The Effects Of Negative Thoughts And Emotions On Your Body
While we know that thinking negatively can hold us back from living an emotionally healthy life, it can be shocking to discover the effects of negative thoughts and emotions on your body as well.
There are numerous physical manifestations of your mental pain when you deal with a stressful situation or one where you become sad or disappointed.
Those physical ailments that can be traced back to negative thoughts and emotions are: back pain, headaches, high blood pressure, dry mouth, sweating, stiff neck, sexual performance issues, weight gain or loss, loss of appetite, constipation, digestive issues and chest pain.
Heart palpitations, trouble sleeping and feeling lightheaded can also be the result of a situation that changed your overall feelings and thoughts from positive to negative for more than a brief moment.
There are some that believe certain areas of the body are directly related to specific feelings, like neck pain can be traced to your stubbornness on a certain issue, elbow pain comes from resisting new experiences and hip pain means you are afraid of moving forward in a new direction. Regardless of whether the pains can be traced directly to a situation or merely connect to negative thoughts in general, there are times when the doctor should be consulted.
POSITIVE THOUGHTS VS. NEGATIVE THOUGHTS
Sure we can be neutral sometimes towards certain things, but most of the time our brain will judge and define what is positive and what negative. The brain is a powerful tool, so as it defines something to be positive or negative we’ll get a different reaction in our activity. For example, if while driving you get cut off by another car, some will get pissed off and immediately change their mood to negative even if it was positive the whole time before, while some will just hit that brake a little bit and continue like nothing happened. So it seems that things are not always positive or negative by definition, but it is we that define them as such.
CHANGE YOUR WAY OF SEEING THINGS AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE
Most of the time, there are no positive or negative things just by definition, but it is you that find them to be one way or the other. So, you are the one defining how a situation affects you and therefore how your body will react to it. We can always work our definition on certain situations, and while we do not have such self-control yet, maybe after knowing how our emotions affect our health, we can work to improve that self-control.
“If someone wishes for good health, one must first ask oneself if he is ready to do away with the reasons for his illness. Only then is it possible to help him.” ~ Hippocrates
THE CONNECTION BETWEEN OUR BODY AND OUR MIND
Even though not seen visually, the connection between our mind and our body is huge. While positive thinking and inner calmness can lead to a healthy life style and self esteem, destructive thinking and unresolved issues will surely lead to an unhealthy and unfulfilling life.
Our emotions are our body’s essential energy and they can also be stored in our cellular memory. You can probably still feel pain from something that left an emotional mark from when you were in a situation when you felt overwhelmed with stress. That area of your body is likely to store the energy released from the type of experience you had.
Here’s an interesting chart on how various emotions affect your body:
Often, when you feel some pain, stiffness or injuries, it is often related to some emotion within. At first it doesn’t seem this way cause we live in a fact paced world, and we often leave our emotions aside. When I had chronic pain in my back and neck, it wasn’t from any exercise or any physical injuries. I spent time and money on physical therapies and nothing happened, something was not addressed. It was the emotions involved behind it. Later, when I addressed the unconscious thoughts and emotions I’ve beed experiencing, the pain started going away.
Often in that way, the body asks us to pay attention to our mental state and find peace with ourselves. It’s still a learning process for people and it is early to judge, but we need to get involved on the subject.
THE POWER IS WITHIN US
Davis Suzuki wrote in ‘The Sacred Balance’, ‘condensed molecules from breath exhaled from verbal expressions of anger, hatred, and jealousy, contain toxins. Accumulated over 1 hr, these toxins are enough to kill 80 guinea pigs!’ So imagine the harm we are doing to our body when you have negative thoughts or unprocessed emotional experience in your mind?
We are the only ones what have the power to deal with what life throws at us. So stop judging on small situations as positive or negative, or get stressed over little things, but try to see the big picture and think about the effect on you overall health. Try to look at situations with positive thoughts, get a lesson from small stressful situations or just slow down and observe things before reacting. And keep a positive attitude, thinking that you will get sick all the time will not help you preserve your health, but work the other way around.
Image Sources:
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/2e/c9/db/2ec9db647f73f86eca48df40a9e0565a.jpg
Vocabulary Words:
1. Manifestation - (noun) an event, action or thing that is a sign that something exists or is happening the act of appearing as a sign that something exists or is happening
2. Palpitate - (verb) to beat rapidly and/or in an irregular way especially because of fear or excitement
3. Self-esteem - (noun) a feeling of being happy with your own character and abilities
4. Accumulated - (verb) to gradually increase in number or quantity over a period of time
Discussion Questions:
1. Do you believe that out thoughts affect how our body feels? Why or why not?
2. In what ways are mind and body connected?
3. Can you give some examples of how mind and body are connected, from your own experience.
4. How do you stay positive?
5. Do you think positive thinking can help you to overcome all of your problems in life?
