Signs You’re Holding Emotions in Your Body

Most people think emotions live in the mind. But anyone living with tension, exhaustion, tightness, or overwhelm knows the truth: emotions live in the body — and they stay there until released.

If you’re in Los Angeles, navigating pressure, pace, and constant performance expectations, your body may be carrying more than you realize.

Here are the most common signs.

1. Chronic Tension or Tightness

Jaw, neck, chest, belly, and hips are the top places emotions hide.
These are often signs of stored fear, grief, people-pleasing, or emotional suppression.

2. Trouble Relaxing or Feeling Safe

If your body stays “on alert,” you may have unresolved emotional memory looping through the nervous system.

3. Emotional Reactivity

Small stressors feel big when your body is carrying old emotions and your system is overloaded.

4. Exhaustion That Rest Doesn’t Fix

This is one of the clearest signs of stored emotional weight.
Your body is constantly holding instead of releasing.

5. Physical Symptoms with No Clear Medical Cause

Digestive issues, headaches, sleep disruptions, and tight breathing can all be emotional signals.

How to Release These Patterns

Somatic emotional release therapy works with:

  • breath and body mapping

  • guided emotional unwinding

  • nervous system regulation

  • intuitive somatic tracking

This is the work I specialize in.

Ready to release what your body has been holding?
Book a virtual emotional release therapy session in Los Angeles.

julie otte