Are Your Emotions Making You Sick?

I thought I was going to discuss strategies for handling the loss of loved ones in last week's blog, but instead I got really sick—sinus, upper respiratory and double ear infections. I’ve been a mess for over a week.

 

My friends have all suggested that my emotional state has had everything to do with my susceptibility to illness, and I had to address that as a possibility. Did my sadness, depression and anger open me up to physical sickness as well?

 

We can’t avoid feeling our emotions, but it has long been believed that when we suppress them, we get into trouble. Suppression of emotions includes denying they exist, not discussing them when we do recognize them, not dealing with them if there is action about them that we can take, and not releasing them after resolution. We must acknowledge how we feel, process how we feel, and then let those feelings go.

 

Our physical bodies and emotions are intricately intertwined, so when we repress our feelings instead of ultimately releasing them, blockages can occur, energy flow is impacted, and various muscles and organs are affected adversely.

 

Eastern medicine advocates a direct link between specific emotions and certain areas of the body.  It is believed that sadness weakens the lungs and can result in flu, colds, fatigue and shortness of breath. That would certainly explain my upper respiratory infection.

 

Anger and irritability damages the liver. The symptoms include muscle cramps, headaches and depression. Anxiety affects the spleen and results in sinus congestion, skin rashes and digestive problems.

 

Also, according to this philosophy, the associated feelings are compounded as well, so it all becomes a vicious cycle of sorts. You feel scared, for instance, and the fear weakens your kidney and results in fatigue, urinary problems, back and knee pain. As a result of those symptoms, your energy lowers even further but the feeling of fear increases.

 

I say in my book Living Agelessly: Creating a Lifestyle for Midlife and Beyond that…

 

“You will alter your life by altering your attitude. The evidence is mounting that a positive attitude not only impacts the quality of and contentment with life but also delays the aging process. Researchers at The University of Texas conducted a seven year experiment on over 1500 relatively healthy people to assess whether there was a link between emotions and the onset of frailty.

The researchers reported in the Journal of Psychology and Aging that although genes and physical health play a role in aging, that “those people who had a positive outlook on life were significantly less likely to become frail than those who were more pessimistic. They speculate that positive emotions may directly affect the quality of health by altering the chemical balance of the body.”

“I believe that there is a connection between mind and body,” said lead researcher Dr. Glenn Ostir, “and that our thoughts and attitudes/emotions affect physical functioning and over-all health, whether through direct mechanisms like immune function or indirect mechanisms like social support networks.”

There is even scientific evidence to suggest that a positive attitude can elongate life. Yale University Associate Professor Becca Levy found in her study of 660 people (338 men and 322 women over 50) that those with positive perceptions of aging lived 7.5 years longer than people with negative perceptions of getting older. She suggests that “this is a critical finding as medical achievements in the area of longevity are generally considered a success when they extend life by one-to-two years. The implications of attitude elongating life by seven years are extraordinary.”

Some suggestions for releasing emotions from Wikihow.com are:

 

1.   First of all, know that crying is not a sign of weakness. Let out your tears! Bottled up emotions lead to more emotional breakdowns in the future. Crying not only cleanses the eyes, but washes the pain away.

2.   Keep a diary. Each time you're feeling down in the dumps, write a journal entry about it. When you're feeling better, you can look back at the entry and think, "How did this pain make me stronger?"

3.   Find someone to talk to. Find someone you trust. If you feel comfortable talking to them and if they can listen to you, understand your pain, then they are the right person for you to turn to.

4.   Try to get to the source of the sadness, and insulate yourself from future damage if possible.

5.   Work through the reasons that provoke your crying. If you are jealous of someone, try to figure out if this reaction is really worth feeling sad about.

6.   Allow time to grieve. If sadness is due to the death of someone close to you, then it may take a bit longer for the sadness to pass. It is healthy to feel sad at the loss of a loved one so understand this and take one day at a time. Crying is perfectly normal at a time like this. Talking about it and expressing your feelings will also help.

7.   Use art to free some of your pain. It can be a poem, a song or a painting that describes what you're feeling and going through.

8.   Muster the courage to feel what actually exists inside you; the courage of an open heart.

9.   If your sadness is related to a family member passing away, do not forget them, but keep memories of them [pictures, home videos, favorite songs, etc.

10.  When you feel pain, find ways to pamper yourself—exercise to release endorphins, visit a spa, plan a day of enjoyment with others who love you, eat some carbs (dark chocolate is good), and rest well!