Do You Carry Your Emotional Baggage Everywhere?

​Dumping your old emotional hurts onto the new people that come into your life experiences is a sign that you carry your old emotional baggage with you.

​You might feel that emotional baggage is protecting you from getting hurt again, but it’s only hurting your present and the new relationships that come in to your life.

​Emotional baggage

Emotional baggage is a collection of old emotional hurts that were created in the past with a character from your life story. This baggage causes you to be fearful when similar situations seem to come back in your present life.

Emotional baggage is then a collection of unresolved emotional hurts from the past.

Don’t you get tired of carrying this baggage around with you all the time? It must be exhausting. I know for sure mine was. Fortunately, I now travel light.
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​What your emotional baggage causes you to do

When new people come in to your life and trigger, with word or action, the small memory of that past painful experience you had, they get a taste of your wrath, even though they didn’t cause the original pain.

Or you could be acting out in a defensive way while the new person in your life doesn’t have a clue where your actions are coming from. That reaction of yours is a safety mechanism to keep you from feeling and getting hurt again.

You might have had a similar experience in which you were talking to someone and all of the sudden you get a defense reaction and you have no idea where it came from. Well, those are reactions from the old emotional baggage they still carry with them.
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The fear imprinted in the experiences from our past that are in our emotional baggage prevent us from moving forward in certain aspects of our lives that, had those not been there, we would advance and grow significantly.

​Release your emotional baggage

Emotional baggage is not only taking you back to the past to re-experience old emotional hurts, but it’s holding you back from experiencing and receiving the good stuff in life.

Also, going back to the past to re-experience and or remember old emotional pains only hurts yourself since you’re bringing that negative energy from that time to the present moment. This negative energy gets you in an emotional state from where you would not be able to create anything positive since that energy comes from negative feeling emotions.

The good news is that you can drop that emotional baggage at any time. If you’re ready to begin releasing it now, follow these 4 steps to start:

1. Identify it –Notice it’s the presence of old emotional baggage that’s making you distrustful and it’s making you believe you’re going to get hurt again. If you pay attention to those moments when you feel a recurrence from an old emotional pain, you’ll eventually identify where it’s coming from.
2. See it coming –If you cannot deal with the emotion at the moment you identified it, make a mental note of it so you can identify it when it’s coming to you again.
3. Evaluate –Evaluate the situation you’re experiencing and ask yourself if the current situation is even close to what you experienced before or if are your thoughts and beliefs that make it look like it is.
4. Stay in the present situation –Bring your awareness to the present moment and pay attention to the situation at hand. Once you are present, instead of going to your past, you’ll be better able to handle it appropriately.

Once you learn to see an old emotional hurt coming, you’re going stay centered and be able to put that emotion to the side while you’re having an interaction with the person you have in front of you, and you'll deal with that emotion at another moment so it can be released once and for all.

This is going to change your perspective and focus on what you’re doing at the moment. This will also help you stay present, living in the NOW, and creating the life you always wanted.
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Everyone has some baggage, my dear, but I’ve never seen a suitcase that couldn’t be unpacked if its owner was willing to start by removing the locks.” –Samuel Decker Thompson
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Another sign of carrying your baggage with you is when you keep talking about the same emotional hurts over and over again to whoever lends you an ear.

You need to realize that doing so only makes your baggage larger and heavier since your present is now tainted with that old negative energy from your past stories.

You also need to realize that those experiences are no longer here and that you need to resolve them so they never come back. Follow the 4 steps above to help you resolve them or contact me to help you with emotional healing.
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Related Publications:
​
The Art of Letting Go
 
Tell Me a Better Feeling Story
 
Choose To Be Your Best Self
 
7 Steps To Stop Repressing Your Emotions

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​Image source: https://www.123rf.com/profile_gorosi​

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