Our emotions affect our body in numerous ways. It’s thought that every feeling you have has the potential to affect a different part of your body.
While positive emotions such as gratitude have been scientifically linked to a number of beneficial health effects, negative emotions and stress can unfortunately have a detrimental effect.
Certain emotions are known to be associated with pain in specific regions of your body even though science cannot explain exactly why this is. For example, those suffering from anxiety or depression will often experience chest pains, even when there’s nothing physically wrong with their heart. Extreme grief can also have a particularly devastating impact. Research confirms that in the days following the loss of a loved one, your risk of suffering a heart attack increases by 21 times.
Anger can shorten your life but suppressing emotions is not the answer
Frequent anger is associated with a heightened risk of high blood pressure and heart problems, including heart attack and stroke. Research has also shown that people who get angry easily tend to die sooner than their mellower peers.
However, suppressing your anger is not the answer. This has been found to triple your risk of heart attack. The risks associated with the suppression of anger were even greater when people felt they’d been treated unfairly. According to Iris Mauss, associate professor of psychology at UC Berkeley and author of a study on the health effects of repressing versus accepting dark emotions:
“We found that people who habitually accept their negative emotions experience fewer negative emotions, which adds up to better psychological health. Maybe if you have an accepting attitude toward negative emotions, you’re not giving them as much attention. And perhaps, if you’re constantly judging your emotions, the negativity can pile up.”
Allow your emotions to have expression
In other words, trying to pretend you don’t feel what you feel, or judging your emotions harshly, tends to cause more stress than just feeling them. By contrast, people who allowed sadness, disappointment, anger or resentment to take their course had fewer physical symptoms or mood disorders. Accepting “what is,” including your emotions, is something many meditation and yoga practices teach us.
But why is accepting your emotions so important?
According to Psychology Today, “When you try to deny or stifle any ‘parts’ of yourself — whether undesirable emotions, desires or fears — you become fragmented. But you need a sense of integration; of wholeness inside, to grow your wellbeing and capacity to handle the ups and downs, the successes and failures; all part of the relentless change and impermanence that characterizes life.”
Repressed emotions such as anger, fear, frustration and rage may also be a factor contributing to chronic pain, especially back pain. Dr. John Sarno, author of ‘Healing Back Pain – The Mind Body Connection’, successfully used mind-body techniques to treat patients with chronic, severe back pain.
How I can help
As a nutritional therapist, wellbeing coach and holistic grief coach, I see how important it is to view our health holistically and to understand how our emotions affect our bodies. Accepting and integrating our feelings, without judging them or pushing them away, lessens the impact on the body. As they say: ‘The body keeps the score’.
If you want help with addressing how your emotions might be affecting your physical health, then please contact me to find out more.
To read more about the services I offer click here
Vanessa May is a BANT registered Nutritional Therapist, ILM Accredited Wellbeing Coach and Certified Grief Educator and has helped hundreds of clients with her holistic approach to health and wellbeing. She specialises in stress, fatigue, low mood, anxiety and grief, giving women the confidence and tools to change their lives in the best way possible.