Jon Spayde · November 2010

Suppressing intense feelings can carry a heavy emotional toll. When letting it all out just isn’t a good option, here’s a healthier way to cope.

It’s Thanksgiving dinner and your crazy uncle has you cornered, describing his rigid political views and offering incendiary commentary on the week’s news. Part of you is tempted to let loose with a tirade of your own, but you don’t want to ruin the holiday or upset your entire family. So you decide to keep the peace by biting your tongue — perhaps the right thing to do for holiday harmony, but potentially stressful for you.

Suppressing emotions is not a good long-term strategy, of course. Among other things, it has marked negative effects on your emotional and physical health. But in certain situations — at a party with in-laws, dealing with an irate customer at work, interacting with a difficult coworker — it may not always be advisable or in your best interest to “express yourself” fully.

You don’t have to choose between social graces and your sanity. While you need to “make a distinction between feeling your feelings and expressing them,” says psychologist Gay Hendricks, PhD, cofounder of the Hendricks Institute and author of many bestselling books, including The Big Leap: Conquer Your Hidden Fear and Take Life to the Next Level (HarperOne, 2010), there are ways to go about it that don’t make you feel inauthentic or send your stress response skyrocketing.

Challenges to Overcome

Uncertainty. If you’re taken off guard by an unpleasant encounter in a social setting, you may have no idea how to respond — or you may be unsure if the situation calls for you to express yourself or hold back.
Feeling phony. You may feel you’re lacking integrity or inauthentic if you don’t speak your truth. Or you may feel a moral obligation to express your feelings.
The “ready to blow” effect. Any emotion, if held down long enough, tends to become more concentrated, sometimes turning into a simmering rage you may feel frightened of or uncertain how to handle.

How to Cope

Be honest — with yourself. “Is it a good idea to express your feelings all the time? No,” says Hendricks. “But in all situations, you can tell yourself the truth.” If you must temper your reaction for someone else, acknowledge internally that’s what you are doing, he advises. “When you hide your emotional responses from yourself, it throws off your integrity.”
Name your emotions. Sounds easy, but, says Hendricks, “a lot of the time we don’t know what we’re feeling.” For example, we’ll often react with anger when, really, “we didn’t know how to say to the other person, ‘I’m afraid’ or ‘I’m sad.’” When you have a strong emotional reaction, try to identify your true feelings and reflect on what’s prompting them, instead of unleashing on the other person.
Talk it out in advance. If you know you’re headed into an emotionally charged situation, talk about what you expect will happen with someone else in advance. Describe all the emotions you think might get triggered, says Hendricks. That preemptive conversation will help you stay calm in the moment.
Be a neutral observer. When faced with an intractable difference of opinion, look at the situation as an opportunity to learn more about the other person, Hendricks suggests. Pretend you’re a sociologist trying, very neutrally and calmly, to understand another species. “If you do something inarguable — if you just listen and ask questions — the other person can’t really argue with you,” says Hendricks. If asking questions feels like a stretch when you really disagree with someone, try neutral, observing phrases, like: “Wow, you have strong feelings about that.”
Shift gears. If you’re really stuck, “take three deep breaths and change your body position,” says Hendricks. Changing your body position keeps you from getting frozen in fight-or-flight mode. Likewise, rhythmic breathing quiets the body’s stress response. Try to make each breath four to five seconds long on the inhale and four to five seconds long on the exhale. And then just keep on breathing.

Jon Spayde is a regular contributor to Experience Life.

Any serious scientist will be familiar with the assertion that stress causes immuno-compromise. A recent study by researchers at Harvard School of Public Health has finally put this long-held knowledge into perspective, deciphering that those who bottle up their feelings have a cardiovascular disease risk of 140 per cent and a risk of cancer of 170 per cent when compared to individuals who share how they feel.

Overall, the risk of premature death for those who keep their negative feelings to themselves is around 135 per cent that of individuals unafraid to speak their minds. When framed in this way, the dangers of suppressing emotions are hard to ignore, but how exactly does bottling up your emotions lead to real and tangible damage to the body? The article below will explore the molecular and physiological mechanisms behind this startling array of statistics, and provide some helpful tips to managing your rage, and keeping your body healthy!

