The Emotional Weight of Sweat
This summer has felt like one of the hottest and sweatiest New York City has seen in years. These days, simply walking down the street to get a coffee feels like running a half-marathon, and barely surviving it at that. And while the heat may feel overwhelming at times, I implore you to resist the urge to hide in front of your blissfully cool air conditioner all day. Because it may actually be beneficial to actively seek the sweat that comes with the heat. What if, instead of just enduring the discomfort, we shifted how we think about sweating? What if sweat isn’t merely a bodily inconvenience, but a sign of something deeper: a physical expression of the emotional heat we carry and the invisible burdens we don’t often acknowledge? This relentless summer heat offers an invitation to appreciate sweating not just as a response to weather, but as a kind of cleansing or release.
Lately, I’ve been thinking about how much of my life I’ve spent dissecting my own discomfort. Like many of us who live too long inside our own heads, I hold my problems up to the light, name them, turn them over, and then, almost inevitably, blame myself. I use my time not to solve these problems, but to autopsy them. To loop endlessly around one persistent, unanswerable question: Am I the problem? Over time, this becomes less a coping mechanism than a reflex, a kind of emotional self-surveillance masquerading as accountability. But these questions don’t resolve anything. They just lodge themselves in the body. They stick, like sweat after a long day in thick heat: damp, unwanted, and extremely annoying.
But just like some physical ailments need to be released to heal, emotional ones can be sweated out too.
What Is Sweat, Really?
Sweat is the body’s natural way to relieve itself from heat—whether it be physical heat, stress, or internal imbalance. According to Houston Methodist, sweating is your body’s primary way of cooling itself down. When your core temperature rises, your body releases sweat, which then evaporates and pulls heat away with it. But beyond its physical purpose, sweat is also triggered by psychological and emotional stress. That means your body doesn't just sweat when it's hot, it sweats when you're anxious, panicked, or even socially nervous.
There’s something telling about that dual purpose. Your body doesn’t just react when you’re physically overheating, it responds when you’re emotionally overloaded, too. It's as if sweat is the body’s universal language for sensory overwhelm. It’s a reaction to too much heat, too much pressure, or maybe too much of everything.
The Emotional Ties We Store
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) takes it further by exploring the autonomic nervous system and the mechanisms behind thermal and emotional sweating. Sweat glands, particularly the eccrine glands (the most abundant in our bodies), are activated by both thermoregulation and emotional stimuli. These emotional stimuli include anxiety, fear, pain, and self-reflection.
We sweat when we’re faced with emotional discomfort as a healthy way to detox pain, both physical and emotional. It’s our body trying to process what we can’t always say out loud or solve in our heads.
Which brings me back to the summer heat. You can't think your way out of it, can't avoid it, can't intellectualize your way around it. All you can do is endure it. So you sweat.
In some ways, the way we respond to heat is similar to how we process emotions. You can't shortcut grief, can’t rationalize your way out of heartbreak, and you can’t out-think shame. You can only work your way through it. And like heat, those emotions demand an outlet, a release of some sort.
Sweat as Psychic Release
So this summer, when I find myself sweating through my shirt before 9 a.m., instead of feeling embarrassed or annoyed, I’m trying to view it differently. What if the sweat isn’t just a reaction to the weather, but a release of emotional weight I’ve been carrying? What if it’s the physical manifestation of old stories leaving my body?
Akin to how people say they need a “good cry” to get over something, there may be such a thing as a good sweat. Not just the workout kind, but the kind that happens when you’re walking down the street, overwhelmed and overstimulated, shedding latent emotional weight.
Research and somatic therapy experts have begun to recognize that spontaneous sweating, especially when it’s not tied to physical exertion, can be a subtle but significant sign of the body releasing stored trauma. According to trauma recovery specialists like Sabino Recovery, unexpected hot flashes, chills, or bursts of sweat may indicate that the nervous system is attempting to discharge unresolved emotional energy. This form of sweating is often accompanied by other bodily sensations, like muscle twitching or deep sighs, and serves as a kind of somatic reset. Rather than dismissing these moments as discomfort or embarrassment, they can be seen as signs that the body is doing deep, unseen work—processing past pain, grief, or fear that was never fully metabolized. In that sense, sweat becomes more than a physiological response, but evidence that healing is occurring, even when we’re not consciously aware of it.
While modern science sheds light on how sweat aids in processing trauma, ancient cultures have long embraced sweat as a sacred means of releasing emotional toxins. Long before sweat became something to hide or tame, ancient cultures understood it as sacred. Among the Maya and many Indigenous North American communities, sweat lodges known as temazcal in Mesoamerican traditions served as ceremonial spaces for physical, emotional, and spiritual purification. These dome-shaped structures were heated with volcanic stones, and inside, participants would gather in darkness to pray, chant, and sweat. The experience wasn’t just about cleansing the body, but about rebirth, reconnection, and releasing pain carried in the spirit. According to the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, such rituals were designed to foster healing, clarity, and balance with nature and the self. These traditions serve to remind us that sweating can be a rite of transformation, not merely a biological inconvenience.
From Purging to Reframing
We live in a culture that loves to hide discomfort: deodorize it, mask it, sanitize it. But discomfort is exactly what’s needed for transformation.
Sweating strips us down to our most primal selves. It’s messy, honest, and impossible to fake. That’s why it’s such a powerful mechanism for emotional catharsis. If the body keeps the score, then sweating might be one way it starts to settle the balance.
So, next time you’re dripping with sweat, standing on a boiling subway platform or crawling into bed with damp sheets, don’t just curse the heat. Take a second and think: What am I releasing right now? What am I shedding? What’s leaving me?
It may be more than you realize.
Be Well,
Kate Pappas
Bibliography
Houston Methodist. (n.d.). Why do we sweat and why does it matter? Houston Methodist On Health. https://www.houstonmethodist.org/blog/articles/2021/jun/why-do-we-sweat-and-why-does-it-matter/
National Institutes of Health. (2018). Thermal and emotional sweating: A review of the physiological and neural mechanisms. Autonomic Neuroscience: Basic & Clinical, 207, 29–35. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.autneu.2017.07.008
Sabino Recovery. (n.d.). What does it mean when your body releases trauma? Sabino Recovery Center. https://www.sabinorecovery.com/blog/body-releases-trauma/
Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian. (n.d.). Sweat lodges: Tradition and healing. Smithsonian Institution. https://americanindian.si.edu/
