Your thoughts and emotions can and will affect your health. Positive and negative emotions and thoughts can either cause you physical pain or physical relief. Especially if these emotions of yours are negative emotions. Negative emotions that are failed to be expressed get boiled up inside like a volcano ready to explode. One of my favourite quotes right now is, “Emotions that cannot find their expressions through tears will cause other organs to weep.” It is important to factor in when referring to negative emotions, negative is not in the context of good and bad. All emotions are needed and valid. It is the context of high and low, some emotions make you feel happy, other make you feel terrible and others make you feel neutral. In this article I am referring to the ones that put you in a low state. Whether that be sad, angry, bitter or regretful, or in the similar realm.
Your negative emotions can drain your mental energy and negatively affect your physical health. The negativity and feelings of hopelessness or helplessness can lead to chronic stress, which can result in a hormone imbalance, depleted brain chemicals, and a weakened immune system. And in some research, it is proven that chronic stress can shorten your lifespan. Severe stress can shorten your telomeres (the end caps of your DNA strands) which causes you to age faster than normal.
Repressed negative emotions like anger and depression or anxiety can also lead to hypertension (high blood pressure), cardiovascular disease, digestive disorders, and even infection. This is why it’s important and a must that you recognize your thoughts and emotions and be aware of the effects they can result in. You must try to release your negative emotions through positive ways like meditation, exercise, journaling or through a good conversation.
According to some research up to 70% of people are living their life in chronic stress. I can imagine that number grew higher going through a global pandemic. Stress will exacerbate the effects of any health condition you are experiencing. There are a lot of health conditions that are created through chronic stress alone, probably a lot more than you realised. When someone can find the time in their life to address their stress levels and how they are relating to the world, it can actually create phenomenal impacts on their state of health. Sometimes it evens goes so far to completely reduce the symptoms of different health conditions. We as a society do not factor in people’s mental state, the mind-body-connection any where near as often as we should.
It can be hard because often when someone is presenting with a chronic health condition or mysterious illness that doctors cannot find an explanation for. They are labelled as, “it is all in your head”. And this concept is very misunderstood. First off, nearly everything is “all in peoples heads” because it is how you relate to your world that determines your response to it. People are made to feel if their health condition only has a psychosomatic explanation, then they are choosing the illness or it is their fault they are unwell. Yet even if someone has a health condition that has a diagnosable physical reason; what they tell themselves, how stressed they are, how they decide to respond to this illness will still determine how it impacts them and their life.
There are a number of things you can do to manage your emotional response to things. If you are finding your emotions are overwhelming you lately, use some of the tips in the article to help you handle things better. Here are a few ways you can release your negative emotions and thoughts positively:
1. Meditation and yoga
Both meditation and yoga can help you let go of your negative emotions in a positive way. The time you spend in silence and in peace trying to communicate with your inner self can clear your mind of all the heaviness you are feeling.
2. Journaling
Journaling or writing down your negative thoughts and emotions helps control and improve your mood. Writing your thoughts out helps clear your mind and your heart of the pain and heavy burden that comes along with those emotions. This also provides you an opportunity to deeply understand the cause of your emotions and do positive self-talk.
3. Do something that makes you happy
When your head is full of anger and your heart is filled with pain, doing something that you love can help you release those emotions.
4. Talking to someone you can trust
Talking to someone you can trust is one of the best ways you can let go of your negative emotions and thoughts. It is not easy for people to open up and show your vulnerability to someone but the release you get from doing so always makes it worth it.
5. Forgive
Giving forgiveness is difficult. Especially when the person who aggravated you or caused you pain does not ask or deserve it. However, letting go of your grudge is healing no words can express. And so, do try to forgive whoever may have caused you pain. Let go of your grudge and free yourself from the chain of hatred and anger. Forgiveness is not about the other person so saying what has happened was right, but it is about releasing yourself from the pain you carry.
These are just five of the many ways you can relieve yourself from negativity. And it all starts from you consciously choosing to be free. Being self-aware is all about recognising your emotions when they come up and having healthy coping mechanisms to deal with them. What is one thing you can do this week to release emotions that have been weighing you down?
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