You’ve probably seen the image of an iceberg used quite often as the metaphor for all the emotional stratifications we have buried somewhere inside of us.
It offers us a powerful mental image to grab our attention and encourage us to go deeper. Few of us want to willingly dive into what we’ve put in cold storage. Yet all that we have supressed is a drag on how we move through life.
Occasionally, a piece of our iceberg will shake itself loose and come to the surface. Something from our past emerges and leaves us no choice but to look at it. Perhaps it is more accurate to say that it requires us to be present with it, to feel it all over again.
In a recent post, yung pueblo (author of Lighter) reminded us that if a past experience hurt deeply, we will need to return to the memory often, in order to chip away at its hold on us. This is particularly true of those very visceral emotional experiences that we did not process, but rather suppressed and submerged. We’ve layered a lot of other unprocessed emotions on top of the big ones.
Our iceberg is layered with stratifications of our lived experiences and emotional history. There are treasures we were intended to work with that are fossilized in that frozen iceberg. So often, when we take the time to handle those fragile memories with care, we actually make meaning that resonates deeply.
That’s why we do this work. We carefully examine what we could not bear to look at before. With more experience under our belt, with more compassion and improved skills, we can now be with a painful past experience and metabolize it.
Pieces of our iceberg often catch us by surprise – they surface when we least expect it. They drift to shore when we are already in the midst of dealing with a present moment full of big emotional waves. Why is that painful memory emerging now, when we already have enough on our plates?
Often, what is happening is that our brains and bodies are remembering a similar visceral experience, something that feels both vaguely familiar and at the same time of paramount importance to our present moment. The gift is that we are “feeling deeply” and “feeling back into” something that can be repurposed to help us right now.
A very visceral emotional experience that we suppressed can no longer stay compressed and underground. It has value and it wants to work its way up and into our unfolding experience. Our brains and bodies bookmark our past emotions and experiences and bring them online when they have something significant to reveal.
It is often the case, that when we were younger, we had to face some of our scariest uncertainties all alone. We didn’t have the support system we needed to help us make sense and make meaning out of hurtful, painful events.
When these memories resurface, we can reframe the recall as an opportunity to work with our past experiences to comfort and heal ourselves. We do not have to do this work alone. We can talk with someone we trust, who has similar lived experiences, who can hold space for us to unpack it all with care, compassion and validation.
As yung pueblo reminds us, if a past experienced was flagged in our nervous system as integral, important and profound – we will need to examine it with great care more than once.
We can reframe the resurfacing of painful memories and experiences. When we reframe them as opportunities to heal and learn from them, we can work with them in powerful ways. We can edit and rewrite the stories we tell ourselves. We can unearth the treasure that was frozen in time. What is surfacing for us is a time capsule — one that reminds us what mattered most in that very moment.
We all have emotional experiences that are frozen in time, in our iceberg that stays beneath the surface. The warmer and more compassionate we get with ourselves, the more likely it is that what we suppressed and compressed will begin to break free. It is a positive sign that we are ready to work with something from our past that informs our present.
When past experiences break free, handle them with care. They are emotional treasures, little time capsules of self discovery.
