You’ve been working on yourself forever but how do you know if you’re still holding onto emotional baggage after some kind of painful failed relationship or traumatic event in the past?

I’m going to give you three signs that might show you that you’re still holding onto stuff that you haven’t even been aware of.

1. It Still Hurts

The most obvious sign is if you can’t talk about that person or that situation without feeling some kind of emotional charge in your body, then you know that there’s still stuff in there.

So, for example, I often talk with women about what I do, and I get this response.

A woman says to me, “Oh yeah, I left my husband 10 years ago, but I’ve moved on”.  But what I see is their eyes glaze over with pain. They tear up, they have a rigidness about them.

It’s like pain flashes across their body and then it disappears again quickly.

So, think of somebody that you’ve had a bad relationship in the past.

It doesn’t have to be a lover or a husband. It can be a parent, a child, a sibling.

How do you feel in your body when you think about that person?

If there’s any kind of tightness, sickness in the guts, tears, any kind of reaction, that’s a sign that even though you think consciously you’ve moved on, your body hasn’t.  It’s still carrying negative energy.

2. Needing to Prove Yourself

The second sign is if you’re living your life as a reaction to what’s happened in the past.

What I mean by that is when I hear a woman say something like, “Well, I’m doing this because I’m showing my ex that I can make it on my own.”

Or, ‘I’m showing my parents they were wrong about me.’

They’re actually living their life to try to prove somebody else wrong.

It’s a reactive way of living life rather than consciously choosing how you want to live.

3. Avoiding the Subject

The third sign is if you say things like, “Oh, I just don’t want to go there. That’s in the past. I just don’t want to talk about it.”

The reason you “don’t want to go there” is because ‘going there’ is painful and confronting.

And what a lot of women do is they make the mistake of thinking, “If I just speak positive, and have positive thoughts, build my confidence, get really strong, then everything will be great.”

But if they haven’t addressed the pain and truly healed it, then that pain’s always going to be sitting there waiting to be triggered.

That’s not true freedom.

How do you know you’re free from the past?

You know that you’re free from something painful that’s happened in the past if you can talk about it and there’s a sense of peace around it.

There’s a neutral acceptance and no attachment. 

You think, ‘Oh yeah, that happened to me and I’m grateful for what the experience taught me about myself.”

You’re not just saying the words.  You feel gratitude in your body.

There’s no emotional charge there anymore.

There’s no reaction.

There’s no rigidness, there is no toughness, there are no tears.

You’ve completely moved on.

So, I’m wondering if you relate to any of those three signs?

And do you want to stop putting off the inevitable step of facing and dealing with your past so you can be free now?

If so, I encourage you to download my free audio training & eWorkbook ‘Be a Woman of Integrity: The 3 Hidden Ways a Woman Gives Her Power Away and How to Take Yours Back’

You’ll uncover three ways you’ve been keeping yourself stuck by giving your power away (without even knowing it) and learn what you need to do right here and right now to take back control of your life and move forward. 

I hope this blog has been of service to you. I invite you to comment your experiences or thoughts on this topic below.

You do have the power to just be you.

Love,