Negative Emotions Stuck in Your Body Can Cause Health Problems

Are people around you doing things that aggravate and upset you? Should you just keep quiet or should you say something about it? Most of us choose to be quiet and suffer alone. We choose to suppress our emotions. We do it to avoid an explosive feeling that is seen to be socially unacceptable, or we try to replace an uncomfortable feeling with a more acceptable one. We are influenced by expectations from other people in our lives. Trauma victims often find past experiences too difficult to process so they keep it to themselves. Emotional suppression is a necessity for most people, some of the time; it enables us to cope. People are expected, for example, not to spend the day crying from sadness at work. Modern society demands that we suppress emotions. We must put a lid on feelings so we can perform, whether that be at work or to survive in a dysfunctional family. In public spaces we are expected to act respectfully. Shouting with anger is frowned upon and most people don’t have the know how or confidence to express anger in a different way. So, we suppress emotions to cope, to conform, because we are told to do so, or because a trauma is just too painful to process. But suppressing emotions has a physiological impact on the body. Much of the time this is short-term and causes no lasting problems. But longer term, the continual suppression of emotions can have detrimental physical and psychological effects. Suppressed emotions stay in the body. The effects of suppressed emotions include anxiety, depression, and other stress-related illnesses. Individuals often suppress what they perceive to be ‘negative’ emotions as a way of avoiding distress. But continual emotional suppression requires effort and eventually this effort can take its toll. The effort increases sympathetic nervous system activity which can have unhealthy consequences. Research shows that bottling up emotions can make people more aggressive. Studies also show that effortful suppression of negative emotion has immediate and delayed consequences for cardiovascular function. The link between emotional suppression and mortality appeared initially in a Yugoslavian study conducted in 1970 by Grossarth-Maticeck. Long lasting hopelessness was independently associated with cancer, and anger with heart disease. Another study on emotion suppression and mortality risk over 12 years of follow-up concluded that emotion suppression may convey risk for earlier death, including death from cancer. Strong emotions like jealousy, fear, anger, guilt or remorse, if suppressed, can have serious consequences. Fortunately, there is a solution to release suppressed negative emotions. HijamaEnergetics can help locate emotional blockages and release them safely.