Emotional Wellness: Understanding How Emotions Affect Your Body

Emotional Wellness:
Understanding How Emotions Affect Your Body

By Guest Author, Elle Bieling

The concept of emotional wellness is a familiar one indeed.
Everyone wants to have total health of his or her body, mind and soul.

However, in my observations as a nurse, emotional wellness is the single most misunderstood concept.

‘A bodily disease, which we look upon as whole and entire within itself, may, after all, be but a symptom of some ailment in the spiritual past.’ ~ Mark Twain

Very few people understand the deep connection between emotions and physical health. We don’t understand that chronically stored, strong, negative emotions can severely affect our mental health, and therefore affect our entire beings, physical and spiritual.

Emotions have a tendency to rule us. They rule us, only because we are so unaware of their effect on us. When strong, negative emotions raise our ire, we often feed on the feeling. We dwell on the unfairness of it all, and our bodies become tense, our breath becomes rapid, as we gear up for the fight or flight. Our bodies surge with the hormone, cortisol, to prepare us to stand and fight, or run away. This is our conditioning, from an evolutionary standpoint, when we were faced with the real physical danger of a charging wild animal, or our enemy. This evolutionary pattern of behavior no longer serves us well.

When we feed on our negative emotions, the negative emotions build and become what we now term as “stress.” Stress is created when our hearts and minds perceive danger or personal attack upon our perception of ourselves. Stress is really anxiety. The anxiety we feel when the perceived danger to ourselves becomes chronic and takes hold of our lives.

If we continue to hold these stressful, strong emotions and never learn to release them, eventually, our body-mind-soul will be affected and dis-ease will be created. This is how emotions affect our body.

Emotional wellness can only begin when we realize to what extent we suppress our emotions or let them build up inside us, versus accepting them and releasing them. It is the suppression of emotions that is our real and constant danger, not the emotions themselves!

If we view our emotions as information only, we can better be aware of what is happening to us. Emotional wellness begins when you can become the observer of your own negative emotions, especially the all-too-frequent anger. Anger is the single most destructive emotion for our health. Nothing will create dis-ease faster than pent up anger. Fear and hate, are a close second.

Instead of fighting against our emotions, or just suppressing them deep in our souls, if we view them as information to tell us of our inner condition, healing can begin. Awareness is always the first step toward change and positive outcomes.

Emotional wellness is obtainable only if we can stay present with our feelings in the moment when they occur, and feel them deeply. If we learn to experience our emotions when they occur, and let them go, they do not have to be stored in our cells and in our bodies for ill health to take seed.

I invite you read more on how to find emotional wellness, by reading my article on How Emotions Affect Our Body. I teach you about the 90-second rule for releasing your emotions in the moment they occur.

You can have health and healing of your body-mind-soul if you are willing to begin the journey. Come take the journey with me!

Photo of Elle BielingABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Elle Bieling is a holistic health nurse and creator of The Body Window website, a site committed to helping you reintegrate your body into your body-mind-soul for complete and total health and healing. She believes that the body is a window to your true self or your soul. Elle invites you to begin to learn how to hear your body’s messages through your Body Window to find health and healing in your life.

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