Addressing repressed emotions

I finished Dr Sarno's audiobook healing back pain. He mentions that people with tms need to address repressed emotions. I am wondering how do you identify emotions that are in the subconscious? Once you identify these emotions what do you do to overcome these emotions?

 

Hello @Chris27
Welcome
What a great set of questions.
Dr. Sarno explicitly suggests looking for rage in the subconscious, however, that's not the only emotion to look for. There's often a lot of baggage surrounding rage. Sarno's theories are Freudian - so a great way to think about it is by looking at the Id. It's your inner temper tantruming 2 year old that wants everything it's way. When it doesn't get it's way it gets rageful. Because these things are subconcious, or buried, we can really only suggest to ourselves what might be going on in there, but looking at what are considered negative emotions is usually the place to go.
Your goal is never to "overcome" the emotions. Especially because Sarno talks about not only subconcious emotions but repressed emotions: stuff we haven't allowed ourselves to feel. Perhaps that's because it's hard for eg. a goodist to relate to being angry and rageful, or a perfectionist to imagine that they have any shame or any "unwanted" or "unacceptable" emotions at all. We just don't feel them. The goal is to simply acknowledge and allow that we might be feeling these things, and that it's OK to. Humans were designed to feel all emotions. Many TMS-ers also find they haven't felt joy, love (especially towards self) or gratitude. These too have been stifled.
Since every person has different experiences, and different personality traits, you'll have to do some inner self-work to identify these things. These are feelings often triggered by thoughts, events, our past etc. and become painful to feel. The SEP is a free tool that will guide you through a series of exercises that can teach you the skills for doing this work. https://www.tmswiki.org/ppd/Structured_Educational_Program (Structured Educational Program)