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The connection between Energy Blocks in Children and their emotions and what parents can do to prevent and heal blockages.
by Genevieve Simperingham
From my perspective as an energy healer, I can clearly see the connections between the physical and behavioural problems that a child expresses and the places in their body where the flow of their emotions has become blocked. Repressed emotions leads to energy block, which leads to discomfort and frustration, which leads to unhealthy behaviour and potentially to health problems.
Emotional repression can happen easily when the child is not given the permission and the support to feel and hence release their emotions. Children need to feel looked after and supported when they are upset. If they are not supported, but distracted, ignored or rejected, they will often shut down their feelings causing them to get locked up inside their body as muscular tension and stress. Repressed emotions can manifest in blocks to the child’s breathing and body posture and can lead to various physical ailments. From the healer's perspective, all problems that people experience in their lives, problems with self esteem, motivation, anger, addictions, conpulsive behaviours, relationship problems and all health problems can be found and identified as energy blocks in the person's energy systems. In this way, when an energy worked opens and clears the patient's energies, they are helping to relieve problems in all areas of their life, physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually.
Just as blocked and repressed emotions leads to blocks in a person's chakras and their energies, which lead to all sorts of mental, physical and emotional issues, clearing these blocks also clears a whole host of related issues. (Read also my article on the chakras).
It is the job of the healer or energy worker to identify the blocks within the child’s body and energy field and to contribute towards the rebalancing and reintegration of their physical, mental, emotional and energetic aspects of self. In doing this work, the blocked and locked emotions that lie at the heart of the problem can be released.
However, for a child's energy to become free flowing again, the child ideally needs to live in an emotional environment that is overall physically and emotionally safe. If the child does not feel safe, seen, heard and warmly connected to and cared for, it is unavoidable that the child will continue to hold their deeper more vulnerable feelings inside, keeping them energetically armoured and hance certain chakras may be shut down. In this situation, unless the dynamics between the child and the adults who look after them change to include an approach that includes truly listening to and supporting the child’s expression of their emotions, the problems or other similar problems are likely to re-occur.
Inevitably, the parents who bring their children along for energy work to myself, or other health care professionals, are doing everything they possibly can within their framework of understanding to help their child return to wellness and balance, physically, mentally and emotionally. But unfortunately, most parents have not received enough correct information about children's emotional needs and the inevitible unmet needs that lie behind a child's "misbehaviour". Unfortunately, many well meaning experts focus mainly on behaviour management and obedience training without having a deeper understanding of the negative consequences of emotional repression. Other articles on this site talk more specifically about how to best meet children's emotional needs.
Much of the time, in a parent’s attempt to make their child happy, strong, confident and obedient, the parent is conditioning the child to work against their feelings rather than with them. They force a child to deny their true feelings and replace them with logic and correct behaviour. These approaches appear to work only because adults don’t realize that the negative consequences that then appear are in fact the direct result of the child's emotions being repressed. The hurt feelings that a child doesn't get out, they act out in unhealthy ways. Once again, the parent blames the child once again for their “misbehaviour”, not seeing that the misbehaviour is in fact a symptom of a child’s lack of emotional validation and release and the cycle continues.
Misbehaviour can also, of course, be a symptom of thirst, hunger, over-stimulation, tiredness and one of the biggest ones is sugary or processed foods. If a child’s behaviour is out of balance regularly, the first thing to cut out is sweet food. If it’s not causing the tension in the child, it will certainly be at least aggravating the situation.
Psychotherapists generally recognize the therapeutic value of crying and encourage their clients to cry. There is a current recognition of the value of deep-feeling therapies, regression therapy, primal therapy and emotional release therapy in which therapists encourage clients to feel the effects or sometimes to relive early childhood traumatic experiences. In therapy, clients are generally encouraged to cry and rage. These therapies are based on the assumption that people who did not feel safe enough to cry as children can "catch up" on their crying later in life and heal themselves from the effects of early traumatic experiences.
Our culture tends to block and suppress the healthy expression of deep emotions. There needs to be a greater understanding in our society in general of the distinction between deep emotions and destructive behaviour. In attempts to stop the destructive behaviour, children’s emotions are often scorned and invalidated "don't be angry". Often adults who were shamed or punished as children for expressing their feelings, experience an unconscious triggering of the body memory associated with these experiences and hence have a need for their child to stop crying because of the anxiety it causes the adult. Adults whose parent distracted them from the expression of their emotions using sweet foods, drinks, presents, tv, etc will generally use the same or similar methods as an adult to distract themselves or their children from the discomfort of their feelings.
During deep-feeling therapies, adults overcome their inhibitions around expressing their feelings clearly, thereby allowing them to cry as much as needed in a supportive environment with an attentive, empathic listener. This release of deep emotions is generally experienced as being incredibly freeing for adults, reconnecting them with their confidence, happiness and the courage and passion to overcome challenges, as opposed being trapped within their “comfort zone”.
Genevieve believes that children need to experience this therapeutic permission for deep emotional release and ongoing positive validation of their emotions on an ongoing basis throughout their childhood. When we can give children the calmness, safety and permission to feel, explore and express their feelings, children can live happily in the moment. This then enables children to give their full attention, enthusiasm and potential to their daily play and learning. On the other hand, the child who carries a backlog of invalidated and unreleased tears and fears is less available mentally and emotionally and will be generally frustrated, unsettled or inhibited.
