You Felt Your Emotions - But Did Your Nervous System Catch Up?
Why integration is imperative in emotional healing
Hey wonderful people ♡
As you know by now, healing is an inherent part of my life. Why?
Because I see nothing more beautiful than reaching new depths of authenticity in myself.
Yesterday I had my first hypnotherapy session. It was a profound experience of feeling and processing deep emotions that put me in touch with very tender parts of me.
This experience prompted me to write about the importance of integration in any deep emotional healing work that you may undertake.
This article was initially thought out as a deep dive into the broader topic of emotions, following the previous one where I talk about The importance of being seen in our emotions.
But because of the depth of the topic and in light of the insights I gained from my hypnotherapy session, I have decided to break it down into three separate articles that each deserve a little deep dive on their on.
There are three stages in the emotional healing process: Feeling → Processing → Integrating.
All three are fundamental and they complement one another, but I find the Integration Stage to be the one that is most overlooked, something that can leave us feeling depleted and discouraged.
So if you, like me, are involved in any type of deep emotional work, this article will important for you.
Integrating an experience means allowing time and space to process and absorb what happened—emotionally, mentally, and physically.
And we do that via a regulated nervous system.
Sarah Baldwin, trauma-informed coach and nervous system expert often says:
‘Nervous system regulation is the foundation of all healing.’
What do we mean by that?
In simple terms, a regulated nervous system is a system that operates from a place of connection, openness and safety. When we go through a process of feeling intense and challenging emotions, a series of things can unfold.
We are brought to the root of our wounds - perhaps for the very first time we feel the depth of an old pain or remember painful past experiences
We become aware of fundamental core beliefs we hold around those emotions- beliefs we subconsciously operate from
We experience physical symptoms of release such as shaking, crying or deep sighs, as the body is finally given the space to process
In other words, all that has been repressed and deemed as a threat to the system now finally has the chance to come to the surface and share its message. This is a wonderful thing, as we need to access that truth and let the emotional energy of move through.
The problem is that our nervous system will still register this as unsafe, since this is the very thing it has been protecting us from all along.
This experience might seem more like retraumatization rather than healing, if we don’t support our nervous system to access the part of it responsible for safety, also known as the ventral vagal complex.
This is why coming into a place of regulation is key to preventing emotional overwhelm and teaching your nervous system safety.
How might you recognise that you need more integration after a deep emotional healing session?
You feel a deep sense of shame for what you experienced
—Shame might have been exactly what you felt when you weren’t allowed to express your emotions as a child (see the full circle moment?)
Now, what your system needs is connection and integration of the part of you that feels shame
You feel a pressure to implement changes in light of what you uncovered
—Just because you learnt something new about yourself doesn’t mean that you feel safe to act on it. The body and psyche need time to reconfigure to the new truth. And this new truth will be further consolidated via small steps in a new chosen direction.
Additional emotions continue to surface
—For example, you might realise that your emotional needs were consistently unmet in childhood, which led you to believe that you are inherently unlovable. This awareness can bring up intense feelings of sadness, grief, or anger as you process the impact of this belief on your life.
The tendency to fall back into familiar coping mechanisms, such as withdrawing or numbing
All of the above are a natural part of the integration process, and the more we turn towards the needs of our nervous system and release pressure, the less we interfere with our body’s capacity to heal.
Things that can make this process profoundly healing:
orient towards inner connection
slow down and attune to your needs
seek connection with other people
spend time in nature, fully present
creative rest and soul nourishment
Integration isn’t immediate—it unfolds over time as the body, mind, and nervous system adjust to the new shifts. It requires patience, self-care, and ongoing regulation to allow the transformation to settle deeply.
With love ♡
A.
Great article, Alex. For me (and what I teach my clients), the integration works better if it’s embodied. I literally turn my body towards ‘ashamed Anita’ or ‘hurt Anita’ and I acknowledge her arrival and I tell her ‘ it’s ok you’re here. No wonder you’ve arrived, given what we have experienced in our past. I hear you. You can sit down and relax now you’ve delivered your message. Yet you’re not telling the full story here, we have other resources to use now, that we didn’t have back then. So I’m stepping in now and we are ok’ This means I can FEEL my emotions, PROCESS them and begin to INTEGRATE them into my ‘whole’ Anita.
Something that I tend to do when I'm in the deep emotional work of healing is also analyze the people who initially wounded me. I tend to deep dive into the psychology, life experience and circumstances of the people who hurt me so that I can forgive them as part of my healing process.