Most people are used to feeling victimized by their emotions, or rather victims of life circumstances or other people that force them to feel emotional pain. It can be uncomfortable to consider then, that we ourselves are in some way encouraging and perpetuating our own emotional suffering.

I do not say this to cast blame, but rather to provide clarity and certainty: According to the latest science, we are each in control of our emotional experience, insofar as we understand how that experience affects and is affected by, the brain, nervous system, and subconscious mind.

While life brings moments of joy, happiness, gratitude, and excitement, you may have also experienced times when it feels as if your own emotions turn against you — when you can’t seem to get over the heartbreak, or the depression won’t lift; the anger or resentment won’t retreat.

Recent studies have revealed, for the first time, the brain mechanism that translates unpleasant experiences into long-lasting memories. These findings support a 65-year-old hypothesis called Hebbian plasticity, which is described by health and sciences journalist Christopher Wanjek as such: “That in the face of trauma… more neurons in the brain fire electrical impulses in unison and make stronger connections to each other than under normal situations. Stronger connections make stronger memories. The new findings are not only an important advance in researchers’ understanding of how Hebbian plasticity works, but they also may lead to treatments to help patients forget horrible memories.” 

Science is beginning to prove what counselors and therapists have noticed for decades: Bad memories that incite negative emotions stick around far better than memories that are neutral.

Though memories, in general, are prone to distortion over time, according to Boston College faculty member, Elizabeth A. Kesinger, recent evidence suggests that emotional memories are more resistant to the decay processes that wear away at all memories with time.

Is your brain wired for pain?

Why would your brain prioritize the preservation of emotional memories over neutral ones? Research suggests that memories retaining strong emotional energy do so because these emotions were not fully processed at the moment of the event.

Thus, it appears that our emotional operating system stores and protects all unprocessed emotional energy, and then continually attracts and triggers new experiences of that same unprocessed emotional pain. 

Without looking deeper at why our neurological and emotional systems do this, at first glance it seems that we as human beings become literally addicted to unhappiness. But before you give up all hope, let me make clear that the ways we store and re-create emotional pain has an ultimately positive purpose. 

You are not a victim. Rather you are like an adventurer or explorer, being asked to see vital signposts leading you to the greatest truth of your own being. The glitch is that no one taught you what these signs look like, what they mean or what they point to.

Your brain and subconscious carefully preserve emotional memories and bring your awareness back to them so that you can locate unresolved emotions still stuck in your body, nervous system and psyche and allow their full expression and release. That is the essence of emotional healing. The emotions themselves - even the negative ones - are not the issue. Unresolved emotions that were not properly processed at the time, and hence get stuck, are the issue.

These stuck, unprocessed emotions are referred to as Rogue Emotions and are part of a larger system created by the subconscious called Emotional Footprints. 

An Emotional Footprint is a program that the subconscious uses to store all emotions that could not be processed in the moment they occurred. It then brings these emotions or Rogue emotions back to the surface at what would seem like random times in order to bring your attention to the false beliefs that created them in the first place. 

The reason why you could not process the emotion originally was because your current beliefs at the time were threatened. You were being challenged to change your beliefs to a deeper truth that you just were not ready for. So, the Emotional Footprint program came in to aid you so that you are not living a lie. It took that unprocessed emotion and turned it into a Rogue emotion to use as a signpost for you in future experiences. 

The idea is to bring your attention back to the belief(s) that you are holding onto that just aren’t true and to help you adopt new perspectives that will ultimately bring you peace, joy and clarity. It will continue to do this until its program is satisfied and you have truly dropped your belief. 

We were never supposed to be stuck in our emotional pain. The pain was supposed to point the finger to the deeper culprit responsible for our unhappiness so that we could release them both forever to achieve genuine peace and joy.

This elusive final step — to find and release the deeper issue your negative emotions are pointing to — is the purpose of the Biko Method. Releasing Emotional Footprints without having to continually relive painful experiences and at a fraction of the time is why the Biko Method was created. 

This amazing tool allows you to hit the delete button on that addiction to unhappiness. You can use this powerful tool at any time to immediately release any Emotional Footprint along with its associated Rogue emotions. And the beautiful thing about releasing Emotional Footprints is that they will never return. 

Once an Emotional Footprint is gone, it’s gone for good. The only reason why we experience repeated unwanted patterns and emotional experiences is because the Emotional Footprint program re-introduces that Rogue emotion. If we delete the Emotional Footprint program, the rogue emotion leaves with it. 

The subconscious only allows this release if during the release it knows that you are in alignment with the beliefs that are right for you. This is all done naturally when you explore your Emotional Footprints using the Biko Method.

The natural and organic approach to releasing Emotional Footprints is the one that you have already been using. Unfortunately, the only way to truly release an Emotional Footprint without a tool such as the Biko Method, is to continually repeat similar emotional discomforting experiences and gain the wisdom that develops naturally through that process. That wisdom will eventually free you from Emotional Footprints. It just takes time.