In Aletha Solter's books "Tears and Tantrums", she says; "Researchers have measured physiological changes in adults following therapy sessions in which they cried hard. The results showed lower blood pressure and body temperature, slower heart rate, and more synchronized brain-wave patterns. This state of physiological relaxation was greater following crying than following physical exercise for an equivalent period of time. Biochemical studies have discovered greater concentrations of stress hormones in emotionally induced tears than in irritant-induced tears, leading to the theory that one purpose of crying is to rid the body of excessive amounts of these hormones. It is obvious that, when we cry, something important happens."
The reality is that whenever a child experiences big feelings of fear, anger, frustration, excitement, sadness, grief, or other, but the pressure is put on them to be brave, logical, strong and sensible, they are being forced to change their emotional state immediately and this is a very hard thing for a child to do on their own. It’s scary for them because they don’t know how to do it and generally don’t understand why they’re not allowed to experience that particular feeling. Without an adult helping the child make the transition from one feeling to another, the only way a child can “snap out of” their very intense emotion and into a different state is to block their breath and shut down their sensations. Unfortunately, this also shuts down their chakras, through which they metabolize their life-force and also causes a lot of unnecessary stress and tension in the body.
Adults can avoid the stress and repression caused by children having to change their emotional state by validating the child’s feelings as well as sticking to the original rule or request. E.g. “I know you’re disappointed that you can’t have an ice-cream, it’s hard being disappointed. Oh dear, you’re so upset. You really wanted to have that ice-cream didn’t you?”. “YES I DID”, the child may express with increased expression of her pain, but this release will generally be the healthy one of clean release.
For a child to experience a clean healthy release of their feelings, they generally need to feel the permission and support of an adult. Without this, the child is locked into a struggle that’s too big for them to end. They desperately need the adults love, approval and understanding again, but know that it’s not a possibility, so they will then crave sugar or another comfort, which then becomes, what Dr. Aletha Solter describes in her books, as a “control pattern”. A control pattern is a learned behaviour of emotional repression that children adapt when they are not given the avenue of natural, healthy, emotional release through crying or raging.
When a child experiences their parent’s disapproval, anger, tension, embarrassment or other, the child feels alone in their big pain and feels negative about themselves for having those feelings. They’re grief, anger, disappointment has now just been compounded by their parents rejection, disapproval, etc. The pain then becomes unbearable and the child can become locked into their state. However, when the child experiences their parent’s kindness, acceptance and empathy, the child is released from their struggle, is given permission to feel sad, angry, etc and can now have a very healthy, clean, releasing cry that literally “lets it all out”. When we learn to view emotional release as a positive and healing experience, dealing with a child’s big feelings becomes much easier for the adult.
As parents our response to a child screaming because they’ve caught their finger in the toy they were playing with and need help releasing the finger is a very different response to the situation of our child screaming because they are at the doctors and the doctor is doing some necessary intervention that will hopefully make the child better.
I believe that as a society in general, we’ve been conditioned to view our children’s strong expressions of emotions as a negative thing as opposed to a positive experience. It’s understandable to want our children to be calm and happy as opposed to angry and grief stricken. Using logic, threats, punishments or distraction techniques to make our kids stop feeling those strong feelings, is in fact creating the very problem that we’re trying to solve.
Those strong feelings that adults cause children to box in don’t easily dissipate. Those feelings are still in there and still need to be felt and moved through the natural process of release that ultimately repair the energies, the body and the mind. No doubt, you can easily begin to imagine the snowball effect of ongoing repression of strong emotions.
Every time a child’s feelings do not receive the validation (i.e. permission) that’s needed, there is an accumulation of the build up of stress and tension in the body, nervous system and the backlog of unexpressed, unreleased emotions gathers more momentum. If the buildup reaches a certain point, the child may become weighed down to such a point that they become depressed. Up until that point, the child is unconsciously attempting to find avenues of release and validation all the time through indirect methods. With this greater understanding, I believe it’s unfair to accuse kids of being manipulative and attention seeking, we should instead feel grateful that they’re still seeking validation and release of their emotions.
The understanding of the therapeutic and healing value of adults going to therapy, rebirthing, counselling and other feeling focused therapies is very widely understood and accepted now in our society in general. I believe that the next evolutionary step is to apply this understanding of the emotions to our parenting practices.
When parents give their children ongoing validation of their emotions, the child themselves learns that when they’re acting destructively out of their anger, hatred, jealousy, fears, etc, they need help and support. They learn that this is a signal that they have big feelings inside that need to be expressed with a safe person,
Children who are given ongoing validation of their emotions learn that:
- They deserve to feel looked after and held when they feel big emotions,
- They deserve to be not alone with their big feelings,
- They deserve to feel understood and still loved even though they are angry, hating, etc
- They are allowed to feel all their feelings,
- Asking for help from a loving parent, or other attachment figure, is a good thing to do,
- They can cope with and trust other people’s emotions,
- Our feelings are our friends,
- They are a good person and loved and valued unconditionally,
- To take responsibility for their feelings,
- They don’t have to make the change or solve problem until the feelings are released,
- Feeling, exploring and expressing big feelings always makes them feel lighter and brings back the nice feelings towards themselves and others.
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