Although the concrete mechanism linking bottled-up emotions and premature death has yet to be established, several sound scientific principles may be applied in order to elucidate some facts about the forces at work.

Firstly, it is conceivable that those who feel that they must hide their emotions from others are more susceptible to seeking comfort in substance abuse such as alcohol addiction, cigarette smoking, or the use of other harmful drugs in order to relieve their stress. The use of these substances has several obvious and detrimental effects to health, and so needs no explanation here.

The second suspected mechanism is slightly less direct in nature.

When the body is coping with a stress response, such as un-vented anger or pent-up rage, a hormone known as Cortisol is released. Cortisol is a hormone of critical importance to humans, but it also has some unwanted effects in individuals experiencing high levels of stress. Cortisol is a steroid hormone, specifically a glucocorticoid, meaning that it is capable of suppressing the immune system’s response to damage or invading pathogens.

This unfortunate effect means that individuals who have a higher than normal stress level, and thus a raised Cortisol level, will have under-effective immune systems, not only opening the floodgates to any nasty bugs that may wish to make your body their home, but also preventing a complete response from being carried out towards invaders from within – cancer cells. Every day, the immune system destroys a cell that would otherwise have become cancerous, so it’s easy to see how quickly things can go wrong when this response is working below optimum levels. All is not lost, though.

Studies have shown that releasing anger actually increases blood flow to those parts of the brain responsible for pleasure and reward, thus making taking out your frustration a ‘feel good’ experience. However, there are those of us for whom releasing anger at every turn can very quickly end both friendships and careers. Perhaps a change in outlook is the answer?

Conditioning your brain to be more optimistic about everyday situations and into overlooking the minor foibles of others can quite literally be a lifesaver. The statistics speak for themselves, and lend credence to the thought that optimistic people really do live longer than their pessimistic, stressed out counterparts.

Speaking of which, we are about to launch www.tantrumfitness.net – a whole new approach to releasing your anger whilst becoming healthier. So, why not try to LET RIP whilst GETTING FIT?

Till next time

Lots of hugs

http://www.nakeddivorce.com/about-us/about-adele/

Preview Neuropeptides and their effect on the human body.

Neuropeptides and their effect on the human body.

Why bottling up emotions may be bad for you

Let’s begin by rephrasing that sentence. Bottling up emotions IS bad for you.

Sowmiya Bhas | Updated: May 22, 2014 5:31 pm

http://st1.thehealthsite.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Stress-.jpg”

Nathalie is in her 50s. Her children have grown up and settled. Her husband passed away recently. She has very few friends and mostly keeps to herself. Since her early 20s, Nathalie used to suffer from backaches. She could barely walk and used to be bed-ridden for days. She also developed asthma around this time. She still suffers from these problems today.

All the medical tests and reports were inconclusive and nothing seemed to be wrong with her physically. The doctor then suggested a psychological evaluation. There, it was learnt that Nathalie’s husband had been physically and emotionally abusive.

Since theirs was a love marriage, she felt she couldn’t stand up to him and had bottled in her feelings of sadness, guilt, betrayal, anger deep within her. She stayed with him for the sake of their children. Even after her husband passed away, these feelings remained. She is now learning how to deal with these emotions and is on the road to physical and emotional recovery.

Emotions can be categorised as positive emotions and negative emotions. Some makes us feel good and others make us feel bad. We find it easy to deal with the positive emotions. However, we often are lost when dealing with negative emotions. Anger, sadness, pain, despair, grief are the ones that most of us have trouble dealing with.

Children until the age of five throw tantrums to express their inner turmoil. They don’t know what’s appropriate and what’s not. Grown-ups, on the other hand, bottle up their feelings. The reasons are numerous. Sometimes you feel it is not the right time or place to express, or at other times, you feel that you are bound by some unspoken rules of conduct and courtesy, or you may be in a position that undermines your authority and position – like at your work or at school.

Read more about causes, symptoms, diagnosis and treatment of stress.

