We may easily accept that for good health and well-being we need to keep our feelings and moods cheerful as we seek to enjoy our lives.
But we tend to overlook the fact that on the other hand, if we don’t manage to keep positive about ourselves and life in general, negative emotions and emotional stress can actually do us a great deal of harm.
Perhaps the worst culprits are anger, fear, depression and grief. These can all undermine our mental health and fitness.
When angry our blood pressure is known to rise; our face tends to become florid; our eyes flash and tension and muscular constriction inevitably follows. If tension is located around the head and neck we usually develop a headache after a burst of anger. If our tension is directed to the torso we will tend to hold our breath forcibly and experience constriction around the heart and lungs. It depends to some extent how long we entertain our anger and express it outwardly as to how quickly these problems will dissipate. If we hold our anger inside us, the damage to our bodies and nervous system is increased and we develop gastro intestinal symptoms or digestive upsets.
Extremes of anger have been observed in some people to develop serious and immediate reactions so violent that they literally froth at the mouth or are thrown into spasm with contorted limbs. A laboratory analysis of the saliva of such a person has been found to have a highly toxic or poisonous content. Sudden fright can cause the body to tremble violently or to lose control of bladder or bowels as is well known.
Long held depression, feelings of loneliness or hopelessness and intense grief can upset all physiological processes including arrest of the gastric secretions, or turning the hair white and causing premature ageing. Similar interruption of normal body functions can occur through sudden shock. Psychologists interested in psycho-somatic causes of disease have related deep emotional problems to serious diseases such as cancer, and to chronic lingering conditions such as arthritis.
So we need to be more aware of the need to keep our emotions cultivated and controlled for our own sake as well as for those around us who share our space.
We all have a great potential to feel positive emotions of love, kindness, joy and peace and have an innate ability to transform all the wild negative energy in anger, into happier channels to demonstrate our emotional and mental fitness.
Sally Janssen’s wonderful book “Mental Fitness: A Simple Self-Help Guide”, offers simple and timely solutions.
