TRYBE Tales - Blog Edition

Emotional baggage?! But that’s so last season.

🕟 Reading Time: 4 minutes

So our first official blog post and it’s about emotional baggage, just as I pack my own luggage and run away from my problems go on a little family vacation.

First off, if you don’t know what emotional baggage is, congrats your parents must have been fairies. Let me help you out: Emotional baggage refers to unresolved emotional experiences and traumas from the past that continue to affect an individual's present emotional well-being.

Why do we even care? Because unlike your lost luggage at the airport, this bag WILL find you and probably at the most inopportune time, like just when you were getting over your breakup with Chad. The impact of emotional baggage can manifest as challenges in forming and maintaining healthy relationships, low self-esteem, anxiety, depression, and even physical health issues. Unfortunately, it can influence our perception of the world, our thoughts, and our behaviours, often leading to repeated patterns or negative coping mechanisms.

Time for a rebrand - emotional: Emotions are less like baggage and more like a trip down memory lane, if the memory was more ‘The Ring’ than it was ‘When Harry Met Sally’ (if you don’t know what this movie is, stop reading this immediately and go stream/vhs/netflix).

Let’s get geeky for a minute: When a memory is formed, its information is encoded into our brains, specifically the hippocampus for memory consolidation and the amygdala for emotional processing with neural connections being strengthened or weakened based on the emotional significance of the experience. This ultimately leads to the integration of emotion into the memory trace. Intense experiences leave intense pathways.

And this ain’t no one-and-done pathway, this is a, “Oh this is the place he always took me” and an, “Omg bagels were his favourite thing for breakfast’, and of course a, “Is that a green shirt?! he once wore a green shirt. It was spectacular” type of pathway. We’ve all been there, amiright?! When we relive memories the neural networks activated during the recall can trigger the emotional responses encoded within those memories, leading to a reactivation of the emotional experience - when we relive the memory we relive the emotions associated with it.

So in our example, when you think of Chad breaking up with you, your body is actually experiencing the same emotional response that it did when it actually happened. You are reliving the memory mind, body and soul. How lovely.

BUT there’s good news: In the recent decade, more research has been done on the science of neuroplasticity (personally a fave topic of mine). This is the brain's ability to reorganize and form NEW neural connections. That means it’s possible to rewire the brain to diminish the intensity of existing pathways (“Actually green did nothing for Chad’s complexion, poor guy”) AND create new ones (“Come again, Chad who?!”).

But first - the warm, gooey soft truth for my fellow sensitive souls who probably already got welled up thinking about that time Harry crashed Sally’s NYE party (if you know, you know).

Emotions are tricky - ignore them, release them, write them down, post them on Twitter to go viral. Akh. Most of the wellness community out there will at least all agree to the idea of acceptance. Accept the emotions as they arise, they are something we experience, but they are not who we are.

Emotions can be powerful messengers guiding us through life's experiences. They can be seen as an internal compass shining a light on things we actually don’t like, boundaries we still need to set and hurts we still carry from the past that need tending to (okay FINE, we’re not over Chad 😭). But while they may influence our thoughts and actions, it is important to remember that we are not solely defined by them 🫶.

Time for a rebrand - baggage seasonal bags: Just like bags (not baggage) - emotions are something we pick up, put down, fill up, take things out, lose stuff in, maybe bring it back out when it’s in season again. It’s not who we are, it’s just something we wear sometimes. And guess what, everyone’s doing it - purses, baby bags, bum bags, weekender bags, pet carrier bags - we all wear bags. It’s really what binds humanity together if you think about

So next time you’re triggered, allow it to exist, observe it as an experience you’re going through and know that it kinda makes you a relatable human (just like going to the dentist, we all hate going through it but it would be weird if we didn’t)

Chat soon folks 🎉

- Tameem @ TRYBE

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