Whatever the case maybe, you end up feeling frustrated, angry, or sad. Instead of dealing with those emotions, you end up pushing it into the deep recesses of your mind. You tell yourself, “It’s okay, no big deal. Such things happen. Maybe I deserved it. I am okay.”

Time goes on and you make it a habit to integrate and absorb such feelings into you system.

However, you need to remember, that there is a limit. You can only take in till a certain point. After that, you will overflow or burst with the tension and pressure. If emotions and feelings are not expressed constructively, you will notice the repercussions in your day-to-day life.

Road rage, displacing anger, psychosomatic disorders as well as psychological disorders are all symptoms of bottling up and suppressing your emotions. If you take note of your behavior, you’d notice that you get irritated at the smallest of things, shout at you children, friends and spouses and even experience some physical symptoms like aches and pains.

If you do not address the core issue, you may end up spoiling your relationships or with chronic mental and physical illnesses. You don’t seem to get relief with any kind of treatment either.

It is not always possible to express to the person who causes these emotions – like your boss or your parents or your spouse. That doesn’t mean you build these emotions inside you or try to put a lid on it. One day these emotions will spill out and it won’t be pretty. You need to learn to express your negative emotions.

Find a safe place where you can express freely without worrying about hurting yourself or anyone else. It can be your closest friend, your psychotherapist, your diary or even your pillow. Cry, scream, grumble, punch, talk – do anything that will help you let go of these emotions. It’s something you need to do to preserve your sanity and peace of mind.

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Ways To Release Those Bottled-Up Emotions

Write. Putting your feelings down on paper not only enables you to begin unloading your emotional baggage, it also allows you to process the situation so that perhaps you may….

a) gain objectivity, b) understand the other person’s point of view, and more importantly c) be free to move on with the more important and pleasant things in life. Plus, if you do this regularly in the form of a journal or diary it makes a fascinating read many years later.

Music. If you play an instrument, write a song about what is bothering you. Not only is it a release, it is a way to take that negative energy and be creative with it positively. The song may be dark in subject or it may have some explicit lyrics but you will have fun putting it together and feel empowered every time you perform it or listen to the recording. Sometimes it may be a song that no one else will hear, but that’s fine. It would have served its purpose. If you’re not musically inclined, listen to someone else’s song about a similar subject. Music has the power to move you deeply and by the same token has the power to heal.

Confide in someone. If you feel you can’t talk to the people in your immediate circle, look outside it. If you know someone you haven’t been in touch with for years, give them a call and see if you can catch up. They do not know the details of your life as they have been out of contact so may be able to provide an objective point of view or “outside advice”. Similarly, you can go to the park and find a stranger to talk to. You never know.

I realize some people do not like the idea of going to see a psychologist. It scares them and it also costs money, but I’ve always been impressed with the kindness of strangers. Bear in mind, if the advice given is not what you wanted to hear, do not be angry and defensive toward someone who is trying to help. Be honest with yourself.

Pray. Even if you’re not religious, even if you don’t believe in God, just give it a shot. You have nothing to lose by asking for help. Don’t be surprised if you bump into someone the next day that will make you smile, or you see an ad on tv or a show that makes an impact on your life for the better. There is always a solution, no matter how bad the problem is. (And no, the solution is NOT suicide).

Talk to pets or nature. If you’re uncomfortable talking to people, try nature. Animals are not dumb. In fact, they often sense the emotions of their owners or other humans. You’ve heard stories of dogs howling when their owners have passed away in the other room, or stories about plants growing more quickly to a bigger size when exposed to music. http://secretsofthefed.com/65-year-old-cancer-patient-takes-magic-mushrooms-her-life-changes-forever/

Final Thoughts

Everybody bottles up their emotions at some point. The trick is to realize that doing so is not healthy. When you learn to let go of the hurt or anger or frustration within and are no longer carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders, you will feel much happier with life. Your smile will generate opportunities and with the bad experiences behind you, you can also begin to help other people.

The Queen Bee won’t age … Um no, it’s the power of LESS STRESS. All of these women sound/look happy. Stress can take a toll on your life (physically). Honestly if you remove the stress and you remain ageless. Eating healthy does help too…. but it’s not the ONLY thing.