses in your past. But here are some things you might want to try (along with releasing Trapped Emotions), both with or without some outside support.
Be patient with yourself
Before you follow any other steps, remember to be kind to yourself. Beating yourself up over your emotional baggage won’t help, and could make things worse. Sometimes old habits need to be broken, and that takes time. Try to be more mindful of your negative thoughts and consciously replace them with positive thoughts and behaviors that reinforce joy and higher energy. We all have emotional scars, but choosing to overcome them can bring you a whole new sense of freedom.
Make an honest list
Grab a notebook and spend some time alone. Write down the feelings, thoughts, memories, and behaviors that cause you to feel negative emotions like sadness, fear, anxiousness, or anger. Think of it as simply taking an inventory of what’s there, without judging yourself or skipping over things that are unpleasant. Nobody will be reading this but you, so make your list as complete as possible. This is your emotional baggage inventory.
Reflect on the sources
Now that you have your list, go through it and identify where you think each item came from. Was it a certain experience? Is it something you picked up from your upbringing? Are there self-limiting beliefs that contribute? Is there a grudge or forgiveness issue? For example, maybe you fear trusting others because of a betrayal you suffered years ago. Or maybe you felt unloved by your parents, and find it hard to love yourself. Don’t wallow in what you identify, just acknowledge it and write it all down.
Look for the silver lining
Now take another look at what you’ve written down and identify at least one positive from every item. Maybe the lack of attention from your parents helped you become independent. Maybe betrayal taught you how to stand up for yourself and not let others take advantage of you. The beauty of this exercise is finding out how adversity has made you stronger. You may not be able to choose all of your circumstances, but you can choose what to learn from them.
Use your positives
Now that you have a list of positives, use them to create daily affirmations that can help you fight off negative thoughts and change your behavior. For example: “I will show love to someone today who doesn’t feel loved” or, “I’m valuable and worthy of loyalty.”
Unpack Your Emotional Baggage
If you’re wondering how to get rid of demons, mindfully use the steps above and work with The Emotion Code™ to help you identify and release any Trapped Emotions. Trapped Emotions could make you more likely to stay in a cycle of negative feelings without even realizing it. The simple process of removing that negative energy from your body can make a huge difference in how you feel.
