I experience constant and severe emotional numbness since I experienced trauma and extreme depression around age 13, and I can feel that the numbness its caused by “knots” in my body. I can feel this tight restriction in my diaphragm, chest, and and along the spine, from the lower back to the head. This has seriously impacted my quality of life and my relationships. Fixing the issue is more important to me than anything else in my life. I have tried a long list of modalities along with spending thousands of dollars; the ones which have helped me the most have been iyengar yoga and myofascial release. The combination of both has helped me gain more awareness of these knots, including the existence of new ones and becoming more conscious of their strength and exact locations. Their release, especially some of the bigger ones, would coincide with a release and “opening” of my access to my emotions. However, the progress has been too slow. Ive been doing the yoga for 2.5 years now. I might need something more to take me to where I want to go.

My trauma is unusual. I don’t experience any anxiety or nightmares when speaking about the events that led up to this with professionals. I do avoid speaking about it with people I know as there’s nothing they can do for me, talking about it with them wouldn’t help,, and it would probably make my relationships more uncomfortable because I would seem “messed up.” I want nothing more than to feel these painful emotions again because it would lead to me functioning more normally. The only thing that makes me apprehensive about releasing is the physical pain that would coincide. I think that a release of these emotions would be severely painful in my chest and throat. Every time I feel a very heightened sense of awareness of the knots, and they start to feel “movable”, for lack of a better term, I start to feel very sore inside my chest. The soreness disappears, and so does the heightened awareness of my body, as if my body is disassociating my being conscious of my body to avoid the physical pain. I think back to one of the traumatic incidents long ago, when something triggered severe emotional pain, and hours later, I formed a deep, violent cough which had me bed-ridden for a day. Each time I coughed was like getting stabbed in my wind pipe with a sharp knife. I’m pretty sure that the release would feel like that. Still, I’m willing to go through with it, because being numb the rest of my life is worse.

I have done 3 SE sessions earlier this year with a remote practitioner. It was comprised of mostly the same 4-5 questions and exercise repeated over throughout the sessions. “What do you feel in your body now? What about now? Imagine the boundaries of these knots and imagine them softening up. Imagine releasing these emotions, how would you feel after? And what do you feel now?” Each time, the answer to what do I feel now was about the same as before. There were some vagal nerve stimulation breathing exercises which didn’t seem to have an effect the few times I tried them. I stopped because I didn’t see it going anywhere. However, i read posts on this subreddit with others who describe some similar symptoms (but never 100% the same) who seem to have success. My question is, should I give it another shot, and if so do you have any advice about what to do, or what to look for? I don’t want the same trite experience. Or was my experience pretty much what it is, and maybe SE is not for me? Has anyone experience something like what I have experienced, and found a way to release?