It’s a proven fact that negative emotions have a direct impact on short-term and long-term physical health. There is a direct connection between your mind and your body. The body reacts by releasing different hormones and chemicals based on different emotions. Serotonin, Dopamine, and Oxytocin are released when we are happy and Cortisol and Norepinephrine are released when we are stressed.
These different chemical concentrations can cause immediate physical symptoms. For example, if you are suffering from anxiety, you may notice headaches and shaky hands. Childhood experiences and memories become deeply rooted in our current emotions. During a study conducted on 17,000 people, it was seen that the subjects with a disturbed childhood were 4-50 time more likely to suffer from physical ailments such as fractures, diabetes, and heart diseases.
How Emotions Could Be Affecting Your Health
Negative emotions can even hamper the immune system, making you more prone to coughs, colds, and other sicknesses. Another scientific study actually proved that chronic stress reduces our longevity by depleting telomeres, the end caps of our DNA.
Further research was conducted on atherosclerosis patients by the Duke University Medical Center. They discovered that the patients who received support from their friends or spouse experienced mortality rates as low as 17% over 5 years. Whereas those without this crucial emotional support experienced higher mortality rates of 50%.
These studies clearly show the silent but harmful effects of subduing our negative feelings. It clearly has adverse effects on our body. Pain and stiffness in the body can even be caused by certain emotions, then healed by others. The key to keeping our body in the healthiest state possible is learning how to deal with and express our negative feelings correctly.
How to Identify Negative Emotions Right Now
All too often, we suppress our emotional side by ignoring our deeper feelings. We compensate by adopting habits of overeating, drinking alcohol and other vices. However, it’s vital that we identify negative emotions and accept them if we are to return the balance. Use the following tips to identify harmful negative emotions:
Listen to Your Subconscious Mind
Hectic schedules often cause us to neglect the voice of our inner consciousness. We develop a set pattern of thinking and we often forget to listen to ourselves. So now it’s time to break the cycle and delve into your inner self by listening to your subconscious mind. You’ll learn a lot about yourself, your weaknesses, subdued emotions, relationships and the things you love.
Start by freely jotting down your fleeting thoughts on paper. The act of writing down your thoughts will help you analyse your thought process and any negative emotions hidden inside you.
Prepare a List of Moments You Were Hurt
We often try to forget the times we are hurt by saying that it is a small thing and we will get over it, but in fact, we don’t. Men are usually the worst culprits, but women should still try this exercise.
Prepare a list of little and unimportant hurts that keep on coming back. This may even include small hurts from your childhood. Instead of burying these hurts and avoiding them, writing them down will help you to confront these emotions. It’s likely you’ll gain a greater understanding of yourself.
Record Your Emotions for 8 Weeks
Keep a record for 8 weeks, including all significant emotional events and how you felt. Anything that makes you feel strongly, positive or negative, should be jotted down. It could be anything like pleasant weather, children, wife, husband, business, and books. Be sure to analyse your emotions, identify things that made you angry as this can trigger sadness.
If you are successful in unmasking your anger or other emotional issues, you can prevent yourself from getting stuck with negative emotions. Writing them down will make you feel stronger and raise your awareness of your emotions so you can work on them.
How to Release Negative Emotions
Now that you’ve learnt how to successfully identify negative emotions, it is time to release them. Follow these simple tips to release negative emotions and keep your body in a healthy, balanced state:
Physically Releasing your Negative Emotions
Physically releasing negative emotions is one common way to get rid of them. One likes to go to a secluded place and scream or shout as a way of releasing them. Screaming loudly till it feels better can often help by venting negative emotions. For others, a punching bag or other controlled physical exertion can be used to vent rage. This method is best suited for angry people who like to vent out their emotions in the form of aggression.
Transmuting Your Emotions
Sit in a comfortable position on a chair and close your eyes. Take deep breaths until you feel relaxed. Now start searching for the emotion that is making you feel bad. All these subdued emotions will be located in different places around the body. Anger is usually found in the belly-button, whereas sadness often rests in the midriff area.
Be with your emotion and hold it. You can see your emotion as a vast dark grey cloud. Repeating this process of holding your emotions can help you in reducing the size of the cloud of sadness. This process is called transmuting emotions and it can be greatly helpful in releasing your negative emotions.
Meditation
Meditation is another well-proven way of releasing negative emotions. Sit in a relaxed position and close your eyes. Take deep breaths 10 to 15 times to relax your body. Delve yourself into the root cause of your problem and identify the emotion behind it. Try to get rid of it by confronting it, dealing with it and choosing to move on. Meditation can alter your perception about things strongly. Often you will feel things differently after a session of meditation.
You can keep negative emotions away by living in the movement, then dealing with them as they arise. Practice the above tips and live your life with all the positive energy around you.
