Ever felt like your stomach is in knots when you’re nervous, or like you want to puke when feeling disappointed or upset? Just like these, do you ever feel a sinking heaviness or dizziness when giving yourself a negative self-talk?
These may seem like they are just in your head, but little did you know that those negative thoughts and emotions are actually manifesting themselves into physical illnesses. These do not apply just to stress and depression, but even those tiny bursts of anger or days of negative thinking.
However, just as how negative emotions make you sick, good emotions can also equate to good health. It’s all how you process them, handle them, and make them work for you, so you become, stronger and healthier.
Based on medical studies conducted over the years, here are some of the negative emotions that trigger these physical conditions:
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1. Stress
When feeling stressed constantly, the stress hormone called cortisol starts to over-accumulate in the body, and in the long-term it transforms into detrimental issues in the digestive, immune, and reproductive systems. It can also induce depression, insomnia, heart disease, obesity, and damage your memory and brain functions.
Solution:
It may be advised to replace your coffee with some green tea, and add a few fresh berries, and probiotics like yogurt to your diet. Also, reduce your salt intake and bad carbs like white rice, white pasta, and potatoes. Keep telling yourself, “This stress is temporary and does not deserve a permanent place in my mind, body, or spirit. I will be peaceful, because if life is already so crazy, why should I make myself feel worse too?”. Pamper yourself when you feel that stress getting to you, be it a massage, a hike, or just being lazy at home.
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2. Resentment
According to Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), feeling resentment is said to take a toll on the liver and gallbladder, including slow processing of fatty foods, therefore increasing the risk of liver disease.
Solution:
Drink some lemon juice and honey mixed with hot water, each morning and reduce the amount of fatty foods you eat. You can also try chanting affirmations such as, “I want to release the past and focus on the positive attributes of every person”. In terms of lifestyle, take up activities that show gratitude and working with other people for a cause. This will keep your mind from stewing with distaste for any person to feeling happiness when helping someone lesser privileged.
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3. Worry
The emotion of worry is said to affect the digestive and immune system, making you more vulnerable to indigestion or stomach disorders. Being a worry wart is not uncommon, whether it is about your aging parents, partner, career, and the like.
Solution:
Remind yourself that worry is not getting you anywhere, and chant these words, “Everything will be absolutely fine. I am calm, safe, and full of joy and hope”. Try to avoid alcohol, caffeine, and excessive sugar, but include lots of warming foods like soups, stews, and even some turmeric milk with honey to your diet. Going for a run, playing with a dog or cat, and breathing slowly all the way into your belly, also do the trick.
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4. Guilt
This is one emotion that can latch onto you and form a host-parasite kind of relationship, which also weakens your brain or cognitive functions, and distracts you from the present moment.
Solution:
Trying to push it away only makes its clutches on you even stronger, so give it some distance and allow yourself only one ‘guilty pleasure’ hour or day per week. Tell yourself, “I am doing my best and this guilt is keeping me from doing better or being more than what I am. So, I release this need to blame myself”. Show yourself some love, do what makes you feel special, and don’t be too hard on yourself. Go for a stroll in the park, lie on the grass on a lazy afternoon, and keep your mind light.
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5. Grief
This depressing feeling has a way of weakening your heart, and making it susceptible to disorders and issues. With the apt label of ‘matters of the heart’, this emotion can occur from the death of someone you love, a break-up, failure in your career, and so on.
Solution:
What you need is to remind yourself that life goes on, and that failure, loss, or each person act as a lesson that is vital to helping you grow and learn. Find someone to talk to or spend some time alone to remind yourself, “I will be gentle with myself, heal this wound, recover, and rise back up from this loss in a phenomenal way”. Fill your diet with heart nurturing foods of raw salads with green leafy veggies, feta cheese, and fresh fruits. It may help to join some social activity with positive vibrations such as a choir or try singing to release the pent-up pain and bring your biorhythm back to vitality.
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6. Anger And Irritability
This emotion doesn’t just destroy relationships, but brain cells too. It’s also said to cause harm to your stomach, make your skin more prone to disorders like acne, and even increase blood pressure.
Solution:
It’s essential to increase your intake of healthy fats such as avocados, unprocessed nuts, seeds, olive oil, seafood, and fish. When you’re angry, it may help to count from 1 to 100 by taking fast to slow deep breaths at each count. Repeat these words in your mind, “I choose to be calm, at peace, and in harmony within myself, and all those in my life, no matter what goes wrong”. If you have anger issues, it may help to vent it out with some sports like kickboxing, or even meditation so that situations and people can never get under your skin.
Other Mindful Tips:
Awareness:
The first step to any form of negativity is awareness, which is an achievement in itself. Never forget that!
Just A Fraction:
Your negative emotions and thoughts are only a part of you and do not make up your whole self.
Break The Wheel:
Most times negative thoughts and emotions run in cycles or patterns. Notice what yours is and start to see what triggers it and do not hold onto it, let it pass. If it persists then start questioning it, and you’ll see that it makes no sense or holds no value.
Tech-Diet:
Ever see yourself zoning out during a movie and having a loop of thoughts running like background apps in your brain? Reduce the time you spend on your gadgets and on mindless tasks. Focus on games or activities that require your full attention and concentration, keep your mind busy on productive tasks, not mind-numbing activities.
Forgiveness:
Negative thoughts and emotions root from past experiences and not forgiving others and ourselves. Easier said than done, but just let it go, and say “Does it even matter anymore? This is not what I want my life to be. Let me be better and make the present better than before.”
Getting Perspective:
Talk to someone and get their perspective on it so you visualize your thoughts in a different way. If not, just vent it out by talking to yourself or writing it out, just to get it out of your system.
In medical history, there have been cases where heartbreak resulted in inflammation issues, worry manifested into longer flu durations, and stress turned into back problems. Besides the genetic predispositions for them, emotions do trigger them and exist for a reason. So, embrace emotion and let it run its course without getting to you too much.
