Tips to Release Stuck Emotions from a Therapist and Trauma Specialist

As a therapist specializing in trauma, one of the most common experiences I see in my clients is the sensation of being emotionally "stuck" — knowing intellectually that they are safe while their body and nervous system remain locked in a state of distress. Polyvagal Theory helps us understand why this happens, and three specific strategies can help begin to unlock the freeze response and release emotions that have been held in the body.

Understanding Stuck Emotions Through Polyvagal Theory

Stephen Porges' Polyvagal Theory provides a framework for understanding how the autonomic nervous system responds to threat. The theory describes three primary states:

• Social engagement system (ventral vagal): The state of safety and connection. When we feel safe, we can think clearly, connect with others, and engage creatively with the world.
• Fight/flight (sympathetic activation): When the nervous system detects threat, it mobilizes energy for action — increased heart rate, muscle tension, rapid breathing, and heightened alertness.
• Freeze/shutdown (dorsal vagal): When the threat is overwhelming and escape is impossible, the nervous system shuts down — producing numbness, disconnection, fatigue, and immobility.

Emotions become "stuck" when the nervous system is locked in the fight/flight or freeze state and cannot return to social engagement. The emotional energy — the anger, fear, grief, or shame — remains trapped in the body, unable to be processed, expressed, or released. The person may feel simultaneously overwhelmed and numb, as though the emotions are present but inaccessible.

Three Tips to Release Stuck Emotions

1. Imagine Small Movements First

When your body is in freeze, attempting large movements or intense physical activity may feel impossible. Instead, begin with imagined movement. Research shows that the brain responds to vividly imagined movement in many of the same ways it responds to actual movement — activating motor cortex regions and beginning to shift the nervous system out of freeze.

Try this: close your eyes and imagine yourself making a small movement — wiggling your toes, turning your head, or lifting your hand. Visualize it in as much detail as possible. Notice any sensations that arise. This imagined movement can serve as a bridge between freeze and action, jump-starting the nervous system's mobilization response without demanding more than the system is ready to give (Dana, 2022).

Once imagined movement feels accessible, you may find that actual small movements follow naturally — a gentle stretch, a shift in posture, a deep breath. The nervous system is designed to move through these states sequentially, and imagined movement honors that sequence.

2. Visualize Emotions as Physical Objects

Stuck emotions often feel amorphous, overwhelming, and unmanageable — in part because they lack clear boundaries. One way to make them more workable is to externalize them by giving them physical properties.

Ask yourself — or have your therapist guide you: If this emotion were a physical object, what would it look like? What shape is it? What color? How much does it weigh? What temperature is it? What is its texture — rough, smooth, jagged, soft?

This exercise accomplishes several things simultaneously. It engages the prefrontal cortex (reducing amygdala dominance), creates a sense of separation between you and the emotion (you are observing it, not drowning in it), and provides a concrete focus for therapeutic work. Once an emotion has a shape and color, it becomes something you can move, transform, or even set down.

3. Offer Yourself Curiosity Instead of Judgment

When stuck emotions finally begin to surface, the most common response is judgment: "Why am I still feeling this way?" "What's wrong with me?" "I should be over this by now." This self-judgment activates the threat response, which pushes the nervous system right back into freeze — creating a cycle of emergence and suppression that keeps emotions stuck.

Instead, practice approaching your emotions with curiosity. As David Knipe (2019) describes, emotions — even the uncomfortable ones — serve a psychological defense function. They are trying to protect you from something. Rather than asking "Why won't this go away?" try asking "What is this emotion trying to tell me?" or "What was this emotion protecting me from when it first appeared?"

You might try these reframing exercises:

• Instead of "I shouldn't feel this way," try "This feeling makes sense given what I experienced"
• Instead of "Something is wrong with me," try "My nervous system is doing exactly what it learned to do"
• Instead of "I need to get rid of this," try "I wonder what this feeling needs from me right now"

Curiosity activates the social engagement system — the ventral vagal state associated with safety and connection. When we are curious, we are not in threat mode. This creates the conditions under which stuck emotions can finally begin to move.

Stuck emotions are not a sign that something is wrong with you — they are a sign that your nervous system did its job protecting you. Releasing them is not about forcing them out but about creating the conditions of safety in which they can finally let go.